Creative and Tactile/Sensory Play Ideas

I decided today to risk some messy play out the back and the girls have been playing nicely and quietly for about half an hour now!! 'How?' you ask? Well I made coloured rice!!

To colour rice simply dip it in water with food colouring. The darker you want it the more food colouring you use. I used a strainer to dip it with and strained it all out before putting it in the clam shell pool to dry out with a hair dryer. You could put it in the oven to dry too, or on a sunny day you could skip the hair dryer and just leave it in the sun. The same idea works for dyeing pasta shapes for necklaces. Use spades, buckets, and any sand moulds to keep them entertained with it. Non toxic and edible so no sandy poos and it is best as an outside play idea.

There are lots of other creative play ideas that involve the kids making something and then playing with it, like playdough (no cooking though, get them to put the dry ingredients in and mix and then use boiling water in the cooked recipe instead of cooking. When it is cool enough they can take over mixing from you, and then play away.

Sand can be good but for me I prefer it to be only under certain circumstances. I hate sand being everywhere and I prefer for it to be easy to wash off so dry sand at table height rather than a pit is my preferred option.

Lentils are also really good as a hide and seek game. The FP Little People are the perfect size to hide and are also in a tactile environment.

If you can think of any more ideas feel free to add them. I did see the sticky thread about toys and games but I wanted to look more at tactile things and things that can have multiple activities in one.

playdough is a great one. You can add fragrance to it as well for smell. They did that at DD's CC