Hot Rocks

Objective

To help my toddler understand hot(warm) and cold using river rocks (Sensory Discrimination)

Materials

• Two containers that are similar 
• river rocks (to be divided equally into the containers)

As mentioned above, I divided the rocks into two. I put one set into the freezer about an hour before I did the activity.  For the hot rocks- I put them on a tray in the toaster oven and "baked" at 200 degrees for slightly less than a minute.  I set them aside to cool just to be absolutely sure they were not too hot for my daughter to handle.  Please double check the temperature of the rocks prior to letting your child play with them.
Then I placed each set of rocks into identical containers and asked my daughter to join me on the floor.  She immediately took the lid off of one and then the other.  She picked up one of the cold rocks and raised her shoulders and smiled at me, then3 quickly put it down. :) I asked if the rock felt "cold" or "hot".  I guess she thought both containers had cold rocks, because she just kept taking rocks out of the container with the cold rocks.  I decided to put a cold rock in one of her hands and a warm one in the other.  I repeated saying cold and warm and she did the same.  We also tapped the rocks together to make sounds.  My daughter seemed to enjoy taking all the rocks out and putting the lids on and off the containers.
(Note:  I supervised my daughter the entire time as she still has a tendency to put things into her mouth)

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Sensory Surprise Bag

Objective

To encourage the use of senses through exploration of new objects
(Skill: Sensory Discrimination)

Materials

For this activity, you can use any assortment of objects as long as they are safe and objects in which you think your child will be interested.  Some of the ones I used are:

• scented pinecone
• a clean sponge
• ribbons of various colours
• spikey rubber ball
• lids from tubes of lotion
• feathers
• bath puff
• a kid friendly bag or container to put it all into

My daughter had not seen any of these items prior to the activity so I was especially interested in seeing what she would do with them.  I placed the bag on the floor and Bean came to it and began reaching in and taking all of the items out.  She gave me each item as she took it out of the bag, so I used the opportunity to describe the " cinnamon scented, pointy pinecone", "spikey ball", "smooth ribbons" etc.  She was most interested in the ball as she really enjoys practicing playing catch.  It was a fun and quick activity that is also easy to put together in minutes.

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