Playing with goop

Objective

To explore with senses using goop

Materials

• corn starch
• food colouring (optional)
• 1/4 cup measuring cup
• 1 teaspoon

My daughter and I played with goop yesterday.  I loved this messy activity as a child and I hoped that my daughter would too when we made the sticky, wet and crumbly mixture.  I started out with measuring 1/4 cup of cornstarch and then added one teaspoon of water at a time along with drops of food colouring to make sure it would not get too runny too quickly.  Although hesitant to touch

it first, after Bean saw that I got my hands dirty, she was more than happy to join me.  She was excited and intrigued by it.  She spent about 20 minutes just exploring it with her hands and at one point even put it in her mouth.  She was not impressed with the taste of goop, but I guess she had to try!  

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Cotton balls and Q-tips

Objective

To further develop fine motor and sorting skills for my toddler

Materials

• cotton balls
• Q-tips
• Two containers (one for the cotton balls and one for the Q-tips)

Like many toddlers, my daughter likes to play and explore objects that are not necessarily toys.  A couple of weeks ago, she found the Q-tip holder in our bathroom and dumped out all of the Q-tips.  I watched what she did with them.  Instead of just dumping them and moving on to the next activity, she began picking up the Q-tips. One by one, she put them back into the container, making sure each one was flat and fit back into the holder correctly.  She managed to put them all back and then proceeded to dump them back out and do it all over again.  She must have spent a good half an hour doing this. It was amazing to me that she was so focused on this and was practising attention regulation despite the distractions near by.

She also gave me inspiration for this post.  This activity could be used to develop fine motor skills, sensory exploration as well as sorting.  I set out the cotton balls, Q-tips and put containers for each of them so she had separate containers if she wanted to sort.

Here is what I used:

What are your toddler's favourite bathroom accessories?

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