Muffin Tray Sorting

A ziplock bag with pom poms, wooden teddies and colourful spiral pasta + a silicone mini muffin mat = sorting fun! We're having dinner at a restaurant tonight, and I'm hoping this is another activity that will keep her occupied for a while. I'm going to throw in a pair of mini tongs to use as well. Simple, but effective. Better than plastic toys, that's for sure!

Bubbles Challenge Part 2

I thought I'd tackle some bubble painting with Eden for this weeks Play Time Challenge, but unfortunately it did not go as well as planned. To do bubble painting, you need a container, powdered paint/s, detergent, straws and paper. You mix 1/4 cup of detergent in with some powdered paint to get the colour you want, then get your child to blow into the paint mix with a straw to form lots of little bubbles (which stay in the container and don't pop). You'll need to make the colour extremely bright in the mix because once the bubbles pop on the paper, they're much paler. Once the bubbles are overflowing the container, take your paper and carefully roll it around on top of the bubbles, but don't press down. The result should look like coloured bubbles have burst on your paper.
I don't have any powdered paint, and I don't plan on getting any (pretty expensive stuff), so I used normal non-toxic poster paint. I poured a fair wallop of if in to make the colour vibrant but that meant that the detergent was too diluted and the bubbles didn't, well, bubble properly. They certainly didn't overflow the container. So I had to grab some much smaller bits of paper to dip into the containers instead. The whole thing was a bit of a debacle, but Eden didn't seem to notice. She was to preoccupied with blowing bubbles into the paint mix to notice that our activity wasn't going as planned. Suits me! Will definitely try this again and adjust the detergent to paint ratio and see how we go.
A note: if you're going to try this, maybe get your toddler to practice blowing through the straw first, the last thing you want is for them to accidently inhale the paint mix. They could blow bubbles into a cup of water, blow pom poms or cotton wool balls around, blow on your face, etc. 

What Do Pom Poms and Ice Cubes Have In Common?

Answer: Ice cube trays of course! 

I can practically see eyebrows being raised as I write this, but it's true. One of the best activities I do with Eden is to set her up with some empty ice cube trays, a bag of pom poms and a pair of mini tongs. She sits happily and transfers the pom poms from one tray to the other with the tongs (great for fine motor skill development), or sorts them into the trays by colour or size, or decides that the pom poms are my lunch and that Mummy needs to be a good girl and eat all of it, thank-you-very-much.

Actually, pom poms are a great item to add to your little box-of-tricks, they could be rabbit tails for puppets, decorations for party hats or clown hats (dress ups!), your littlie could try blowing the pom poms from one point to another with a straw, you could put a whole bunch of them in a bag of netting as a tactile bag for babies, or you could put some in a small plastic bottle for babies to play with - it's very visually stimulating for them. Be careful around babies though, brightly coloured and small pom poms may look like fun to chew on...and I'm pretty sure they're not. Keep away from the bubbas unless they're in a sealed bottle or bag.