Month: May 2016

Spaghetti Potion

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toddler 3 (7)

This three-ingredient project couldn’t be easier, and was a huge hit.

I’m on a sensory play kick with Travis, but in the wake of his short-lived interest in Dish Soap Foam, I thought he might be averse to dipping his hands into the gooey spaghetti concoction I made. Boy was I wrong: he couldn’t get enough of the stuff!

To set up the craft, cook a batch of spaghetti (or use leftover cooked spaghetti). Drain and toss with cold water, then arrange on a disposable foil pan. I drizzled the pasta with just a touch of corn syrup for stickiness (as well as to combat dryness), and added a sprinkle of natural red food coloring, and then let the mixture cool.

toddler 3 (4)

When we returned home from a hair cut (always a bit of a traumatic experience), I asked Travis if he wanted a super fun new game as a treat for being brave in the barber’s chair. We set out the foil tray and a colander, and he immediately fell to transferring the spaghetti by huge handfuls from one container to the other and back again.

toddler 3 (6)

He very quickly decided the spaghetti looked like “vines,” too (we recently had a day of play centered around a jungle theme, so the comparison was forefront in his mind). So he then began singing the Jungle Dance song from an episode of Daniel Tiger (season 1, episode 10) and told me his spaghetti was “shaking like a rattlesnake” and “swinging like a monkey.” This made for delectable fun as the spaghetti was transferred from container to container.

toddler 3 (1)

Huge smiles on this mama’s face.

toddler 3 (3)

Dish Soap Foam

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toddler 2 (5)

Travis loves bubbles and he loves when he can touch them, so I was very eager to try out this neat trick from Hands on As We Grow. Just a bit of water in the bottom of your food processor, followed by a few squirts of dish detergent whips up into a thick, foamy substance. Think closer to a shaving cream than to the foamy bubbles you see while washing dishes.

toddler 2 (1)

I whirled up the mixture and set Travis up with scoops (an ice cream scoop worked particularly well here), ladles, and various other utensils.

toddler 2 (2)

He took to it, but was not as interested in feeling the mixture as I thought he would be, aside from clapping his hands together a few times to make bubbles fly, and declaring that the mixture was “sticky.”

toddler 2 (6)

Remarkably, he lost interest very fast, I think because the loud sound of the food processor scared him during preparation! When I asked him if he wanted me to give it a second whirl to make it thick and foamy again, he said/signed “all done” and moved on to other toys.

toddler 2 (7)

Soapy Sensory Bottle

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toddler 1 (5)

Many thanks must go to Hands on As We Grow for sparking the idea for this first adventure on our blog. Since it’s the first post here, I kept it a simple one! I’ve actually done similar activities with Travis at earlier ages, but he seemed more into it this go-around than in the past. The set up is as simple as can be.

Use any clean, clear plastic jar with a screw-on lid (I like empty Folgers coffee jars, but peanut butter tubs would also work well). Fill half way with water. For visual excitement, I added a few drops of Color Kitchen’s Beet Red food coloring, tinting the water a nice pink.

toddler 1 (1)

I let Travis take a look at the water at this stage so he’d have a before and after comparison, then built up the suspense as we dribbled in Seventh Generation dish detergent and screwed on the lid.

toddler 1 (6)

He gave the bottle a few shakes when I asked him to, but was more interested in rolling it on the floor.

toddler 1 (4)

In full disclosure, he did quickly lose interest once he learned I wouldn’t take the top off, the same reaction he had in the past when I tried a soda bottle “lava lamp,” and when we played a game involving sealed bottles with shaking elements (such as rice and coins) inside. He wants to touch the stuff, not look at it!

toddler 1 (2)

So, a few moments of good fun, but likely not one I’ll return to.

toddler 1 (3)

If your child is equally frustrated by the lid, an open-top soapy alternative is to full a large paper cup with water half way, add dish detergent, and blow bubbles with a straw. The resulting bubbles make almost a honeycomb pattern, which Travis loves scooping out onto his hands!