sensory fun with corn cobs and sunflowers

Posted on October 13, 2012 by happyhooligans

It’s time again for another Outdoor Play Party!!

A couple of weeks ago, I asked on my personal facebook page, if anyone had any sunflowers or corn cobs that they’d be willing to donate to my daycare. Exploring corn kernels and sunflower seeds is always a fun activity at this time of year.

Sure enough, my friends came through (THANK YOU!) and we had both delivered right to our doorstep!

I set up an inviting fall display for the hooligans to examine, explore and dissect, and they’ve been busy ever since, pulling kernels off of cobs and seeds out of the sunflowers.

I’m not going to do a whole lot of talking here, because the pictures will show you how much fun we’ve had. Touching, feeling, plucking and picking; these items have kept the children busy for days.

And we’re not the only ones enjoying this fall activity!

I have more plans in store for the corn kernels, but we have to finish stripping all of the cobs, so stay tuned to see what we’ll do next with our stash!

My favourite activity linked up at the last Outdoor Play Post was Sensory Play with Soapy Slime by Learning 4 Kids!

How have you been playing outdoors this week? We’d love to see what you’ve been up to! Link up your blog posts here at the Outdoor Play Party!

Fall Sensory Bin

Posted on September 20, 2012 by happyhooligans

It’s time for some a Fall sensory bin! I don’t know who has more fun with these: me, putting them together or the Hooligans, playing with them.

I assembled this one yesterday and surprised the Hooligans with it this morning. If you’ve never made a sensory bin for your child before, I want to tell you how simple it really is to put one together.

Everything in this bin, I already had in the house, and it’s all been used for assorted bins and seasonal play before. That’s the beauty of it. You can re-use these treasures over and over again, every time using a different combination of materials so you’ll never have the same activity twice. You don’t have to spend big money; go through your cupboards, your craft supplies, holiday ornaments, the kitchen drawers, your fabric stash, the toy box… You’ll likely find lots of stuff once you start looking.

The artificial flowers and wooden gourds were thrift shop finds from a long time ago. Some items, like the pumpkins and the gemstones, I purchased a few years back, at the dollar store.

The pasta and rice have been used for sensory play many times. I just bag it up and store it in between uses.

Until recently, the apples decorated my Christmas tree every year for the past 2 decades. Butterflies – dollar store.

The pinecones and seed pods, I collected in the yard this morning.

The pods were fun to take apart and remove the seeds from.

Raid your cupboards and think outside the box when you’re looking for items to add to your bin. I filled this little wooden bowl with large vintage buttons.

Scoops, wooden bowls, jars and muffin tins are perfect for pouring and sorting and organizing. Ice cube trays work too. Tongs are always fun and they’re great for fine motor development and preparing little ones for using scissors. Our favourite scoops are the little meatball-makers. We have two sets, both thrift shop finds.

I set the Fall Sensory Bin out in the yard on my SIX DOLLAR (!!!) thrift shop coffee-table. It’s one of my best 2nd hand finds ever! It’s the perfect size for spreading an activity on, there’s plenty of room for everyone to gather around and it’s super-light so I can easily move it around the yard. The plastic/faux wood surface doesn’t get damaged when we play with water, and paint and messy-play ingredients wipe right off. If you’re using your bin inside and don’t like the idea of a rice and pasta mess, simply put a vinyl table-cloth on the floor and let your little ones sit and play on that. Voila! Clean up’s a breeze.

So much exploration and discovery in one little bin! What do you say? Will you make one? If you need a little more inspiration, click here and here to see our Fall Sensory Bins from last year.

Don’t forget to visit our Facebook page and follow the Hooligans there too! I post lots of goodies there daily that don’t make it to the blog, and I wouldn’t want you to miss out!

https://www.facebook.com/happyhooligansblog

dinosaur activity bin

Posted on June 7, 2012 by happyhooligans

The Hooligans are just loving the small world play these days, so today I set up this dinosaur activity bin. It’s a combination of small world, sensory and water play all wrapped up into one bin, so what’s not to love?

Did you see the Ocean Sensory Bin that we were playing with last week? It was a huge hit, and when we’d finished playing with it, I drained the water, but left the pebbles and beads in the bin. That’s what I used to start the dinosaur bin today.

I added a few large rocks, some plants from the garden and a couple of chunky sticks that have been in the sandbox for the past year or so.

I scooped most of the rocks to one end of the bin to form a “beach” and I poured in a jug of water that I coloured with a few drops each of blue and green food colouring.

Then I added all the dinosaurs and reptiles I could find. The Hooligans loved it.

Who wouldn’t? This is such a great way to keep cool on a hot day. And it’s so easy to pull an activity like this together. Just a few items and a basin of water.

Inexpensive and simple but it encourages such imaginative play.

If your Hooligans are very young, and stones and beads are a choking concern for you, leave them out. They’ll be happy to just have the animals in the water. The baby was trying to mess around with things when I was setting up the bin, so I tossed a couple of fish and some corks into the bowl of water that the Hooligans wash their hands in when we’re outside, and she was more than happy splashing around in that while I did what I had to do.

ocean sensory bin

Posted on June 2, 2012 by happyhooligans

An Ocean Sensory Bin was the perfect activity for today. We’ve been finding wonderfully creative ways to keep cool in this these hot, summery temperatures that we’ve been enjoying this week. You can click here, here and here to see how we’ve explored, concocted and experimented with water, mud, and other backyard goodies in the past few days.

I’ve had this sensory bin in mind for a long time. In fact, it was last July when I went to the beach and collected my supplies for this activitiy. I filled a container with tiny pebbles from the shallow shore-line and gathered up a bunch of small, round stones, brought them home, washed them, dried them and packed them away until now. Here’s how I made our Ocean Bin:

Check out our fancy water DIY water table.

A plastic storage container on a stool makes the perfect work-station for something like this. You could also use a more box-shaped storage container instead if you don’t have a stool. If you find your container slips around on the base, pop a rubber place-mat or a couple of anti-slip pads in between the two.

This was cute: as I was walking back and forth in the yard, setting things up, I glanced back and saw the littlest Hooligan investigating things. Apparently she thought we were doing the baby bath station again. heehee

I set out a simple variety of materials for the Hooligans to add to their ocean: the pebbles and stones that had been in hibernation-mode for almost a year, a few plastic water-dwelling animals, a basket of corks and coloured glass beads, and several large leaves from the garden to serve as lily pads.

I filled the bin with some water and a few drops of blue food colouring, set the tray of materials beside it, and called the Hooligans over. My work was done. I stepped back and gave them complete control over what, how and how much they added to the bin.

Playing with the rocks (moving them from one container to the other) was an activity in itself for this little one.

This was a super activity. The Hooligans loved it! They spent most of the morning playing with their ocean, and came back to it in the afternoon after nap-time.

One of the cutest lines of the day: At the end of the afternoon, one of the Moms came into the yard to pick up her little guy, she came back to where he was playing at the bin to see what he was up to. She got right down to check out all the materials and observe how her son was playing with them. She pointed to the corks and said “Wow! Look at all the boats you have!” He (not quite 3 y.o.) said “They’re not boats!”, and she said “Oh! What are they?”. He looked at her and exclaimed “They’re CORKS!”.