Nature Collage: Sensory Play

I saw a friend post this idea a little while ago on her blog: the Natural Momma in Me, and I knew that I had to try it out with the boy-o too! I really love the idea of making a nature collage and since the boy-o has been staying at Nana and Grandpa's during the day the last month or so, he's been spending tons of time outside in their back garden playing with rocks, plants and dirt so I was pretty sure he would love making it too.

To start off with we wandered around my parents garden collecting little leaves, flowers, petals, and bits of plants with different textures and smells. We made sure to get some lavender because the boy-o really likes to sniff it. One of these days I think he's going to sniff it so hard it'll end up going up his nose... but that's another story.

Once we got home we examined our pile of collected plant bits and I attached some Mack-Tack to our balcony door with the sticky side facing out. This was going to be our canvas for the collage. The boy-o was pretty interested in the sticky feeling and kept trying to pick it up. I showed him how to place the flower bits on the sticky surface to hold them there, and he got down to it!

He had a bit of trouble getting some of the leaves to stick since our Mack Tack was pretty cheap and not as sticky as it could have been, but with a little help we got all of the bits up and completed our wonderful nature collage! When we were all done I took a second piece of Mack Tack and placed it sticky side in so it was like our plant pieces were laminated between the two and now we can hang it up next to some of the boy-o's other masterpieces!

This was a super easy activity, that was not only very cost effective, but there was minimal clean-up required. It provided the boy-o with an opportunity to explore the plants around him though and experience some different textures as well as some different smells. This could be an interesting activity to do once each season and then compare them together to see the different kinds of plant bits you could forage.

Craft Time: Handprint Trees

Yesterday we hosted a group playdate at our house and we wanted to do a little sensory play! There were four little boys in total and I thought it would be lots of fun to make handprints trees together, and then each little one could take home a tree with their friends handprints on it. I purchased the materials we would need ahead of time (some paint, and paintbrushes) and I had the other materials already on hand (Sketch/Paint paper, some brown cardstock, glue, and a Sharpie Marker).

I cut out a tree shape with the brown cardstock and glued it to the center of the white sketch/paint paper, leaving lots of room at the top of the tree for the little handprints. I selected five different colours of paint so that each child would have some choice as to which colour they wanted to use. (In reality it was mum choosing at this point!)

We did each boys handprint one at a time, and painted their hand before we/they pressed it onto each of the four papers. As I was painting their hands I was asking them questions like whether it tickled, or if the paint felt cold. Some of the boys liked to close their fist around the brush and squeeze feeling the paint squish around their fingers.

The results were awesome, and after the handprints were all done I wrote each boys name over their hands so that we could all remember whose was whose and keep track of which friends were over that day. We're going to frame ours and hang it up in our play space and later it will get added to the boy-o's memory book as a cool keepsake of our first group playdate at our house! The next time we host I think we're doing to dive into some MAGIC MUD.

Your Turn:

What's your favourite sensory activity to share during playdates?