Slime is yucky. Slime is fun! The first time you push your fingers into it, you’re not so sure. You hesitate. And that’s the point. Slime is perfect for sensory play, a malleable material that should feature regularly in your child’s early explorations. The slight revulsion toddlers and preschoolers feel when they approach slime and […]
Gak is slime and slime is fun. There are some differences (see below) but, in essence, Gak is a slimy, sensory adventure that’s both fun to make and even more fun to explore. It’s a wonderfully squishy and stretchy substance that has a unique texture and elasticity fundamentally different from most common play materials like
Oobleck is weird. It sits at the junction of science and fun, a bit of both and a lot of neither. Water and honey flow easily when you pour them. They are ‘Newtonian’ fluids which means they behave as you would expect, no matter how quickly you try to push or stir them. But Oobleck
Take some pasta. Anything with a hole in it will do. Now get some twine. And slip the pasta pieces onto it one by one. That’s it. You have successfully completed one of the trickiest, most beneficial preschooler activities of all time. Threading activities are simple but their impact can be profound. What is threading?
Threading activities: the secret to perfect pencil grip Read More »
A toddler stands in front of the washing machine, watching it go round. And around. Later he takes a crayon and draws jerky spirals on paper. He also runs round and round a tree in the garden and spends a long time pushing his wooden train around the track. These are all physical manifestations of
The rotation schema Read More »
Here is a girl. She is lining up beans along the windowsill. One, then another, then another. All in a row, evenly spaced out. She didn’t start out with this arrangement in mind. She simply put one bean down and then another. Something about the configuration looked right. The line travelling in the same direction
The positioning schema Read More »
From A to B. It’s such a simple idea. You can go by yourself. Or you can take something with you. This concept is known as the transportation schema. Schemas are mental models of how we think the world works. Your transportation schema is a representation in your mind of what happens when an object
The transportation schema Read More »
Do you remember the nature table at school? Some autumn leaves, a handful of conkers and some acorns? Or, in the spring, a vase with a branch of blossoming cherry? There was something magical about it, it drew you in. These common objects, things you passed by on your way to school every day, had
How to make a nature table Read More »
You don’t have to spend long online to come across sensory play. Fill a bowl with slime and plunge your hands into it Put shaving foam into a tuff spot and draw pictures with your finger Play with rice using scoops and bowls Hmm… I thought there was more than one sense. What happened to
Here is a boy. He is rolling a ball along a track and it is fun. Down, down, it rolls, snaking left and right until it reaches the bottom. But the game doesn’t stop there. Back to the start it goes and the ball sets off again. How many times does he do this? He
The trajectory schema Read More »