Flowers!!!

You could probably figure out by my title that I'm just a wee bit excited today.  :-)  I've been waiting about two weeks to try this new fine motor activity.  It was so fun for the children.  They repeated it over and over.  I'm planning on leaving it out for free exploration...as long as Trent can handle it (or I can handle how Trent handles it).  But gut feeling is he'll do okay keeping it somewhat contained. From an adult perspective I had to bite my tongue lots of times and become like a broken record with the question, "Well, what do you think?"  This turned into a perfect problem solving activity also.  Before I go on I should share the pictures, so you know what on earth I'm talking about.

Flower Arranging

I showed the children one time and then I walked away and observed.  With one child there was constant verbalization.  It was hilarious and eye opening!  What I showed them was to place two scoops of sand inside the vase, using a funnel.  Then add flowers to make arrangement.  Then clean up for the next person.  They didn't do it exactly as I said after the first time, but that is a-okay for me.  That allows for "problems" to arise.  :-P 

Flower Bubble Wrap Printing

This is a perfect example of an activity where the adult's thoughts do not correspond with the child's.  :-) Actually, this child did paint and print all the "flowers" first and then used her paint brushes and fingers to finish her work.  Since I'm big on "open ended" art...so be it.  She was definitely enjoying the process and I was definitely enjoying listening and watching!  I'm not so sure she was so excited when she realized that these paints stain your hands (yes, they are washable but they are the worse "washable" paints I've used yet...especially anything with the red pigment...so red, magenta, purple, etc.) But...I had mentioned they were not fingerpaints...just regular ones and she still wanted to use her hands.  A little lesson in taking responsibility for her actions.  :-)

Side note:  When another child was painting, he stated "I got it on my hands!"  He's a "newbie" compared to others and before I could say a word, the 4 year old said, "It's no big deal.  Paint washes."  Ah! (*Big Smile*)

Tea Pot Pouring

The last two weeks we've had our tea set out on the shelf.  So today I placed part of the set with the water play to encourage pouring. 

We also started a Garden Party booklet for our scissors activity as well as other literacy and math activities.  But these were the "favorites".  Of course, any type of art and sensory are favorites!  And for those of you with really young children: I believe that if you provide time to get "messy"...specifically exploring with sensory material, your youngsters are less likely to create their own sensory materials...like dumping socks all out of the drawers...getting into the flour....writing all over your walls...getting into your makeup, dumping out a powder from the container (yes, stuff I've heard over and over again).  My point is that they are LESS likely to find their own materials to explore with if you provide enough time with sensory materials in order to satisfy their natural curiosity ... even a need... to explore!  Plan it...and it's a lot less of a mess and stress for you as the adult!