mixology 101

I'm always looking for ideas to keep M busy while I cook dinner at night. A few nights ago I gave him two bowls of water and a medicine dropper. 20 minutes of fun. It helped that he's been fascinated with droppers since Baby G came along. 

Today we tried something similar but if added a drop of food coloring into the water and we experimented with mixing colors. 

M enjoyed seeing what colors we could make but he enjoyed squirting the dropper more. He also stirred and eventually tried pouring. 

Admittedly, it didn't last as long as it did the first time (novelty is everything with this kid) but we did have fun and only made a semi-large mess :)

mix and pour

I loved this activity because the idea came from M.  Every year since I was little my mother and I have decorated a gingerbread house before Christmas.  This year was the first year M could participate.  We did a train instead of a house because he loves trains.  He got really into the decorating, which made it really fun.  However, during the course of the decorating he discovered that he could pour the little candies from one small dish to another (and then into the back of the train).  He ended up totally consumed with pouring the candy into different bowls.

And so we have this pouring and mixing activity....super easy to set up, one of M's favorites, and (maybe) the first independent activity we've had so far.

We started off like this with various bowls and measuring cups.  Some were filled with small snacks (we used Cheerios, banana puffs, and Goldfish).  Leave some empty.

Then M was let loose with them.  He poured and mixed and had lots of fun.  I started off playing with him but then I was able to clean the kitchen up a bit and load the dishwasher while he played quietly by himself.  He had a great time:

Here is my warning: If you don't want a mess of small snack foods on the floor, skip this one.  If my husband had been in the kitchen while we did this it wouldn't have lasted long.  However, we have a great clean up crew that ensured that no Cheerio or Goldfish stayed on the floor for longer than 2 seconds.

If When we do this one again I will give him a spoon to practice scooping.  If you have an older toddler you could get into mixing them together then sorting them back to the original bowls.  You could even use objects like buttons or pom poms or fruit loops if you want to stay edible, and get into sorting by color or size or shape, etc.  

rice bin

I don't know if it was this particular activity or the fact that M is getting older and more attentive but the rice bin was a huge hit.  I always leave the length of our activities up to M.  When he gets tired of something or decides to do something else we stop.  This was one of the first activities I had to drag him away from (literally).

Our rice bin was made up of a plastic bin, a 5 pound bag of rice, and miscellaneous plastic toys and containers.  We played on a trash bag cut so it would lay flat.

We had a little spill over onto the floor but it was easily cleaned up.  One of the things M liked doing the most was filling up a small tupperware cup and dumping it back into the bin.

The container I used has a snap on lid so I'm hoping we can reuse the rice bin multiple times.  In the future I might add something to it, like lentil beans or small pieces of pasta, to change the textures.  If our little plastic pool had still been out I think I would have put the rice bin in the pool, which would have made for super fast and easy clean up.  I'll also add different toys since M really enjoyed "digging them up."

Some things we used were plastic building blocks, plastic toy figures, small plastic cups, magnetic letters, and some old baby links that we haven't used in quite a while.  Other things that might be good- measuring cups, measuring spoons, little trucks to drive through the rice (M would love that), buttons, rocks, Easter eggs, cooking utensils, etc.  You can also use food coloring to change the color of the rice (be sure to let it dry) and I think you might even be able to buy colored rice at some places.  This was similar to our cornmeal beach and jello bowl activities that we tried months ago.  I love these types of hands on sensory activities because M loves exploring so much.  You can do this type of "sensory bin" with a variety of things - jello, cornmeal, rice, beans, shaving cream, soapy water, confetti, macaroni, ice (great for a hot day), etc.  It's fun and easy and toddlers love it!