Montessori Activity: Rice Sensory Box

Age: From 1 year old

Objective:
1. To stimulate your child's five senses

Materials:
1. 1 transparent box
2. Base materials made of 2 packets of rice
3. Some small toys that your child like
4. 1 bowl and 1 ladle (optional)

Directions:
1. Invite your baby to pick the box off the shelf to the floor, helping her along the way.
2. Invite your baby to dig into it.
3. After playing, invite your baby to bring the box back to the shelf.

Additional Information:
Baby FECS tried this forthe first time today 12 July 2017 (1Y1M26D). After a while, she made too much mess out of it, as she pour the rice onto the floor. I had to end the activity. But  it turned to a fun activity for our Little FECS to help clean up by the mess with a vacuum cleaner:-)

 12 July 2017 (1Y1M26D)

Montessori Activity: Letter Pasta Sensory Box

Age: From 1 year old

Objective:
1. To stimulate your child's five senses

Materials:
1. 1 transparent box
2. Base materials made of 4 packets of pasta
3. 26 letter magnets
4. 1 bowl and 1 ladle (optional)

Directions:
1. Invite your baby to pick the box off the shelf to the floor, helping her along the way.
2. Invite your baby to dig into it.
3. If she picks up a letter, say the sound of the letter for her.
4. After playing, invite your baby to bring the box back to the shelf.

Additional Information:
I prepared this for Baby FECS to try today 6 July 2017 (1Y1M20D). Any toy that has base material to form a sensory box tends to be more interesting for kids to play with.

It has been 6 years ago since I first prepared a Montessori sensory box for our Little FECS. He is now 8 years old. Brings back lots of memories as I begin my Montessori journey with Baby FECS.

6 July 2017 (1Y1M20D): Baby FECS playing with Montessori Letter Pasta Sensory Box

Montessori Activity: Elderflower Sensory Box

Age: From 1 year old

Activity Duration: 5-10 minutes

Objective(s):
1. To stimulate and develop the sense of smell and touch.

Materials:
1. 1 transparent storage box approx. 40 x 30 x 16cm
2. Some elderflowers

Directions:

1. Simply place the elderflowers in the box.

2. Let your child touch and feel the texture of elderflowers, hold them and smell them.

3. Describe the feeling, the touch and the name of the sensation to your child, for example, ask your child doesn't the flowers smell good.

Additional Information:
29 June 2017 (1Y1M13D): We plucked some elderflowers off a main road side. As it is polluted by the traffic and not suited to make into elderfower cordial, I decided to use them for the sensory box for Baby FECS.

Before I made this sensory box, she was very eager to play with these flowers from those we plucked from non-polluted trees. When I finally made this for her the following day for her to play to her heart's content, after touching and taking out some of the flowers, she quickly lost interest... the novelty was perhaps lost already.... grrrhhhh!!!

References: 

http://nurturingnaters.blogspot.com/search?q=sensory

 29 June 2017 (1Y1M13D)

29 June 2017 (1Y1M13D)

Toy of the Day: LEGO Sensory Box (6M28D)

13 December 2016 (6M28D): A box of LEGO for Baby FECS to touch, pick and banging against each other. You can talk about the colors too

Toy of the Day: Montessori Sandpaper Letters Sensory Basket (6M24D)

9 December 2016 (6M24D): Baby FECS loves touch-&-feel baby board books now. So as an extension of the same touch sensory idea and concept, I prepared this Montessori sandpaper letters sensory basket. You simple pick a letter, trace the sand-paper textured letter with baby and say its sound. This is just to give her a foretaste and fun, and familiarity with letters, not to hammer in learning letters at this young age.

8 December 2016: Oops... Before I could put the basket away, I was away for a split second and she started playing with it now... It was supposed to be for tomorrow!

9 December 2016 (6m223d): Baby FECS found the sounds of letters really funny. We traced b, m, k, g, s, o, u, q and v today. She found it fun to sit in the basket and picked a letter.

Here is a video on the sound of letters by a fellow mom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWZ_8vRdZM

Toy of the Day: Montessori Bottles & Containers Sensory Box (6M22D)

7 December 2016 (6m22d): Baby FECS loves to dig into baskets and boxes now. So today I prepared a Montessori sensory box made of bottles and containers for her to dig into.

Toy of the Day: Montessori Letters Sensory Box (6M22D)

7 December 2016 (6m22d): Montessori letters sensory box. Pick a letter and say its sound to your baby. Then just let her explore on her own with some independent play time.

Shaving Cream Sensory Box

Age: From 2 years old

Objective(s): To stimulate the sense of touch.

Materials:

1. 1 can of shaving cream

2. 1 transparent tub

3. Some small animal figures - I choose the animals from artic such as penguin, polar bear, seals, etc.

4. some scoop

5. A toy hand-mixer (optional)

6. A few drops of food colouring (optional)

Directions:

1. Prepare the tub.

2. Put the animals and scoop in.

3. Demonstrate by spraying the shaving cream.

4. Let your child make his sensory tub himself by spraying the shaving cream.

5. Let him just have fun.

Additional Information:

I bought the shaving cream a long time ago, but haven't got down to trying it... because i dreaded the mess. Finally, J (3Y3M3D) tried this today. He is at the age, where he can help to make his own sensory tub, so we made this together. He helped me to spray the shaving cream into the transparent tub.

I thought he would have a blast of a time, as I have seen in other kids, but no... that was not quite his reaction. After gotten his hands into the tub, he said, "Mommy, i want to wash my hands" straight away. He has become like me, does not like mess!!! So I told him, "it is alright, dear." Not much effect. He wanted to wash it off.

But the shaving cream has got to make its value worth! I thought to myself. So I brought out the toy hand-mixer, and use the shaving cream as ingredient to make "whipped cream". This extended the play of the shaving cream play for a couple of minutes, until J got his hands and toy hand-mixer all over with the shaving cream. And then he said again, "Mommy, I want to wash my hands. I want to bathe."

Alrighty, off we went into the shower cabin, but I tried to stretch the play a little more with the last trick - adding colour! That didn't help. After a few seconds, J wanted water. Thereafter, he was playing a good 20 - 30 minutes or so with water. His favourite is still water play, not shaving cream. Ya, that's my boy - he is not interested in messy play. He is not a kinestic boy. I won't be buying shaving cream again.

References:

http://www.playcreateexplore.org/2012/04/20-ways-to-play-with-shaving-cream.html

http://www.learning4kids.net/2014/06/08/shaving-cream-activity-tray/

http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2013/09/ways-to-play-with-shaving-cream.html

Montessori Activity: Pasta-Based "Food" Sensory Box

Age: From 1.5 year old

Activity Duration: 5 minutes

Preparation Time: 3 minutes

Materials:

1. Some letter magnets that match the beginning letter of the food
2. Some plastic fruits, vegetables and meat
3. 4 - 5 packets of dried pasta of 500g each
4. 1 Transparent tub
5. 1 spade
6. Some containers or pots, preferably same colour as each of the fruit such as red, green, yellow and orange.

Directions:

1. Mix them all together and let for your child to scoop, dig and play.

2. Sort the food according to colour into the pots.
3. Show your child how to match the letter with the fruit, e.g. w is for water-melon.

4. Ask your child what is w for? Answer: w is for watermelon. Put the watermelon and letter "w" together.

Additional Information:

I prepared this sensory tub for the nursery lesson plan this Sunday and let J play with it. J usually isn't so keen on sensory tub, but it seems that now that he is close to 3 years old, he is more interested in playing with sensory tubs. He played with it for the first time on 31.12.2012 and he played with it for one of the longest periods. This evening, he played with it again, preferring to scoop the pasta than anything else. He also sorted the fruit and vegetables according to colors.