Festive Spiced Play Dough

This play dough smells so good, I want to eat it!

Recipe:

• 1 cup of salt
• 1 cup of flour
• a couple of tablespoons of mixed spice
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• 1 cup of water.
• food colouring

Combine all the dry ingredients together and mix well.  Add the water . Drop the food colouring into the mixture until you have the desired shade you would like.

Then place over a low heat and KEEP STIRRING to produce a nice smooth dough.  An electric hand mixer is great for this part and saves your arm muscles!

When it's nice and thick, take off the heat and transfer onto a sheet of cling film or a plastic container.  When it has cooled enough to handle, knead it until smooth and then leave to cool completely.

Can be stored in an air tight container in the fridge for 1-2 weeks.


I set this out on the table for my little people with some christmas tree cutters of different sizes, some sequins, rollers, rolling pins, etc and allowed them to explore.

They enjoyed decorating the trees and developed their mathematics when talking about positional language and sizes.

Festive Sensory Basket

I had lots of left over decorations after putting our tree up at the weekend, so decided it would be a great sensory resource for the children to play with.  I also found a miniature Christmas tree so they could decorate their own too which kept them occupied for ages!

 

Tesco Vouchers for Schools

We had two very excited little people this morning when these huge parcels arrived.  It was our order that we placed through Tesco Vouchers for Schools and Clubs!

As you can see, the children were very excited and helped me to pick off the box tape.

In the boxes were 2 active world trays, and active world stand and cover, some sparkly fish, sparkly numbers and some PVA glue.  We also ordered some shaped mirror trays which are being sent separately.  Hopefully they will arrive this week too..

We put one active world tray up in the garden and filled it with a few centimeters of bubbly water and the squidgy fish and numbers.  The children enjoyed finding them under the bubbles, hiding them underneath and filling and tipping water from containers.

 Exploring the squidgy fish

 

I would like to thank everyone for all the generous donations of Tesco vouchers.  We were lucky enough to collect over 6000 and although it was a pain counting them all out, it has been an excellent way to purchase some much needed new equipment which would otherwise prove very expensive.  The equipment we ordered totals over £300, so thank you to everyone who helped to raise so many vouchers.  We are very grateful.

I hope to write lots more blogs about other sensory activities that we will be using the active world trays for over the coming weeks.