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sensory play

Holiday Jingle Bell Slime

By Sharla Kostelyk

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This Jingle Bell Slime is one of the first slimes we ever made. It’s a pretty basic slime recipe, but the holiday twist makes it extra fun.Jingle Bell Holiday Slime #slime #christmasslime #holidayslime #sensoryplayWe love trying out all different kinds of slime recipes. When I came up with the idea to make holiday theme slime, the kids were all in!

When I was out shopping for the ingredients (a very short list!), I had trouble locating liquid starch. I googled “where to find liquid starch in Canada” on my phone while in the laundry aisle at the grocery store and found an awesome article. She writes about an alternative to liquid starch for those who live in places where it is hard to find.

Jingle Bell Slime Recipe:

  • 8 oz. Elmer’s washable school glue*
  • about 1/2 cup liquid starch
  • green food colouring
  • brightly coloured jingle bells

*Important note: don’t bother trying to make slime with cheaper glues. Elmer’s is the most consistently reliable when it comes to slime success, so just stick with that. making holiday slimePour the glue into a bowl. Add some drops of green food colouring and mix it well. With slime, I like to use wide craft sticks for mixing so that I can throw them out after.

Add some liquid starch into the glue mixture about a Tablespoon at a time while stirring. Continue to add liquid starch until the slime doesn’t stick to the side of the bowl. This will be about 1/2 cup total, but may be a little less or a little more.

Once it’s pulling away from the sides and forming a bit of a ball, knead it by hand to finish mixing. Once it’s been stretched and pulled and pushed and folded until it has reached slime consistency, add in some jingle bells and start playing. It adds a bit of difference and texture interest if you use different sizes of jingle bells.

When the slime isn’t being played with, store it in an airtight container. If you’re a “slime mama”, chances are all of your Tupperware containers are full of slime already so in a pinch, a resealable plastic bag will do.

After playing with it for quite awhile, the kids asked me if it was the same as the Flarp Noise Putty that they get every year in their stocking. When I thought it was similar, they decided to put it to the test and sure enough, it makes the same noise. (I guess we won’t need to buy Flarp this year since we can now make our own!)

Once they made this discovery, there was a lot of laughter going on at our house! I had to tape this short video five or six times because the other kids were laughing so hard that it was impossible to hear the noise of the putty!

Check out these other holiday theme sensory activities:

Peppermint Scented Christmas Playdough Christmas Sensory Bag 

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Filed Under: Christmas, Crafts and Activities Tagged With: sensory play

Flower Petal Fingerpaint

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Making flower petal fingerpaint turned out to be an interesting science and art activity. We were surprised by what colours were made with the flowers and even by how the smells changed throughout the process.

Fingerpaints made with Flower PetalsMy neighbour had given me a beautiful fall bouquet of flowers and after a week or so, it had begun to look a bit on the sad side. The flowers were drooping and had started to wither but there were such gorgeous colours in the bouquet that it really seemed a shame to throw it away.

fall flower bouquetI was trying to think of a way to use the flowers and decided to make them into a hands-on history lesson to demonstrate to the kids how clothing and linens used to be dyed using flowers and other items found in nature.

Once the colours were created though, I realized that I could turn them into paints and extend the activity to cover science, art and sensory elements.

The kids and I started by pulling off the petals and grouping like colours together. We used small clear bowls that have measuring lines on the sides so that it was easy to measure how much of each colour we had collected.

Homemade Fingerpaints made with Flower PetalsWe added water and the petals to a pot and brought the mixture to a boil. Once it was at a rolling boil, we turned it down to simmer and let it simmer for half an hour. We stirred it from time to time and also used a pestle to press the petals to get more colour from them. The reason we let the mixture simmer for so long was so that some of the liquid could boil off and the colour could become more concentrated.

Snuggle Puppy came up with the idea to try to create green paint using the stems and leaves from the bouquet so he filled a pot with those and used the same process. The colour of that one created more of a yellowy colour than green and had a very earthy smell.

making paint from leaves and stemsOnce we had achieved a strong enough colour, we drained the liquid into a bowl placed beneath a strainer and pressed the petals with the pestle.

The liquid then went back into the pot and I whisked in a bit of flour and brought that to a boil, stirring the whole time. Once it was boiling, it only took a few minutes at most for the paint to reach the consistency I was looking for. I then took it off the heat, poured it into the small bowls we had used for the petals earlier and it was ready to paint with.

Flower Petal Fingerpaint Recipe:

3/4 – 1 cup of flower petals
1 1/2 – 2 cups of water
1 Tbsp. flour

Bring water and flower petals to a boil over medium-high heat in a pot. Turn heat to low. Simmer for half an hour.

Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the coloured water through the strainer. Press the petals to get maximum colour.

Put the water back into the pot and whisk in the flour. Bring it to a boil, stirring the whole time. Remove from heat.

steps to making fingerprint using flower petalsThe paints had different smells depending on the type of flowers used. The colours did not turn out the way we expected them to. The purple petals created an unattractive greenish-brown colour. The red flowers created a burgundy-purplish colour. The leaves and stems made a yellowish colour. The orange petals created a light brown.

Before we made each colour, I had the kids hypothesize about what colour they thought would result. When other colours were the result, we discussed what factors may have contributed to that. It became a very interesting science lesson.  Honestly, one of the colours looked pretty gross so we had a bit of a laugh over that!

Miss Optimism wanted to know what would happen if she mixed several colours of flower petals together. The result was a purple with specks of a darker shade.

After we had made five colours of flower petal fingerpaint, I let the kids start painting. Granola Girl and Dancing Queen painted a cute looking monster on a large poster paper. This had both sensory (touch, sight and smell) and art elements. I love it when one activity can encompass so many different things!

fingerpainting with flower petal paint

Shaving Cream Painting

Condensed Milk Painting

Pumpkin Puffy Paint

If you are looking for other fun activities to do with your kids, you may want to join our free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get our Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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Filed Under: Crafts and Activities, Homeschooling, Sensory, Simple Science Tagged With: sensory play

Frog Sensory Bin with Play Puffs

Frog Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Back when we first started using sensory bins, we made a frog sensory bin. It was well, ugly. It was one of my first efforts at dying pasta and thankfully, I have gotten better at certain aspects of making sensory bins since then!

I decided that it was time to try a frog themed sensory bin again and this time, I opted out of using orangey, red mini pasta shells and used a bright coloured base instead.

Frog Sensory BinThis actually was one of the bins that we put together at our sensory bin swap a few months ago. We had thrown most of the items into a resealable bag so all I had to do was dump it into a bin and it was ready for the kids to play with.

I added a few extra frogs but other than that, the bin was ready to go from the swap. The base for this bin was play puffs. They are a great multi-purpose item as they can be used for sensory play or for craft creation. Once they are wet, play puffs stick together to form whatever shape they can imagine.

Also in this bin, a kitchen sponge “lily pad”, plastic jump frogs, stretchy frogs, toy frogs, and a glossy paper die cut frog.

Frog Sensory Bin PlayMy plan for the kids to use the play puffs for a craft project after I retired this sensory bin didn’t pan out the way I’d planned it. As soon as the kids discovered the ability to stick the play puffs together, they added that as part of their sensory bin play. It made this a popular activity!

For hundreds of sensory bin ideas, you can also follow my Sensory Bins board on Pinterest.

Follow Sharla Kostelyk’s board Sensory Bins on Pinterest.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book. The Ultimate Guide to Sensory Bins

Join our free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get our Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

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Pumpkin Puffy Paint

By Sharla Kostelyk

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This scented pumpkin puffy paint is a great sensory activity as well as a fun way to create fall artwork. I used real pumpkin (canned although I’m sure cooked pumpkin leftover from a jack-o-lantern would work just as well) and added pumpkin pie spice. These two ingredients give the paint its smell. For me, the smell of pumpkin and spices brings me back to my Gramma’s kitchen and her muffins.

Scented Sensory Pumpkin Puffy Paint

To make this pumpkin puffy paint recipe, stir together:

  • 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin (fresh or canned)
  • 1 cup shaving cream (unscented)
  • 1 cup white school glue
  • 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (you can use a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice if you don’t have this spice blend)
  • optional: orange food coloring or food paste for extra colour

When you stir the ingredients together, don’t over mix so as to keep it nice and fluffy. There will be specks of texture because of the spice blend but this will only add more realism to the painting.

We used fingerpaint paper but any paper would do. I let the kids have complete freedom on this one to create in whatever way they wanted to. Some of them poured the paint onto their paper, others used a spoon to scoop it on and two of them just got right in there with their fingers. Granola Girl was hesitant at first but really got into the sensory experience!

pumpkin puffy paint artwork

As in most of the activities that I plan for them, the kids came up with ideas that I hadn’t thought of to make things more interesting. Snuggle Puppy discovered that once he had waited for his pumpkin to dry just slightly, he was able to create a face in his pumpkin just by blowing on it!

scented pumpkin puffy paint for FallIt worked really well and the pumpkin’s face stayed that way once the paint had completely dried. Snuggle Puppy told me that he added little flecks of eraser to make the face look scarier…that boy has a way of making me laugh!

This puffy paint is great as a sensory activity as it includes both olfactory (scent) and tactile feedback. It is also just a plain fun craft! Once the creations are dry, kids could also cut around them and use them for fall decorations.

If you are looking for other easy and fun sensory recipes, just input your email in the box below to get a sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

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Rainbow Soap Foam

a black child's hand is reaching up from a bin of soap foam holding blue and pink soap foam. The bin contains areas of pink, blue, purple, and yellow soap foam.

By Sharla Kostelyk

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I used this fun recipe to create a sensory bin of sorts for the kids to play in. This rainbow soap foam activity was part art activity, part sensory, part colour mixing science experiment, and all fun!

Rainbow Soap FoamRainbow Soap Foam Recipe:

Materials needed:

  • food colouring
  • water
  • Palmolive dish soap
  • hand mixer
  • optional: glitter

1. In a bowl, add 1/4 cup water, 2 Tbsp. Palmolive dish soap and 5-10 drops of food colouring. I also added some glitter in the same colour as the food colouring to this step.

2. Mix on high with a hand mixer for about 2 minutes, until peaks form.

3. Put the foam into a shallow bin. On a rainy day, you could put it into the bathtub.

4. Rinse the bowl and beaters and follow the instructions again using a different colour of food colouring. Repeat until the desired number of colours are created, adding each to the bin.

making soap foam

When I had made four colours of soap foam, I brought the bin outside and let the kids play and explore with it. They enjoyed mixing the colours and playing with the foam. They tried to use it to paint on the concrete with their hands, but mostly only the glitter stayed visible.

playing with Rainbow Soap FoamMy girls really enjoyed the textures of the soap foam and seeing the different colours they could create by mixing.

They enjoyed every step of this activity from helping me mix the recipe in the kitchen to playing with the finished product.

Even one of our new kittens came over to see what all the fuss was about!

Be sure to have your kids wash their hands when they are done playing so that they don’t get soap in the eyes accidentally and of course, as with all projects, adult supervision is recommended. 

Find these instructions along with the coolest sensory play recipes around in the Sensory Play Recipes eBook. You’ll find recipes for everything from slimes to oobleck to edible paints and playdoughs and more.

Join our free 5 part email series and get a sample of 5 recipes from our Sensory Play Recipes ebook:

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Calming Lavender Sensory Bin

Calming Lavender Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

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I have been wanting to make a lavender sensory bin for the kids for awhile now. Dancing Queen struggles with anxiety and we do as much as we can to help her regulate her anxiety. She loves the lavender playdough I make. It really does seem to have a calming effect on her. I reasoned that since sensory bins already help my kids with their regulation, a lavender one may have even more of a calming effect which would be good for all of them but especially for Dancing Queen.

Calming Lavender Sensory BinFor this sensory bin, I used a large shallow tub so that I could put the bin on the deck. I used purple gems and added real lavender and purple water beads. I used a pitcher to add water and it took on a light purple colour because of the water beads.

Lavender Sensory BinThe smell of the lavender was really nice. Once the water was added, the scent was considerably stronger but not overpowering. The plastic gems made a good contrast for the texture of the water beads.

In place of the dry lavender, you can use a few drops of lavender essential oil.

The kids enjoyed playing with this lavender sensory bin outside. It held their attention for long periods of time this week. With the water, various textures and smell of the lavender, it really did seem to have a calming effect on them.

One of the nice things about being back into our regular homeschool routine is having a weekly sensory bin. It forces me to come up with new ideas and even though I keep thinking that I will run out of ideas after so many years of making sensory bins, I haven’t run out yet! The kids like experiencing the new bins and look forward to seeing what each week’s theme is going to be.

Join our free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get our Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins,you may be interested in my book. The Ultimate Guide to Sensory Bins

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