Nope, I'm doing a version of the good old shaving-foam-on-a-tray activity. This one has the added fun element of actually making the foam yourself using a glug of Fairy liquid, a splash of water and a hand blender. To those of you who just thought, "eww, but I use my blender for food", hurray! I'm not the only dullard on this web page! To those of you who just thought "what an eejit", perhaps the University Challenge blog might be more up your virtual street.
I first tried the activity this morning with Girl, and although I didn't get the squeals of delight I had imagined after reading the idea from HandsOnAsWeGrow, the foam definitely caught her attention and she plunged her hands straight into it.
Sometimes it is hard to appreciate a sensory experience like this from the point of view of an eight month old. While she was exploring the foam with her hands (and mouth, naturally, yuck) I was immediately wondering why she wasn't enjoying the activity. Why isn't she smiling and cackling with glee? I must be doing something wrong. So I started splashing about in the foam myself, which resulted very quickly in a big splodge of soapsuds flying into her eye and splat, that was the end of that. It was only afterwards I realised it might have been wiser to just let her get on with it instead of trying to force the foamy fun.
When Boy returned home from creche, the leftover jug of foam had returned to its original state, so we got to whizz it up again with the hand blender. Girl was immediately itching to get her hands and mouth sparkly clean but Boy was reluctant to even touch the foam. I tried driving his chuggers through it - he was not impressed - and putting splodges on my face and Girl's head. He managed to crack a smile at this but still wouldn't touch. However when I got out some measuring cups he immediately got stuck in, scooping up foam with one cup and pouring it into another.
Overall it was a pretty successful activity. The babies got to experience the texture, smell, taste(!) and other sensations from playing with the foam. I learned a good lesson about taking a back seat. My hand blender is now VERY clean. And I am very keen to see whether Himself notices that I'm just refilling his shaving cream with washing up liquid from now on.
that's so clever!! any more ideas?
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