This way of developing your child's mind and imagination just speaks to me. I want to encourage creativity with Easton. I want him to figure out how things work or come up with his own ideas of how things work. I truly believe it will make him a more independent thinker with an urge to imagine a world of possibilities!
You can read more about this way of playing here and here. If you don't know much about it, I highly recommend that you read up on it. Cheap fun, good fun, creative fun, learning fun. Win, win, win, win!
So, now that Easton is sitting up all by himself, we've decided to make up a few sensory baskets for him to play with. We started yesterday with a water sensory bucket. It's not all natural like his other baskets b/c I literally just grabbed a bunch of his and his cousin, Reaghan's, bath toys, tossed them in a plastic tub and raced out onto the porch. He was BORED out of his little mind and fussing nonstop, so out we went without ever planning to do so. He had a BLAST.
"ooooh! What's THIS?"
I laid a few towels down, soaked him in sunblock and let him play and splash to his little heart's content! He wasn't shy about the splashing, let me tell you! He wacked the water and the bucket and the toys so hard, he left a big red spot on his wrist!
Soaking wet!
This morning, I spent a few minutes scouring the house for things to put into a few additional baskets. The idea is to put them in shallow round baskets so that they can be accessed from all sides by short arms. I have TONS of baskets from where I made gift baskets a few years ago! Perfect!
Finding little treasures throughout our house was a fun activity for me. It definitely triggered my imagination when I would hold something in my hand and try to see it through young, fresh eyes. Imagine never seeing a wooden spinning top before? Or a tiny wooden bowling pin? I may or may not have ganked that one from one of Daddy's trophies. :) I could hardly wait for him to play with all these items! In his basket, I included two wooden utensils, a top, wooden stacking blocks, part of a wooden quilters hoop, the tiny wooden bowling pin and one of those grindy pedestal thingy's that I can't remember the name of right now!
FUN STUFF!
Then, I moved on to the textiles basket. I'm still not 100% sure what qualifies as a textile (Rik and I have this conversation a lot, actually) so I just threw in a bunch of things that were textured and interesting. This basket includes t-shirt bands (from an old t-shirt necklace fail), an organza pouch, feathers, a crocheted fish I made years ago and never could bring myself to toss, quilt pieces in the shape of butterflies, a magazine necklace three feet long from Africa, a ball wrapped with twine (glued on very securely) and terry cloth squares. Some of these things are potential choking/strangling hazards so naturally, I won't be leaving him alone to play with these baskets. It's definitely going to be a supervised playtime. If you make your own baskets, use discretion when it comes to what you add. I had a very large cork in this basket but couldn't shake the nagging feeling that it was just a bit too small for his young age.
Textile fun!
So, that's what we're up to today. He's napping now, but I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of him playing with these so that I can show you what a hit they were! I'm doing my best not to run in there and wake the little scrip scrap up so he can play with his new treasure baskets! :)
If you make a basket for your little one, let me know how it goes! I can't wait to hear all about it!
Hope you guys have a fantastic day today! It's going to be another gorgeous weekend here so I have big plans for our little family! What will you all be doing this weekend? Anything fun?
Thanks for stopping by to read my little piece of the internet!
Love to you all!
Shannon
Love this! I feel like this is what our parents did (just maybe not in baskets...), and just as fun for Easton as expensive fancy toys!
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