A quick AND messy toddler activity

A few weeks ago, Alder and I played in the kitchen and made a huge mess creating our own play-doh like substance. It was extremely easy and as equally messy. By the end of the activity, he and I, as well as our dog, the entire floor, and most of the cabinets were covered in flour but it was time to clean in there anyways. We first dumped a cup of flour into a bowl. 

Alder loved helping measure out the flour and dumping it in. He also so enjoyed put his fingers into the bowl full of the white, powdery, and pillowy substance. Then we slowly added splashes of water to the bowl to create a paste.It got a little too wet and so we added more flour and then it got too thick and so we added more water until we got the perfect consistency. The two year old loved that it took us a while to achieve the consistency since it meant more fun with flour and more splashes of water. 

So this is what the consistency should look like. It could be a little more dry actually and if I were to do it again, I would try to add less water. 

Then I had Alder tell me what color he wanted his "play-doh" to be and he excitedly exclaimed "PURPLE!" So we had another learning moment and I explained that to get purple we had to combine red and blue. He looked at me blankly until he started to see the purple color emerge.

So in the end we achieved a rather ugly "mauvey" purple and that was ok because Alder thought it was a perfect purple color.

After all the mess and the coloring of our paste, we put it into a zip-loc bag (and if I were to do this again I would make sure I was using a non-dollar store zip-loc bag since the cheap one we used leaked.)

Alder loved playing with the bag of gunk. I showed him how to "draw" circles and lines. He loved moving his fingers back and forth and I explained to him the words, "left" and "right." According to helpful little book I used, this shows the child the movement of the left to right progression which trains the child's eyes for future reading and writing skills.

The book above is where this little activity came from. The book is laid out into weekly developmental activities for children from birth to age 5. I use it for both Kingston and Alder. This book was recommended by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise who wrote the book below. 

I received this book, The Well-Trained Mind, for my birthday and within days I had read through the first part. Jared and I have always felt that we will homeschool our children for some of their schooling years. We were blessed to be around so many amazing homeschool families while at Auburn that we became really convicted about teaching our children at home. We have no idea what that looks like. It might be for just the first few formative years or all the way through grammar school. We feel very strongly about the Trivium way of learning and this book is a fountain of information about homeschooling, classical education, and so on. The book can also be used for families who do not wish to homeschool full-time, but just supplement their children's education. I highly recommend reading the first part of this book if you have children. It may change the way you think and how you educate your children. 

We had a lovely Easter in Chattanooga. I will post pictures soon. 

Happy Tuesday!