P for Pet Sensory box -yes that one!

I came up with this idea for a sensory bin but I was hesitant to actually do it. This was not because I wondered if Mini Piwi would enjoy it. I knew she would. We talk about delight directed learning but does that involve indulging a 3 year old's sense of humor (about poop)?

This week I discovered two expired boxes of pasta in the back of the pantry and I noticed the cardboard tray from the mandarins was still in the recycling bin. Apologies to the inventor of the sensory bin!

I present to you the Cat Litter box letter hunt...(complete with real cat).

Inside this box was lots of letter p's made from different materials like bubble wrap, pipe cleaners, card, paper and Aluminum foil.

The pasta was supposed to be the 'cat litter'. The letters were buried the 'litter'. You can imagine what the Letters were supposed to represent. I bought Mini Piwi to the table and pretended I could smell a 'donation' from 'Fluffy'. Here is fluffy sitting waiting for us to clean her litter tray.

 

Mini Piwi put her gloves on and the went to work scooping

 

 

The gloves didn't last long bur Miss K was recruited to be the official trash bag holder

 

The Piwi's played did this together several times before we moved onto the slightly more appropriate Cat shape picture. Mini Piwi proudly showed Daddy her page and scooping skills when he came home. She was pointing out the letter P too so I think the poop scooping activity was a success. I did however remind her to leave the real litter scooping to me.

 

 

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Fish bowl dessert

This activity was part of our P is for Pet week theme.

Mini Piwi learnt about a goldfish habitat by making a fun dessert. In the morning we made up some blue jello with canned mandarins. The Piwi's didn't know what it was for, they were just happy I was letting them have Jello (mean mama lol!). I surprised them with this set up.
Blue Jello (water), Mandarins (fish), crushed cookies (gravel), goldfish (extra fish), mini choc. chips (fish food).

 

 

 First into the 'tank' went the 'gravel'(to filter the water and to look nice)

Next we added the 'water' and the fish.I explained we couldn't add a lot of goldfish because they needed room to swim around.

 Just a pinch of  'fish food' so the fish don't get sick

 

 Yummy Fish Tank!

 

I used this fish tank site for reference.

 

After our snack Mini Piwi finished up fish day with some sorting.

 

This is the from the Mail box Theme Kit: Beach & Community Helpers (Preschool). I got it on sale at the Mail box site and it continues to a favorite.

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Fish tank purse craft

 

 

The theme this week in Piwi Pre K is P is for Pets. The first kind of pet Mini Piwi explored were Fish. For each Pet this week we made a different page to add to Mini Piwi's Pet book. She glued the letter P onto this coloring page and counted fish stickers as she added them to the page.

 

To hold her little fish toy and shell collection we made a fish tank purse.

All you need to make this is:

Two Paper Plates
Colored paper
Crayons or paint
Ribbon
Stapler
Tape

We made a 'fish' by from the outline of Mini Piwi's hand. She colored the 'water' in the tank with every shade of blue she could find in our crayon collection.

 

Big Sis cut the top of the paper plate to look like a fish bowl

 

The fish was glued to one of the plates and 'glitterized'

 

A ribbon handle was stapled to the top of one plate and the two plates were taped together.

 

Mini Piwi was very proud of her new purse!

 

 

There were a lot of fish themed books at the Library but the ones that we read about Fish for Pet week were:


A fish out of Water by Helen Palmer ( This was me reliving my childhood with a classic...oh and the Piwi's like it too lol!)


Mr Putter & Tabby feed the fish by Cynthia Rylant. A funny book about a cat with a fish problem. Tabby reminds me of most cats I know who treat fish tanks like their own HD TV. The Piwis thought Perry would be the same with his twitchy tale.

 

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Letter of the week: O

We spent our Christmas vacation at the beach, the Piwi's enjoying beachcombing for shells. Seeing the ocean made me homesick for New Zealand. Where I grew up the beach in this weeks button (above) was just minutes away.

 

Up until now, Mini Piwi was all about glue, scissors, paint and glitter. She would insist all projects needed  to be cut out & glued onto another piece of paper. Monday and Tuesday we read books  and did some O for ocean themed printables from twoteachingmommies

.... made an ocean bag. I posted about all the sensory activities we did for Ocean week here.

As of Wednesday the rules changed (and I didn't get the memo). Mini Piwi told everyone she didn't like books and did not want to do anything with glue. So I pulled out some other activities I had planned...

Mini piwi went 'fishing' in the sink

 

 

Played Letter race

Made O is for Oatmeal cookie balls. Mini Piwi likes watching the mixing but not the noise.

Played with the Ocean shapes sensory bin

By Thursday afternoon I was starting to run out of inspiration. Thankfully, the post-lady turned up with our order from The Mailbox. I had purchased several pre laminated Pre k theme sets on sale last week. I quickly cut out some of the cards and Mini Piwi loved the first activity so much she wanted to play it all evening. As usual the packaging it came was also great entertainment. In this case it was sheets of humongous white paper. The crayons got a good workout on that.

 

As far as the printables and glue go, I'll just leave them in her work boxes and if she wants to grab them they are there. If there was any doubt in our minds, Mini Piwi is 3 now and all that comes with it. She is full of cuteness and curiosity and wanting to do it all correctly, the first time (by herself!).

Resources we used this week:


The Mail box theme kit: Beach & Community helpers (pre laminated)



Big pack of plastic sea creatures

Ocean unit from Two Teaching mommies



Check out our other posts about Ocean week activities:

We joined the fun at
Tot school gathering place@ 1+1+1=1

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3 Ocean themed Sensory activities

I had read about the purpose of Sensory bins at A purpose driven home. Seemed like a good idea for Mini Piwi so I gave it a go for Advent. It went so well, I was inspired to try again with this week's letter of the week, O (for Ocean). This week we found a pile of sea life books at the library. We chose some with beautiful underwater photos. The one Mini Piwi likes to sit and look at over and over is

Last week we borrowed at least 6 of the scholastic Math themed readers because Mini Piwi was so caught up in them. They turned out to be fun for Miss K too. One of them is

Math in the Kitchen (Scholastic News Nonfiction Readers: Everyday Math). I am a fan of anything that makes Math practical and fun. Anyway...back to Oceans...

This week we had 3 Ocean themed Sensory experiences. I say experiences because only one was a traditional 'bin'.

The Ocean Shape box & Letter racing



Everyone wants to have a look!

was full of connector blocks, counters and pipe cleaners. Hidden it there were the Sea creatures that will be popping up in allsorts of activities this week.

One crazy activity in particular is popular...I have also been hiding them in odd places to surprise the piwi's. If they find one they yell 'O' and everyone races to tag the Letter O we have on the Letter of the week board.

The Mini Ocean squeeze bag

I had some hotel toiletries that were a nice shade of blue. Mini Piwi had a great time squeezing it from the bottles and tubes. She added water and glitter, shells and sea creatures. Apparently it was great fun to make her ocean stormy and waving and then let it settle again.

Sink Ocean

I surprised Mini Piwi with a kitchen sink of warm bubbles and a scoop. Under all the bubbles were plastic stars, fish and crabs. She spent twenty minutes 'fishing' while I cooked dinner and Big sis got to play on the computer without a shadow.

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Letter of the week: M

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