Welcome to my Blogging from A to Z April Challenge for 2019! The A to Z Challenge is a blogging event held each April. Bloggers create posts from A to Z beginning on April 1st and ending on April 30th. There is a post scheduled for each day of the month (except for Sundays) with each day corresponding to a sequential letter of the alphabet.
Hello again! We are on the downhill slide of the challenge and chugging along. I hope you are all having a good time and finding blogs and posts you love.
Today is letter N. In toddler play land, N is for Noodles.
Now...I will admit that the Boy is a picky eater and that noodles are one of the few foods we can consistently get him to eat, but eating the noodles is not the type of engagement we are talking about here. We are entering the realm of sensory boxes.
The Baby hasn't made much of an appearance in these activities, but this is one that works well for both of their ages. Little hands (and feet) love to play in these boxes. They love the feel and they enjoy the sounds of the noodles as they are dropped, shaken, and otherwise moved about. It's an easy (and cheap) way to keep the kiddos entertained for a bit.
I purchased a set of ten plastic bins at the store a few months back. They are about 6" x 18" with snap on lids. I have divided up some arts and craft supplies into some of them and then have a few that are simply there for random play time use. At the same time, I also purchased some cheap grocery items to use for play. $1 bags of rice and beans, $1 boxes of pasta. They are all just hanging out waiting for a little fun.
The first time I busted out this activity, I simply opened a box of uncooked penne and dumped it into the bin. The Boy spent about 15 minutes just running his hands through it, picking up the pieces and dropping them back in the box. We took off his socks and he stood in the bin, sloshing his feet around and feeling the noodles slide with his movements.
In later sessions, we expanded to two bins, adding in a bin of shells. We also added pipe cleaners, a ladle, a cup, and some construction toys. We have slid penne onto pipe cleaners to see how many can stack on a single piece (fine motor movement and hand/eye coordination). We have scooped and dumped the pasta with the ladle and the cup to work on gross motor skills. We have engaged in play with the excavator and dump truck to move the pasta from one location to another and then return to dump it back in the bin. (This last one was a really big hit for the Boy, who loves his construction trucks.)
Little brother loves to jump in on the action as well...though he tends to do a little more sensory testing with his mouth.
When we're all done with play, I scoop the mouth-tested pieces up into the trash and then simply gather up the remaining pieces back into the bins for next time. For future play sessions, I'll be tracking down wheel-shaped pasta as well as adding some color dye to different types of noodles for a bit of contrast in our play.
As the Boy gets older, we'll be mixing different textures together (adding in materials like the beans). We'll be moving on to larger bins with greater volume and we'll begin to hide other items in the bins to scoop and discover (like small dinosaurs in an "archaeology dig").
There are a lot of options for this easy little play idea.
Are you an A to Z Blogger too? Leave me a comment so I can repay the visit.
Not an A to Z Blogger, but love the idea? Go here to see what other fun you can find in the challenge.
Miss a prior 2016 A to Z post? Find your missing link down below...
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