For our next 31 days of activities guest blogger, we have the lovely Charlotte, who is a stay at home Mummy to four and early years professional. Today she is sharing this wonderful flower sensory play sensory soup activity with us all. Why not take a look at her site, Team Stein?
She would love for you to hop over and say hello and follow their family journey! She is really passionate about sharing their outnumbered family life whether it’s through our love of exploring the great outdoors, learning through play activities or my desire for an organised and homely lifestyle amongst the chaos of having an age range from preschooler to teen! I love nothing more than a cup of coffee whilst planning our next adventure, seasonal activity or lifestyle project.
I am sharing with you our sensory flower soup activity that we had great fun making together and my littles played independently with adult supervision of course.
Flower sensory play benefits
This is a great play idea for keeping little hands and imaginations busy creating bowls of soup, potions or tea. In our home the fairies were getting lots of treats.
Flower sensory play isn’t just for Spring and Summer seasonal play. it can be enjoyed all year round if you make use of any indoor flowers you have that are starting to die out. We used an old floral bouquet as well as some fresh herbs. Fruit slices are also lovely to add or squeeze into the tea.
This activity is a real sensory explosion if you use water and ice as the base to the sensory flower soup.
Little ones can practice and perfect their fine motor skills by using scissors and handling the equipment.
This can be considered a STEM activity as they are experimenting with ice.
ThIs activity can be done outside in a mud kitchen, water play table or indoors on a rainy or cold day in a suitable bowl or tray.
There are so many different ways to enjoy this activity with different seasonal flowers, fruits and colours.
What do you need to make sensory flower soup?
The beauty of this activity is that you can just use what you have in your home.
Materials
- Flowers, herbs and fruit slices ,
- Ice cube tray / silicone muffin tray,
- Water,
- Bubble bath,
- Food Colouring,
- Tray, container, tuff tray, and
- Variety of scoops, bowls, jugs, whisks, spoons and cups
How to make sensory flower soup
We did this activity in two stages which worked really well for extending their play.
First off cut up flowers, foliage and herbs into a silicone muffin tray with a little water and place in the freezer until solid. My preschooler also helped so she could work on her cutting fine motor skills on the petals.
Make up the base for the soup with water, a dollop of children’s bubble bath and a drop of food colouring (we used blue). Whisk the water so the bubbles slightly foam up. Again let your little one whisk up the bubbles for extra learning outcomes.
Put the soapy water on a tray with all the receptacles needed for play.
Pop the frozen flower discs / ice cubes into the water. You can also add in some fruit slices for extra play.
Let your little one pour the water into cups, ladles and jugs etc to discover the flowers and foliage as the ice melts.
How to extend play with flower sensory soup
Here are a few more ideas for extending this activity:
- To enable some STEM learning you could supervise them using some salt to melt the ice flowers. Mine love using a pipette for this but you can simply sprinkle if you don’t have one to hand.
- Make up some calming camomile tea and use this as the base of your soup.
- Using a lemon squeezer to get them handling a juicer to pop into the tea.
- A sieve / tea strainer to use over a jug to pour the flower tea water through and catch the flowers etc in the sieve.
- Pop in some cornflour and make it gloopy soup.
- Stir the soup mixture with chunky chalks instead to see what happens to the colour of the soup
We hope that we have sparked your imagination for making your own sensory flower soup.
If you like this activity – do check out the weekly newsletter for more daily activities for the kids.
We know you will love what we have to share there too.
Why not take a look at these additional activities for kids from KiddyCharts? Some are sensory and some are just educational and fun!
Kids Activities - Toddler Activities
We believe imaginative play is a great way for your kids to learn, so why not pop offsite to check out these KiddyCharts recommended kids activities?
Imaginative play resources offsite
Ideas for encouraging imaginative play from elsewhere on t'internet.
What is Imaginative Play and How to Encourage it?
Explanation of what exactly imaginative play is, and how to encourage it within your children.
I is for Imaginative Play!
More ideas for imaginative play activities - including some great sensory ideas for babies.
Open Ended Resources for Imaginative Play
Open ended play ideas to encourage your kids' imaginations.
Pin It For Later!
Charlotte Stein
Charlotte is a stay at home mum to 4 children, following careers in recruitment and childminding. She is enthusiastic about sharing her family life with others and loves a good cup of coffee!Why not visit her on social too? Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.