25 June 2009

Messy Activities Part II

The Rice Box

In a flash of desperation (or brilliance, it depends on one's perspective), I grabbed a large, empty plastic tub we had downstairs along with the remains of our 20 lb bag of white rice and a few buckets, scoops, funnels, etc and let Ellie play. She LOVES this tub! We played together happily for half and hour the first time. I'm hoping eventually I'll feel comfortable letting her play alone in the tub, but right now I'm afraid the whole thing would get dumped onto the floor...

It's great how easily rice sweeps up.

It's not so great how loudly Eleanor screams when it's time to clean up and close up the box.

My favorite part of playing with her here was her fascination with the funnels. She hasn't figured out how to use them herself, but she wants me to hold them for her while she holds her hands and other objects underneath the flow of rice. It's so cool to see her little mind at work.


3 comments:

Z and Me said...

Beware of the "It's so cool to dump on the floor!" caper. Zach has a sandbox that he keeps outside, but LOVES to bring in bucketfulls and dump them odd places if I'm not watching! She is growing up so big and adorable!

Laura Fenske said...

Love the rice idea. Thanks for the reminder...I had totally forgot how much Garrett liked that at that age. I'll have to pull it back out again for Micah to do.

MacKender 4 said...

So fun! I have used rice in my classroom too...so it works for all ages. Another couple of things that keep kids busy and they love to feel are foam packing peanuts or dried beans. If you want to get brave with water and foam peanuts they sell "earth friendly" ones that disolve in water. Maybe when she's a little older...but still fun and entertaining!