Today we did this!

Today I wanted to dust off the Tuff Spot and try some sensory play. It was wonderful.

I filled the tray with porridge oats and tricolore pasta. We also used some polystyrene bits to create a snowy scene.

I wanted the scene for our sensory play to be a farm and so we used our Happyland people, animals, tractors and trailers.

We also used some other dumper trucks and diggers.

I put all the toys near to the tray for Esther and William to choose which they wanted to use in their play.

The first thing that they wanted to do was get their legs out and feel the different textures with their toes. William was the first to jump in but Esther was not far behind at all.

They walked around the tuff spot, feeling the oats slip between their toes, burying their feet in the oats, standing on the pasta and squashing the polystyrene. They had a fabulous time and were talking all the time about the textures, what they were feeling and what they were doing.

After a while I decided to remove the snow so that Esther and William could really get to grips with the oats and the pasta. This worked really well. They liked the change of look and feel of their play scene and it sparked fresh ideas with them of how to play.

First of all they mostly played with their tractors and trailers. They enjoyed filling up the trailers and driving them around the farm. They like feeling the oats slip between their fingers as they were scopping them up and moving them around the tray. They loved making tracks with the wheels and this lead us on to doing some mark making including drawing M for Matilda Mae.

Esther’s favourite thing to do was to move her hands through the porridge oats really fast. I think she like creating dust. Both twins would pour oats over their sibling whilst they were not looking. They also liked hiding their people in the back of dumper trucks and covering them with oats.

They both played with diggers and dumper trucks for ages. Scooping up the oats with the digger and carefully transporting them to the dumper truck and then dumping them out of the truck. They did this for ages.

They also both loved just sitting in the tray and pouring the oats and pasta over their bare legs and scrunching up their toes.

I think they found the whole experience quite therapeutic and to be honest I did too.

I was really surprised that it was Esther who stuck with the trucks while William engaged with me in some imaginative play with the farm animals. I made a pile of food for a horse and then he copied me. He then made a big pile of food for all the animals and stood the animals around. First he said that they were eating hay and later that turned into cake. He then said that it was birthday cake. I started doing animal voices and asking for cake, he fed each animal as I pretended to be them requesting food. It was lovely. Then Esther joined in with us saying that it was the horse’s birthday. I sang Happy Birthday to the horse. Then we went through all the other animals singing Happy Birthday before they went back to their trucks.

Esther and William played with this sensory play set up for well over an hour. And just before we tidied it all away they of course had some time to explore the pasts and oats with their trains!

I have saved the mix from this sensory play and on Monday afternoon I am going to put it out again but this time we will be adding water!

I cannot wait.

Oats so simple sensory play that toddlers will adore.