Sensory Play – An Oatmeal Dino Swamp

I have very loosely been following my friend Juanita’s Play Each Day Challenge. If you scroll down you’ll find the challenge on her Facebook Page, you should follow her Facebook page or Instagram page, her ideas for playing with kids are inspired, and her little boy is pretty cute as well!

On Saturday the prompt was messy play. I filled my largest saucepan and made a completely full saucepan full of porridge. Which incidentally, is very handy if you’ve had a busy day and didn’t have time for lunch. You can eat the kids craft before you give it to them! (Not that I had time to finish eating, if you look closely there’s a little bit of milk in the tray because I ended up tipping my bowl full back in the mix!)

I thought that an oatmeal swamp would be nice and gooey for plastic dinosaurs to have a good old stomp around in. It turned out I was right, dinosaurs love wallowing in porridge!

I cleared a hole before they started and tipped some colour water into the middle so they had a water hole to drink from. As soon as the children were allowed to play, (Bloggers children learn that they need to wait for photos to be taken before they are allowed to play. It’s a good lesson for them in self control!) those dinosaurs headed straight for the water hole. But oh no, they didn’t want to drink there! Swimming is what dinosaurs like to do in ponds.

Before long those dinosaurs were splashing and dive bombing with gay abandon.

The price was heavy, the pond disappeared and the swamp turned blue. Imogen was distraught and wept over the dinosaurs unruly behaviour.

The beauty of letting children play with oatmeal in winter is it is absolutely delightful for dry skin and leaves it ever so soft.

It is also very safe for taste testing. Funnily enough Jayden will not eat porridge for breakfast, but somehow he thought it was delicious when eaten off dinosaur feet. He started using the dino like a spoon at one stage.

At first the dog was happy to just chill next to the kids while they played. But he is a labrador, and before long he too noticed it was edible! At this point, every stray flick of porridge was promptly cleaned up by the canine cleaning crew. Excellent service.

Before long it was time to go inside. It was straight to the bath.

Once they were undressed, they had one last sensory experience. I let them stand and smooth the oatmeal with their feet and between their toes. The boys loved doing it. Immy, not so much.

I even had a try!

The dinosaurs were sent to the bath to be cleaned also. They tried to get back into the swamp. The swamp needed to be relocated.

It was a really fun activity on a Saturday afternoon! Thanks for the inspiration Wife Mumma Life!

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