A Week of Sensory Play

I've been pretty silent here lately. Nothing big has been going on; I'm just at the height of my semester's business. I have two sermons due Monday (one of which I'll be preaching in class), which also happens to be my birthday and the day after Easter, which means this weekend will be busy enough as it is. Add that to the usual book-a-week for one of my courses, an additional paper due on the 16th (haven't even started that book yet), my senior portfolio, and just getting to class and back, and maybe you can see why school has been keeping me too busy to blog. As a result, this will essentially just be a huge picture post of some of our fun this week.

On Monday, I finally gave into Ethan's continued begging to play with "roe" (rice). I hate getting out the rice because it's such a pain to clean up. And sure enough, he spent a good deal of time shaking the grains of rice off his hands, sending them flying. It was also a short-lived activity because he continued to dump handfuls out of the bin, despite my warnings, so he only played with it for about 15 minutes. On Tuesday, I was preparing to make the grocery list and spotted a box of pudding mix. So I got out a big bowl, had Ethan help me with the pouring and mixing, stripped him down to a diaper, and just let him have at it. He painted the table, he painted himself, and he eventually asked for a spoon because apparently it was improper to eat it off his fingers =) That, too, became a paintbrush after he'd had his fill. This lasted about 45 minutes. Then this afternoon I was trying to find something to console Ethan since our neighbors weren't outside playing (he adores playing with them!). I got out the wet sensory bin, a thing of Dollar Tree shaving cream, and some neon food coloring (gotten for free thanks to coupons!). These pictures were taken with my iPod since I was afraid to bring out my nice camera for this activity. I also had the foresight to change him into an outfit I got at the thrift store for messy craft purposes. And boy did he make a mess! He LOVED spraying the shaving cream into the bin, and once I introduced the food coloring, well it was even better! Now I just have to hope the food coloring comes off his fingers before his Easter egg hunt on Saturday...