Oats and Water Sensory Play

Now that Millie is able to sit up alone and is much more interested in things around her, I have started doing lots of activities that both Oscar and Millie can get involved with. Obviously at 8 months old, Millie is still at an age were EVERYTHING goes in her mouth so lots of our playtime has to be edible if I intend on Millie playing with us – just to be on the safe side! Over the past few weeks we have played with water, ice, made some paint with flour, made sensory bottles and our latest activity was a simple oats and water sensory box.

I set this activity up within 5 minutes whilst Oscar and Millie were playing in the living room with my husband. I simply poured my desired amount of oats into my plastic box and then added enough water to make it as you would eat it – not too runny but wet enough! I popped the box onto the floor with a towel and added a few plates, bowls and different sized spoons. I thought Millie would be content with exploring the texture of the oats (as well eating some most probably!) and Oscar would like a few spoons and bowls to make it a bit more interesting for him. Oscar really enjoys doing these types of activities with Millie, I guess he feels like he has a little friend playing with him and Millie thinks everything he does is hilarious anyway so I knew they would both loving playing with the oats box together.

When I called them into the kitchen to play, Oscar dove straight in and began pouring the oats mixture into different bowls and plates saying he had made some pancakes, cereal and then went onto to making some spaghetti for me too! Millie surprisingly went straight for the spoon and started trying to feed herself the bit of oats that were on the spoon! She then threw it down and dove straight into the box of oats squeezing the mixture between her hands and placing her hands close to her face to explore the mixture some more. She then started eating some – good job it was edible! They played really well together, and Oscar enjoyed making some ‘food’ for Millie to explore in different bowls and plates whilst she enjoyed sneaking a little taste of it! They played for more than half an hour with just some oats and water – result!

What you need:

Oats

Water

Box

Spoons/Bowls/Plates etc

Reindeer Food

I was at a Christmas Bazaar a few weeks back and noticed a vendor selling Reindeer Food for a couple of dinars and was going to buy some for O when I thought we could just make our own – it would be a nice Christmas Eve activity for him and it would mean more having made it himself. All we needed was some oats and glitter, a lot less than the couple of dinars being charged at the Christmas Bazaar too!

What we used:

Oats (we used Natureland but any kind if oats would do)
Glitter (we used silver, gold would look nice too)

What we did:

O poured some oats into a bowl.
He then began sprinkling some glitter into his oats and mixing it in.

We didn’t sprinkle ours outside, we placed it next to Santa’s cookie and milk in our living room. However if you were placing it outside, perhaps you could use some sugar, coloured sugar or edible cake sprinkles instead of glitter in case any birds eat it.