#4: Sensory Science
Hello Everyone,
We hope you’re all ready for more science activities. This week, we have activities that will help fulfill your child’s sensory needs in stay-at-home life, with nature art, butter making, oobleck and more.
Touch
Explore the outdoors with a garden tub. Just like a sensory tub, gather things from the outdoors and put them in a bin for exploration. You can collect coll natural things in a walk around your neighborhood or dig up dirt from your backyard and explore. Can you find any critters inside? What about critter homes? Can you make something for your critter friends?
If you have duct tape at home, you can use it to collect seeds and other natural objects for your garden tubs. For sticky seeds, tape duck tape around your wrists (and your ankles if your feeling adventurous) and see what you can collect in a trip outdoors. You can stick things you find to them and rub against things like trees, bushes, and plants.
You might have read Bartholomew and the Oobleck, but have you ever tried to make oobleck before? Mix 2 cups of cornstarch for each one cup of water into a bowl. You can also mix food coloring in to dye the oobleck, or put the oobleck into a balloon to make a stress ball. If you’re looking for a less sticky and more relaxing you can also try making forest putty.
Sound
Sound maps can be a meditative activity that helps work on focus and observation skills. You can make them in your backyard, your neighborhood, local greenspaces, or nature trails and all you need is drawing supplies. Sit in a quiet spot outside with some distance between you and others. Quietly draw or otherwise represent the different sounds you hear in relation to where you are. Try to do this without looking around you or getting up. Afterwards, you can talk to your kids about what surprised them, how they portrayed different sounds, how they could use their maps, or if the sounds were natural or industrial. If you are going outside to get away from stress or computer screens, this is a good activity to try out.
Sight
Building wind socks with coat hangars and found materials are great ways to stimulate visual creativity and experiment with different supplies. With a wind sock, you can run or dance with them, see how different materials flow in the wind, and beautify outdoor spaces.
Taste & Smell
Making butter, ice cream, and whip cream requires a lot of shaking and mixing, but can be great ways to burn energy indoors.
Fill a mason jar at most half way with heavy cream. Seal it and shake it up and down for 6-8 minutes until you start hearing thumping sounds. Shake it for about a minute after that, and you have yourself some butter (and buttermilk). You can add salt to taste. You can also add sugar at the start and shake it for 2-3 minutes to make whipped cream.
For making ice cream, you need half and half (or milk), sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and salt as well as large and small Ziploc bags.
Nature Spotlight
This week, we featured a handful of outdoor activities including garden tubs, sticky seeds, sound maps, and wind socks. As you explore the outdoors with all of your senses, you can use your experiences to create sensory art with things, images, and sounds you collect along the way. Can you find things of different colors, shapes, and sizes to make a pattern? Can you find things with different textures and make a collage that people can feel?
If you try out any of our activities, we would love to hear about it and to feature your child’s art on our blog. Comments or questions, feel free to reach us at wonderlabsteam@gmail.com or fill out the form on the contact page. We hope you have a great week.