We started our vegetable growing this week (post to follow) and I wanted to do an activity with the childrent to tie in with this. I liked Teach Pre-school's seed decorations where they filled lids with pva glue and added seeds, but I was a bit worried my under 2's would struggle with this. So instead I opted for using salt-dough as a base for our decorating. Initially I planned to use seeds but realised it was going to work out quite expensive and I wanted our seeds for planting, so decided to use beans instead.
The children had been filling and emptying plastic eggs with the beans (see previous post) when I introduced the idea of creating patterns and objects with the beans to the older children (4+ years). I'd made some salt dough in the morning ready and luckily they were really enthusiastic about the pattern making!
I used the same recipe we used for our Super smooth valentines hearts here (as they are drying though I'm realising that I probably didn't use quite enough liquid starch) and coloured some of it green. The children then set to work!
The under 2's came over and joined in.
To be honest apart from L, the activity didn't really hold the attention of the under 2's. They added a few beans and then opted for the 'dump' method - grab a handful of beans and dump them on top! It could be argued that they were problem-solving - working out that it was much quicker to add a handful of beans than adding them one-by-one!
L did like this activity though and carefully selected and pressed her beans into the dough.
Creating their individual patterns
Starting on the second!
I left some of the dough uncoloured as we planned to add paint to these once they have dried out.
This was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment activity this morning, so we used whatever was available as cutters (flower cutters might have been nice:-))
After completing a couple of salt dough creations we decided to go large!
(not sure how successful these bigger versions are going to be though)
I love their finished pieces.
Smiley face!
Patterns and a stick-man
Stick men caught on in a big way after my son came up with the idea (on the right)
Patterns!
These are L's finished pieces (aged 21 months)
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