Getting messy is fun!

Yesterday was the first day back to school for Lucas since Christmas so Sophie and I were flying solo.  My sister was able to come over with my neice Zoe for the morning so I figured I would set up some painting for the girls.  I let Zoe choose the craft we did by offering two choices and she chose tinfoil painting. 

This was a crafty/sensory idea I had been wanting to introduce to Sophie. Sophie loved the mirror aspect of the tinfoil, I don't know why I hadn't tried it before. It also made alot of noise at first when she touched it so it really worked many of her senses at once (in a gentle way).  Sophie immediately got her hands on the tinfoil and was checking out what it was on her tray by looking as well.  I taped the tinfoil to a cardboard piece for stability and then taped that to her tray.

Zoe worked very happily painting alongside Sophie, at one point we even got a broadway production called "I Love Red".  It was pretty darn cute, she loves to sing like an opera singer and can really belt out the tunes she makes up.

Sophie choosing her paint colours with alot of focus.

The girls had a great time painting and when they let us know they had had enough in their own way I set up a sensory bin for each of them.  I had a large jug of epsom salts that were being unused and I had seen some ideas of how to use them on Play at Home Mom, a blog I love. 

I got out some of Lucas' tiny dinosaurs and other animals and set them beside a bin of epsom salts for each girl. I showed Sophie the animals and put them in the salt and let her figure out what to do. Zoe started to bury hers right away. 

It didn't take long before Sophie had her fingers in the salt.

Zoe wanted to see Sophie's bin and decided to add a few of hers to it.

Zoe told me that it was snowing on the cheetah, which was a mommy cheetah that still had it's baby in it's tummy.  She played with this for a long time.  Sophie was enjoying her bin as well.  I had to help her get her whole arm up a few times but she enjoyed moving her own hands in the salt.

I noticed last night that Sophie may have trigger finger again, her baby finger will not straighten.  It happened a couple years ago as well so I will have to keep an eye on it.  It self resolved last time (which doesn't usually happen) so I am hopeful it will be a short lived problem this time around.  I think that this type of play is really great for helping Sophie keep her hands open which is a good thing.

We tried a few more different items in the salts, the cubes above have coloured see through tops, mirror tops, kaleidoscope tops etc.  Sophie liked checking them out, Zoe liked using them as scoops.  Then we lit up the salts and decided to add some rubber balls for our last bit of playtime.  It was a fun morning and both girls were ready for a rest.

The girls got salt everywhere and Sophie was covered in paint but that makes it that much more fun. Sophie and Zoe thought it was hilarious when I vacuumed Sophie as we got all the salt mess cleaned up. Who knows what we will do tomorrow.