Its been a while since I’ve posted a sensory craft and to be honest I’ve missed the time with my boys. They get so excited when mama pulls out the activity tray and want to help with everything.
At a recent Prima Toy Event on of my favourite toys that launched (stay tuned for a full list of my favourites), was the Treasure X box. A little box filled with adventure and you have to try and retrieve the “lost” bits and pieces by digging through the “soft brick” around it. It reminded me of the some of the sensory activities Id done with the boys around dino excavations and got me thinking it was time to do something new.
Cloud Dough is a perfect base for sensory trays. It’s both mouldable and crumbly at the same time. It has a silky soft consistency perfect for little hands. You can see my previous recipe here, but generally I take about 8 cups of flour to one cup oil (vegetable or baby), this time I added in a few drops of essential lavender oil to add in a calming scent. The mixture of flour and oil is mixed to the consistency of a wet beach sand. It’s the perfect exploratory material for toddlers to play with and is 100% taste safe! The boys are at a fun age where I can start making sensory trays a little more challenging. So with this one, inspired by Treasure X, I made it a pirate theme and hid bits of metallic treasure into the “sand”, they had to find the treasures with a magnetic wand. Add in a couple of scoops and forks and use little shells or containers to mould your shapes. To create a pirate theme i took “treasure” from around the house, glass pebbles and sparkly pom poms as “gems”, plastic beads, gold coins, old treasure chests and pirate figurines.
Most of the time was spent burying their own treasure chests in the sand, acting out with the pirates before creating sand castles and shapes with the easily mouldable cloud dough. After about 45 minutes of beach play we packed away our cloud dough into an airtight container to be played with another day. Cloud dough typically has quite a long shelf life if stored correctly.
Have fun with your little pirates and never be afraid to get a little messy xx
