I had several Twister mats that I had for my classroom, and had been saving them in case I thought of something creative.
We bought a BIG bag of beans and a plastic tub, and mixed lots of "treasures" in with the beans (aka: colored dice, blue glass stones, and foam stickers in the shapes of bugs that I had in my classroom that I had bought for games and such).
This keeps them busy for a good chunk of time!
Mason enjoys pouring more beans on himself than anything else.
And wouldn't ya know...it didn't take him long to figure out that he could SIT in the tub of beans to play.
This time, Taylor joined him for a picture.
I'm trying to implement the "BEANS MUST STAY ON THE MAT" rule. But that's kind of hard for a 1 and 2 year old. If I look away for too long, usually someone is throwing beans, or making so much comotion in the tub that beans are flying everywhere. Sometimes beans are being launched off their "digging" spoons too. But it's not too hard to get all the beans back on the mat, then we fold the mat up a little and hold it above the tub and let the beans funnel back to their home. Clean up is pretty fast. We've done this outside a few times too, then I don't really worry about the beans that get off the mat.
We needed something new and fun. This is great! Now I need MORE ideas.
If you have any...PLEASE send them my way. Especially INDOOR ideas for the fall and winter when it's too cold to be outside.
3 comments:
Great idea! I love PAT- too bad our time is up with them! Anyway, an idea for you to help Taylor (or Mason) learn to spell their names you can fill a pop bottle about 2/3 full with beans or rice and put the letters on little foam blocks and play I spy. It would would work for just learning the letters too.
This is one of Hadley's favorite things to do. Who knew beans could be so much fun.
Get some colored M&M's and have them sort them by the color on the Twister pad! They can eat any that don't match the colors. Yum!
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