I am currently in the process of writing our first sensory activity book which will be available via our website or facebook shop, also during sessions. As part of sorting the activities I need to try them and see what we would get out of each activity. So the fun began today with watermelon! Who knew watermelon was going to be so much fun.
I think what I find amazing still is that with a 20 year old child, and over 15 years school experience I still find things that I've never tried. Watermelon sensory play being one of them.
So we started of with the basic exploration that babies would love. My daughter enjoyed tasting it, although it was interesting that at first she pulled a face at it, but by the time she had eaten it about eight times she was happily munching on it and going back for more. Just proves that children need to taste things more than once to actually decide whether they like it or not.
We explored squeezing the watermelon and watching the juice drop down.
How it felt on the inside and on the outside. We talked about the different colours. I modelled scooping with the spoon, but we were really just interested in eating it by this point.
If you had a older child you could have encouraged counting out the tiny seeds, letting them scoop out the watermelon first giving a great finger gym work out in the process.
Then my eldest turned up, remember he's 20, and we had watermelon races! Yes if you cut two slice of watermelon you can race them from one side of the investigation tray to another - do put a mat down as they squirt juice on impact with the other side.
So we had messy play with all ages today and all it cost was a watermelon!
Try it out and let me know how you get on with it xxx