Following through - Sensory table and art

The weekend that I posted my new resolution was to start incorporating more preschool inspired activities around our house - I dusted off Sully's Ikea table that was shoved under a mountain of crap, and promptly placed it in its new home - our kitchen.

That little blue table has been a wonderful daily reminder of what I hope to achieve each week for my son, and for myself.

Not wanting to spend $60 bucks on a standing sensory table, I headed to target and found a storage bin for $2 bucks that fits perfectly on his little table. The first week I put some old fish gravel we still had in the bucket and filled it up with water tinted with blue and green food coloring. I went and hunted out the plastic sea animals from last Christmas and threw them in. He really loved it and was there at his table all afternoon. It led into so much actual conversation about marine life and mammals and what do different sea creature eat - what plankton is, what the difference is between a seal and a sea lion and on and on and on. He even pulled out some Sea Creature books he had to read later that afternoon.

The following week I found two bags of pinto beans I never got around to using for soup, so I dumped the beans in the bucket with some measuring cups and funnels - and again, throughout the week he would go to the table and play in the bucket instead of asking for the computer.

This week in the table is rice (again that I had just sitting in my cupboard for the LONGEST time) and little mini lizards he convinced me months ago to buy him from Target's dollar bins. We've spent the past two days counting the lizards, talking about their colors, what other habitats lizards live in etc. He has been really interested in what food they eat. Since he's also been equally interested in reading words and the phonetic sounds of letters, we combined the two. I wrote on a piece of paper taped above the table "The lizards are eating ..." Underneath that sentence on a different piece of colored construction paper I wrote down all his ideas and put them under the sentence. "Bugs" "Rice" "Food" "The Dinosaur" and "Grass" are some of the words that made it up.

He even has recognized that the plural of lizards is different than the singular lizard by asking why the "S" was on lizards, and why it wasn't just "lizard". He's now been playing baby lizards and daddy Dinosaur with Rex from A Toy Story. Last night Shaun even made the comment "I forget sometimes how simple stuff can actually be to keep him so busy."

So true, so true.

This week for art I busted out some black poster board from the garage (don't ask, I use to be a teacher. I have the oddest stuff on hand.) I found some cars and trucks that would make different tracks and gave him some paint. Painting with the trucks turned into painting the truck, which turned into painting with our hands, then washing the trucks. The previous week we worked on cutting construction paper with kid scissors and using stickers. The two things Sully ALWAYS has access to at his level are books, and his crayon/marker/scissor bucket and paper. But we made a point to work on using the dexterity in his fingers and fine motor skills with cutting lines, tracing and the stickers.

I've been using stuff solely from my house the past 3 weeks, but I finally cracked and bought some stuff from the Oriental Trading Company and Lakeshore today (magnifying glasses, tongs, translucent blocks, tempura liquid water colors, magnetic wands, work station trays, magnet rings, a wood shape set, modge podge, translucent color paddles, dinosaur skeletons and sun ray art paper - all to incorporate with stuff I already have. )I'm so stoked and geeked to use the stuff! And it makes me even happier that he's having such a great time too.

I'm hoping this weekend I'll have some time to turn one of our shelve units in the garage into a preschool supply area, so stuff can stopped being shoved in every free space around my house.

Overall, its been so much fun. I'm having such a great time just listening to him and observing his little wheels turn. Hopefully this weekend I'll get to the DIY light box!