One of the things I hear most often from caregivers in this program is that they’d never try some of the stuff at home because of the sheer messiness. While I totally get it, it also makes me so sad! Messy, sensory play such as this fosters curiosity, imagination, physical and mental development and exploration. When paired with an early literacy activity that the caregiver and child can experience together, it encourages language development, communication, and cognitive skills. Math skills, sorting and categorizing, cause and effect, problem-solving and experimentation are all part of the Play to Learn philosophy. So, while I understand the hesitance for many caregivers to dive in and dye 10 lbs of spaghetti, it also makes me realize how important it is for us to be running programs like this! With all that being said, are you ready for our next Totally Untidy theme? Colors! Here we go!
Program Stations:
Jello ABC’s: Here we had normal jello split up into different pans with foam ABC letters. Very simple, but the kids loved touching the letters and watching them jiggle. It ended up a complete mess as kids discovered they could grab the letters, and then discovered they could grab handfuls of the jello and mix them together. It was a great experiment in color mixing! Early Literacy Tip: SING. As you sing the ABC’s, touch or point to the letter of the alphabet!
Greek Yogurt Painting: Oh, this was a FUN one! I was thinking for a long time about how I wanted to go about painting for this program and finally landed on greek yogurt with a bit of food coloring. For this session, I paired the “paint” with cars so they could paint tracks on a tarp. Early Literacy Tip: WRITE. Scribbling, whether with crayons or paint, is great practice for when your little one is ready to write! Try painting all kinds of curved, straight, squiggly lines with the cars!
Dyed Rice Sensory Bin: Sensory bins are one of the best tried and true sensory activities around. You can do them easily, too! For this one, we had blue dyed rice from other programs (thanks to a coworker who dyed it!) and we brought in other textured objects to bury. The kids loved finding what was beneath the rice, especially giant pom poms, which gave a really unique feeling when mixed with the rice! Early Literacy Tip: PLAY. What can your child find in the sensory bin? Can they make up a story to go along with the objects?
Pumpkin Gut Exploration: This particular program happened right around Halloween, so it was a nice Fall tie-in. For this station, we cut up some squash and pumpkins so the kids could explore the different textures of the outsides and insides. It wasn’t as popular a station as I anticipated. Early Literacy Tip: TALK. Talk with your child about the different textures they feel. Ask them about their Halloween experience.
Little Mouse Game: This is a game I know many of you children’s librarians know and adapt to storytimes and programs with themes. Since our theme was colors, I went with the classic rhyme of “Little mouse, little Mouse, are you in the (color) house?” Early Literacy Tip: PLAY. Play this hide-and-seek game with your child! Can they guess where Little Mouse is hiding?
Rainbow Spaghetti: Where to start? I knew this was going to be a messy station, but I definitely underestimated it. It was all fine until patrons stepped on spaghetti that made it out of the baby pools and got stuck on shoes and trekked out to the carpet in our children’s department. I had to bring in chocolate for our facilities team for that one…Anyway, making the spaghetti was time consuming, but not hard. I made it the night beforehand and used about 10 boxes of spaghetti from the dollar store, cooked in dyed water until al dente. Then, when it came out, I put it in a ziploc bag and added more dye and a bit of oil to make the colors more vibrant and prevent the noodles from sticking together. Get more food dye than you think you’d ever need (unless you’re going for pastel colors). Early Literacy Tip: TALK. What colors do you see? What flavors does your child think each color would taste like based on the color?
Evaluation and What I Learned:
There was a lot to learn in this session! and SO MUCH FUN to be had! The spaghetti station was hands down the most popular (and most messy) station, but none of the stations were ignored. This was also the most prep-intensive session I’ve done. Between the spaghetti and jello and greek yogurt, there was a good 3 hours of prep just there. Clean up for this one was a doozy, but I had a coworker and an intern, thankfully!
Librarian Ginny 