To give Wugs and Dooey a different sensory material to play with (we have previously made "snow" from cornflour and oil), I decided to try a combination of baking soda and shaving cream. When mixed together they create a rough powder-like texture that can be pressed together to make larger chunks or rolled into a large hard ball. It was an interesting material to explore as the larger chunks (when chipped away at) would suddenly disintegrate. For that reason, it was also a messy material to play with that left a thin sheen of white powder on everything in that area of their playroom!
I added some blue perspex to the bottom of the tub to create a sea and added some figurines. Dooey was particularly interested in the animals, so he learned a few new words. Wugs was preoccupied with layering the snow on his helicopter and cars which he then wanted to wash off (yesterday he watched me de-ice our car which was covered in a thick layer of frost, so I expect that is why he played with it in this way). The idea of frost and snow is still largely a novelty to the boys. They haven't yet experienced real snow!
After they played we watched a short clip of the Arctic Ocean by the National Geographic which featured some of the animals we played with.
What we used:
Large tub
Blue perspex
3 pots of baking soda (600g)
200ml of shaving cream
Figurines (we used the arctic Safari Ltd Toob)
Spoons, funnels and small containers
