Arctic Small World Play

Our arctic small world play was inspired by a topic that Wugs' preschool is covering this week on the earth's polar regions.

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