Post-Holiday, and a quick learning activity

We're back from our holiday and thrown back into the frantic pace of things here. The Edinburgh Festival is going on and the city is absolutely heaving with people, and there are street artists and performers at every corner. Edinburgh is an amazing place to live, and Festival time is full of the highs and lows of life here. On the down side there are far too many people for our cosy little city to comfortably contain, making trips on public transport a nightmare - especially with a small child. On the up side, what incredible excitement and culture right here on our door step. I'm trying really hard (it doesn't come naturally to me!) to focus on the good things and soak up the carnival atmosphere, despite being absolutely snowed under with work and really needing to just get my head down and plough through it all.

I already miss our holiday time in Blackpool (and having time to do simple things like go to the bathroom uninterrupted) and I'm going to blog the hell out of every single day because I have photos and videos by the bucketload of our time there. So watch out for that, because you're going to be sick of it soon!

But for now here's a quick post with a cool learning activity we've been trying out today. I got the idea here at Fine and Fair's post about sensory bins. I thought it was such a great, fun-looking idea.

As Audrey is a little younger we simplified it right down - I just took a jar of mixed dry pulses and emptied it out into the lid of her mega bloks box (ultimately I'd like to use our big Ikea storage trays for this) and let her have at it with a variety of spoons and scoops, and her little bucket and spade. I was initially a bit worried that she would quickly get bored. I needn't have worried!

Sebastian (our cat) supervised.

She loved it, and spent ages scooping and pouring the grains between the tray and the bucket. She used her fingers sometimes, which was great fine motor work on the pincer grasp, and otherwise so carefully used the little spoons and shovels.

Did it get messy? You bet. But five seconds with a mystical new invention that they're calling a "vacuum cleaner" sorted it right out.

She enjoyed it so much that when she was done and I'd put the pulses away in their jar, she almost instantly brought the now-empty lid to me again saying "more - more!"

This time I filled it with dry pasta to keep it different. She found the pasta easier to shovel and to pick up, and perhaps less interesting because of it.

The one thing I'd do differently is not to eat anything while she's playing. I picked up a chocolate from Ian's desk and was happily munching on it when I noticed little lady staring at me, and next thing I knew she was trying to eat the dry pulses! A bit of explanation though - "these are for playing, not eating" - and she seemed to forget about it.

All in all she played for nearly an hour with these, with a look of real concentration on her face that I hadn't seen before. While we were away people commented on how she tries so hard to use a fork and spoon when she's eating - often if she's not that keen on eating something we give her a fork and help her use it and she yums it up. I'm hoping that with more activities like this her independence with food will come on in leaps and bounds.