Activities & Days Out / 31 August, 2018 / Nanny Anita
Last week we made some painted salt structures. I left a couple of them on the window sill of the playroom to dry out and see if I could turn it into a sensory activity for BB. Coming back into work on Monday I found them still sitting where I had left them and now totally rock solid. Perfect to make a salt structure sensory tray so that he could try and destroy them.
Make sure you follow my sensory board on Pinterest for more ideas. Don’t forget to save the pin for later.
To make the salt structures you can find the instructions here.
If you are worried about them eating the salt, I don’t think BB put any in his mouth. I’m pretty sure if did it would have been a one time only thing. You could always try making it with sugar, but then I would guess they would be more likely to keep eating it.
All I did was transfer the dried out salt to a tray and added BB’s toy hammer and drill to it.
I have recently been looking into the attention span of toddlers. BB doesn’t seem to focus on anything for more than a few seconds. He likes to wander and destroy. Turns out that the attention span of toddler is about 1-2 minutes before something else distracts them. I’ve now been trying to do a couple of activities a day that help focus him for a couple of minutes and then let him lead the way (within reason) the rest of the time. These activities can be very simple things like a simple jigsaw, building a block tower, or a posting game.
Originally I was just going to put the tray on the table and leave BB to come and go from it as he pleased. Turns out he really loved this activity and spent 20+ minutes trying to destroy them. If I tried to get in on the action he would take the hammer or drill away from me!
He did ended up getting a fair bit of the salt on the floor. That didn’t matter though because BB was more than happy to help me vacuum afterwards.
BB didn’t manage to destroy all of the salt structures so I have saved the rest for another day.
If you enjoyed this salt structure sensory tray then be sure to check out my kool aid play dough and DIY scratch cards.
Pin for later: