Skip to main content

Pumpkin Scented Cloud Dough - 3 & 4 Year Old Classes

In anticipation of Thanksgiving and a visit to the Pumpkin Patch, the children in our Three and Four-Year-Old Classes recently enjoyed some sensory fun with Pumpkin Scented Cloud Dough. It was a popular activity that had children anxiously awaiting their turn to explore. It's a very simple recipe consisting of flour, vegetable oil and pumpkin pie spice. The last ingredient gave this activity a delicious scent that the children immediately noticed and commented on.

The children enjoyed scooping and pouring, and the best... squishing!

Sensory exploration is a child's way of making sense of the world. It's not all about touch, but about the other senses as well.

Sensory exploration also helps to develop language skills. For example, giving children the chance to play with a variety of textures and tastes helps them to build new ways of talking about the world. Water isn't just wet, it can be slippery with bubbles, or cold when frozen. The bark of a tree can be smooth, rough or sharp. Food can be salty, sour, bitter or sweet. 

Some of the comments from our children:

“It smells like pie.”

“It's soft on my fingers.”

“This stuff is sticking and smelling.”

“I'm making cookie pies for my friends.”

“It smells. I want to eat it.”
 



Here's the recipe should you want to try this calming activity at home:

7 cups flour
1 cup vegetable oil
Pumpkin Pie spice (found in the spice aisle)

Combine the dry ingredients in a container or bin and mix well.

Add the vegetable oil to the bin and slowly mix it into the dry ingredients. Continue mixing until you have a slightly damp, mold-able material also known as cloud dough.

Enjoy!

Until next time.

Barbi

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mosaic Garden Stones

Today our children had an amazing opportunity to work with Glen Anderson, a local artist specializing in mosaics. You can see his work at http://www.mosaicplanet.net . I met Glen last year at Urban Weavers Studio in Strathcona. I asked him many, many questions about mosaics, all of which he patiently answered with expertise. I was gearing up for an art project in our preschool class so I really wanted to get any pointers I could from him. The plan was to have our students make mosaic tiles to place along our fence at the garden plot at Terra Nova Farm. They worked out very well, thanks to Glen's great advice and it was a beautiful moment when child and parent hung the stones at the farm on our last day of school. It was a moment of great pride for all of us. The garden that they cared for with their own hands- tended to its needs in sunshine and in rain. They will always remain part of that space, that land and their stone will remind them of this connection. Even though they turne...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Love for Cabbage

Another day of working with cabbage-our prized cabbage that I babied throughout the summer. The cabbage that I saved from the demise of cabbage worms, watered, and surrounded with copper to scare away slugs. So, yes, babied. After all that care and love I was hoping the children would enjoy working with this gorgeous vegetable and like the taste of it. The coleslaw was a hit last week but would cooked cabbage get the same positive response? We assembled our ingredients for cabbage rolls and showed all the children. They smelled all the spices that were in the recipe and many of them loved the smell of the fresh garlic! They took great pride in recognizing onion, salt, pepper, tomato sauce and ground beef. I wanted to introduce them to another herb so we passed around marjoram, which many agreed smelled sweet. We pre-cooked the meat just so the children could work with the food without any cause for concern. The smell of the onions and meat simmering sparked the interest of many ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volunteering at Richmond Food Bank

Today was our last day volunteering at the Richmond Food Bank. I am so grateful we had this opportunity– it has been an extraordinary experience for all of us. I, myself, have been very lucky to work in a community where I have seen dedicated volunteers working countless hours for people and projects they believe in. In my own community centre, the staff devote extra hours for many events, all to help strengthen our community. From these experiences grew a desire within me to try to share this with our children. How can we make them generous with their time and energy for the good of others? How can we teach them to be giving people– people that think of others? Are they too young for these concepts? In my need to answer these questions, I sought to find a volunteer opportunity for them. I thought about many different ideas but the food bank always came out ahead. I was lucky enough to come across an open-minded and risk-taking individual– let's face it, preschoolers gett...
Post a Comment
Read more