Sensory Play: Water Time!

This past week we finally had a warmer day here in the frosty Midwest so what is a nanny supposed to do besides break out the water toys?!  Peanut absolutely LOVES water - bath time is quite possibly one of her most favorite things ever!  MB and I have been talking about getting a little splash pool for the back deck, but until that time we will improvise!  Which is what we did on our water play day.  While Peanut was still down for her AM nap I collected all of the supplies we would need (pots and pans, measuring cups, plastic spoons, and a few rubber duckies for good measure).  Using lukewarm tap water, I filled everything up and brought it outside to the deck along with all of the goodies to splash and pour with.  Now it was time to bring Peanut out and see what she had to say about this project!

Peanut sat back and looked everything over for a few minutes, wondering why her bath toys were suddenly outside in these weird pan things. After a few innocent splashes from nanny dearest, she slowly inched her little pointer finger closer and closer to the water.  Then she gathered all of that sweet baby courage up and went for it!

Now that she is nearing the big one year old mark, I really want her to begin experiencing all different types of things through sensory play.  She is such a curious and explorative baby that I know she is going to love all of the new things we play with.  Water play is a great way to involve both fine motor skills and gross motor skills.  All of the pouring and scooping and splashing require some master coordination from Miss P that you might not even realize!  And what better way to let her explore all of these different muscles and skills than with something as easy to clean and mess free like water?!  An amazing trait of Peanut is that she is the most independent baby I have ever met.  Seriously, give this child a book and her bunny lovey and she will be just fine entertaining herself for an hour.  So I got to sit back and watch all of the little wheels turning inside her little head as she eased into our activity.  Every now and then I would show her how to pour with the cups and she got so excited with the splash it made!  Then she REALLY got into it, literally.

Unfortunately, Peanut's attention span wasn't in tip top shape this day and her interest in my super amazingly complex project only lasted for about 20 minutes.  Le sigh.  

This was quite possibly one of the easiest projects to put together - no cost, virtually no time to set up, and no mess!  Peanut even helped with clean up and dumped a couple of the pans down the front of herself.  That's my little helper bear ;) 

Here is a fabulous article from Early Childhood News about the many benefits of water play, seriously check it out! 

Hopefully everyone is having an easy peasy Monday and it won't take too long to get back into the swing of the weekday schedule!  I can't wait to share this week's project with you - get ready for some more messes!  

xoxo Nanny Sarah.