Guess how long that lasted...
I am so lucky to live in a world with CBeebies. High quality, fun and educational programmes on a dedicated channel from 6am until 7pm. At least I can be confident that when I turn the TV on there will be good stuff. He's learnt a lot.
The only problem...Little E LOVES TV. I think he'd watch it all day if he could. We had to bring in strict rules about turning off the TV. Cue tears and tantrums. It was hard. Now he'll turn off the TV, but looks at me as if to say, "Now what?" He'll play with his toys, but unless he is really interested, we can end up with him sitting on the sofa, shouting at me to turn the TV back on.
If the weather is good, no problem. He'll happily play outside for ages. But on bad weather days, the afternoons can drag on with him demanding TV over and over unless I keep distracting him.
It helps if I have some ideas of ways to entertain Little E. Hence, one soggy day, I pulled out - Mini Ice World.
There are loads of ideas like this on Pinterest. People call them mini-worlds, sensory bins, etc. I'd seen an artic one and thought it looked so pretty, so had been collecting items - some left over polystyrene from Christmas, glass pebbles from a charity shop, Schleich polar animals and some hair mousse. I got out our baking tray and covered it in baking parchment to try to protect it.
Little E gasped when he saw it and was engrossed for about 45 minutes. Result!
I had frozen some ice cubes, which I added as well. Little E wasn't that bothered to be honest, but I've seen other ideas when you freeze all sorts of shapes to make ice floes for polar pears, etc, so I might try that in the future.
He loved the foaming hair mousse! An old memory dredged up from my past. I used to sneak into my mum's hair kit and spray tiny amounts of hair mousse on my hand. I loved to watch it puff up too.
He kept pointing to where he wanted me to squirt some next. I dropped some of the animals in the foam and said they were hiding. This amused him. When he found them, he wasn't happy that the foam had stuck to them. "Dirty!"
Guess, they need a bath then! Little E is a "water baby". He'll mess around with water until the cows come home. So, I got some out.
After their bath, he poured most of the water into the tray! We were all very soggy by the end, but it was good fun. The baking parchment did not survive!
Little E began making the penguin and seal swim through the water. He said they were eating. I asked him if he knew what they ate. At which point, I remembered we had more items we could use for our icy world! A duplo fish and polar bear. In they went.
It was amazing how much there was to talk about. The animals, the experience, the polystyrene floating, the glass beads sinking...We both enjoyed it.
When he was done, I tidied the animals, polystyrene, pebbles and mousse away into a shoe box and hope to bring them out another time.
If you fancy a go, there is lots of inspiration on Pinterest. However, lots of them are pretty complicated with lots of ingredients and things you need. I don't want to spend too much money and end up with more junk in my house, so I aimed to reuse and recycle. Always great to hear anyone else's ideas.
Time to experiment with some more mini worlds methinks!
