Breakfast-inspired sensory table

oats and shells - the plastic cups just did not look right - somehow the oats demanded a more natural scooping material - and luckily the shells worked great as not only scoops but as containers too. Also if you let the oats rain down onto the shells it sounded like music - each shell having its own unique sound. I also saw how the one year olds were really picking up handfuls and squeezing it and then releasing. It DID have a nice bouncy sort of feel as you squeezed it.

next to the oats was semolina in it uncooked powdery form - very much like sand on a beach. More scooping and pouring and feeling how it poured between fingers.

This time I placed the two sensory table next to each other - indicating that these materials may be mixed with each other. The two previous sensory tables (blue/green rice with frogs etc and lentils with tubes) got so mixed up - despite the fact that they were placed apart from each other to offer separate kinds of play - the moon-sand from the opposite side of the room was also getting mixed in. So instead of going into nag-mode I changed the sensory tables to something that would encourage them to be mixed - letting them know that when the tables are TOGETHER mixing is encouraged... when they are apart then there is to be no mixing... I am hoping that this might work (so that role play at one sensory table can continue for a bit longer before it all just looks the same - the lentils did give the frog pond a polluted look and the role play stopped then) - I am also hoping that it means there will not be quite SO MUCH sensory material on the floor - and I am also sort of hoping that when the tables are apart and they want to mix they move the tables together themselves... (did I just say that?)

Anyway back to the oats - I'll leave them dry tomorrow and over the weekend - but I am interested in adding a small jug of water next to the table next week to see what sort of goo they would make - dough-like, sloppy or soup-like? Maybe even colours and glitter could be added, possibly aroma too - I think because my own sense of smell has vanished with the flu I had the other week I have become even more fascinated with smell/aroma/scent...
Looking forward to getting gooey next week...

But tomorrow is song meeting - ALL the children in the whole preschool meet and we sing together - and I have put a powerpoint presentation together - so BIG pictures connected to the songs we are singing will be projected onto the wall... I have no idea how this will work or how the children will react...