One of my favorite things lately to search for is ideas for sensory tubs and fine motor activities… ways to have fun while learning!  One of the biggest things that I have learned about my Ethan lately is that if he is busy with messy and/or hands-on activities, he is a happy camper!  So, I have been on the search for fun and messy activities for the boys to do at home (and with my kids at school!).  I plan on making some of these ideas into Christmas gifts!

If you would like to, you can follow my Preschool Ideas, Fine Motor Skills, and Sensory/Discovery boards on Pinterest to find out where I got my ideas and to find more awesome activities!  Here is a list of activities that I plan on putting together soon (if you’re not sure what something is, you’ll either find a post about it in my Pinterest board(s) or you can google it!).

• Flour and cars!  Ethan and I made some Oatmeal Pumpkin Pie Playdough (my kids at school loved it!), and he was more interested in the plain flour.  He poured a few scoops of flour onto the table, got some of his cars, and went to town.  He played with this for an hour and a half!  Of course it ended up all over him, the table, and the floors, but it was worth it!
• Foam beads and yarn/string- threading
• Hole punch and colored paper
• Cutting playdough with scissors
• Stringing pasta on spaghetti
• A cereal box with holes and macaroni pasta (push through holes)
• Poms poms and tweezers (into muffin tins)
• Sorting colored buttons (by color and size)
• Putting colored paper clips onto color paper
• Rubbers bands onto door knobs
• Nuts and bolts
• Stickers on and off of things
• Syringes and droppers with water or liquid water color (onto paper or paper towels!)
• Pushing pipe cleaners through a colander
• Anything with rice, beans, dirt, and pasta
• Shaving cream!
• Oobleck: 2 parts corn starch, 1 part water, food coloring
• Cooked spaghetti
• Homemade moon sand: 5 cups flour + 1 cup baby oil
• Sidewalk chalk or regular chalk
• Packing foam
• Coffee playdough
• Texture boards (gluing things with different textures onto cardboard)
• Rainbow rice (4 cups rice, 2 T food coloring, and 3 T rubbing alcohol into ziploc baggies)
• Paper in water tub
• Cotton balls
• Homemade bath crayons
• Oil + Water + Food coloring (in a clear jar)
• Painting with water
• Pretend cooking with real ingredients (in muffin tins- tea bags, salt, coffee, buts, seeds, crackers, rice, dried pasta, bread, oatmeal, potato slices, dried beans, and a ball of dough)
• Crayon melting
• Sponge painting
• Window markers
• Marble painting
• Playdough filled balloons
• Homemade bubble bath: 1/2 cup shampoo, 3/4 cup water, 1/4 tsp salt
• Homemade shaving cream: 1 cup shampoo, 1 cup conditioner, 5 T lotion, and 5 T coconut oil
• Obvious one: Homemade playdough (my favorite recipe!)
• Prewriting activities with playdough and straws
• Sidewalk paint: 1 cup water, 1 cup cornstarch, and food coloring
• Hands on alphabet activities