Daily at Home Project: A Wet Paper Project & A Raindrop Collage – At Home Family Projects

by | Mar 17, 2020 | At-Home Enrichment | 0 comments

Please find below our daily SolBe Family update letter containing helpful resources and exciting projects to explore while we all do our part to stay home during this pandemic.

Happy St. Paddy’s!

We are starting simply today. We want to provide a few ideas right away for this rainy day. In the days to follow, we will be offering a more in-depth explanation of activities and how they relate to the approach that we use when the kiddos are at SolBe.

Another wonderful resource we enjoy is https://unionsquareplay.com. Check out Ramblin’ Dan on there for a Livestream music class!

Please find below two project ideas from one of our favorite resources: The Tinker Lab

Infant/Toddler Project:

Sensory activity: Wet Paper project sourced from “The Tinker Lab”

“Does your toddler enjoy squishing playdough, scooping rice, or dumping buckets of sand? It’s widely recognized that sensory activities play a central role in infant and child brain development. This is one of those amazing activities that just “happened,” invented by a toddler who was curious about the combination of paper and water and could be easily replicated in a home or school.

Clean up was a snap!

I placed a towel on the kitchen floor, and filled a tub of water with a small bowl and ladle for water play. My three year old was building things in the other room with paper, and little R toddled and selected these two pieces of polka dot paper. Pretty.

But that wasn’t enough, apparently. She kept walking back and forth, grabbing small handfuls of paper to fill her tub.

It seemed that the challenge was to gather paper and squash it as deep into the water as possible.

I thought I’d help her out a bit when I noticed the slippery trail of water from the kitchen to the dining room.

And then I foraged the recycling bin and tore this magazine apart for her.

She finally sat down to work through the big magazine pile, happily engrossed in this meaningful activity.

As a last step, I handed her a pair of kitchen tongs for picking up pieces of paper. She’s not quite ready to use them for picking objects up, but she enjoyed snapping them and poking at the paper.

And just so you don’t think this all went to waste, it inspired me to turn the soggy paper mess into a paper-making project the next day. Stay tuned for that!”

Older Toddler/Preschool Project:

Raindrop Collage- project sourced from “The Tinker Lab”

“Saturday was a gorgeous day, and then the rain came pouring down on Sunday. Amidst a full circuit of rainy day activities like treating patients in our tented doctor clinic and practicing gymnastics on the furniture, we conducted art experiments in the rain. A shift in weather can captivate young minds with questions about seasons, popping bulbs, falling leaves, flurries of snow, and pounding hail. The elements provided us with an improvisational opportunity to celebrate the excitement of rain, get a little wet, and play with a cause and effect relationship (i.e. IF I open an umbrella in the rain, THEN I will stay dry).

We each worked on our own piece, gluing strips of bleeding tissue *(regular paper will work as well- improvising is encouraged!!)* to our papers. N noticed that a little bit of glue was still showing on my artwork, and did a good job covering it up. Phew!

We had a bowl of dry pasta on the table from another activity, which she decided to incorporate into her piece. Nice 3-D touch!

Then she put them out in the rain to let the raindrops do their work. I asked her to think about how the rain would affect our pictures.

Once dry, we took a good look at them. When I again asked what happened when the rain landed on the collages, she said, “It smeared the colorful paper, but not the big paper.” Righty-oh!

For a prettier after-effect, I’d recommend glue sticks over white glue. Just keep in mind that glue sticks add extra friction to tissue paper, making them more difficult for little ones to use.”

With the holiday today, another indoor idea for both age groups would be going on a “Rainbow Scavenger Hunt” in your house with the kiddos. They could collect and gather small items and collage a rainbow if they so desire. It is simply a fun exploration activity! See how many items they can locate in a room or on one floor that are the color green.

Be well and stay healthy!

The SolBe Team

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