Cereals

 Thread hoops onto string.

 Place in tray with pots, spoons, bottles and so on.

 Make gooey paste for mark making.

Clay

 Make models of animals, pots, people and so on.

 Create imprints from stones, sticks, leaves.

Gloop made from cornflour, water & food colouring

 Place in tray and encourage to push along with fingers,

 Encourage to squeeze in hand then open hand and watch the ball melt.

 Make makes with fingers.

 Use with spoons, pots, funnels & bottles.

Ice

 Place ice cubes in tray to explore. Place items in cubes for children to melt and find the objects.

 Fill a balloon with water & freeze overnight. Place on tray and remove balloon. Allow children to feel balloon & see how long it takes to melt.

 Add food colouring to ice cubes and place in a tray or bowl. Watch what happens to the colours as the cubes melt.

Wet/dry sand

 Place in tray & add snakes, lizards and so on logs, stones to make a reptile habitat.

 Spades, buckets and flags to make sand castles from wet sand.

 Moulds, boxes, bottles, pots and sieve to pour dry sand.

 Add numbers or letters to bury to have a letter/number hunt.

 Add stones, logs, leaves & toy dinosaurs to make a dinosaur land.

 Add cars, trucks, diggers, dumpers to make a building site.

Soapy Sand

 Place cover on table. Add sand, water and washing up liquid and mix together with hand. Watch as the colour of the sand changes and bubbles appear in-between your fingers.

Soil

 Place in tray, add logs, leaves, twigs, stones. Place animals, insects or dinosaurs to make a habitat.  Add pots, spades, buckets, rakes for children to dig, fill and pour from pots.

 Plants flower, herbs & vegetable seeds and watch them grow.

Mud

 Old bowls, pots, spades, spoons, mud, water to make mud pies, soups and magic potions.

 Place diggers, trucks, dumpers, tractors to make a building site or a farm. Spaghetti, noodles, cooked & uncooked pasta

 Thread dried pasta onto string to make necklaces, worms or snakes.  Stick to card or paper plates to create collage.

 Add pots, spoons, kitchen utensils for scooping, lifting and filling.  Add to bottles to make shakers.

 Place a plant pot upside down and place straws into the holes. Ask child to thread cooked pasta onto the straw. Tomato sauce

 Squeeze onto table and allow children to make marks with their hands.

 Squeeze onto tray and encourage children to scrape an old comb through the sauce to make marks.

Playdough

 Add rolling pins, cutters, plastic knifes to make cakes, biscuits and food.

 Add twigs, stones and leaves to make models of people, monsters, insects or animals.

 Roll into long shapes to make snakes and worms. Introduce rulers to measure how long they are.  Add glitter, ginger, curry powder to promote extra use of senses.

Paint

 Use fingers and hands to make prints.

 Mix in sand, tea leaves and so on to change the texture.

 Use cotton buds to dip in paint to encourage fine motor skill.

 Place paper in bowl and cover marbles in paint. Roll marble in tray to make marks and patterns