We participate in a program called Bright Beginnings. Part of bright Beginnings is Parents as Teachers. Parents as Teachers does various play groups. They put together an evening activity called "
Ooey Gooey Sensory Night". They had various "stations" set up for the kiddos to play at.
The first one Samantha went to was a cornstarch mixture texture table. She wasn't so sure about that one so she didn't stay there long.
Next she found the "clean mud" table. This was shredded toilet paper mixed with Ivory soap. She wasn't too sure about this one either, so we moved on.
Then we got to the water table and it was a different story!! ;) She had fun splashing around and finding all the water animals that were in there. She got excited when she found this shell
in the table.
After some splashing time we moved onto making
Froot Loop necklaces. Let me rephrase that.....Marc made a necklace, and I made a small necklace, and Samantha ate the cereal. ;)
The next station we went to involved shaving cream and food coloring. I sprayed some shaving cream into a
ziploc and then added the desired color food coloring and closed the bag back up. The kids then got to
squeeze and squish the bag to mix the coloring into the shaving cream......
then we too the colored cream over to another table and painted with it!
Samantha did NOT like the shaving cream on her hands!!!
Then we had to go back to the water table some more. I am shocked at how dry to stayed!! ;) Maybe it's because the table was so high for her that the table blocked the water from getting all over her clothes.....who knows?!
There was a small corner set up for infants with balls, bean bags and other sensory toys. Samantha was determined to
visit every area of the room, so she went and played, and threw, the balls for awhile.
Next we found a table with oats, beans, pasta, and confetti in. She really liked the feel of this one. She just kept picking it up and dropping it and giggling. Who would have thought oats could be so much fun! ;)
Marc found the
insta-snow table and stayed there for a while. There were also some chunks of ice in the table and some toy hammers. Marc spent a lot of his time there trying to break up the ice chinks.
My handsome little man!!! 8-)
Then Samantha wandered over by her brother and started scooping and pouring the snow. She did an awesome job of scooping up the snow and pouring it into the cup without pouring it all over the floor or herself. ;)
It was a lot of fun seeing Samantha explore different things with kids her own age and size and Marc feeling like a the big man on campus. :)
We then went across the hall and both kids plated the fish pond. Samantha had fun watching the fish "swim" around the pond. (There was a motor to make the water flowing and made the fish swim fast.) Marc picked one and got a bracelet. After some trouble catching one of the fast-moving fish, Samantha won a yo-yo. We decided to have the kids switch prizes. ;)
In the same room with the fish pond was the sucker tree. One of Marc's favorites! It doesn't matter if he has a whole jar of suckers here at home, he always does the sucker tree. Think they taste different coming from a carnival? ;) Both kids gt a sucker but no "tickets" towards a prize.
While waiting in a long line for "Mash the Mouse" we kept hearing a banging sound. We couldn't figure out what it was. Well, it was Marc's turn and we figured out the noise. The kids had to use a mallet and try to catapult a stuffed mouse across the table and try to make him land in his cage. I have made a mental note to ask NOT to assigned to work that game next year. ;)
Marc had fun at the traditional bean bag toss.
Marc had fun playing a bowling game. But, this was no ordinary game of bowling! The pins were half the size of him and the ball was twice the size of his head!! He knocked down half the pins with his first throw!
We were a little nervous letting Marc play the dart game when we found out they were using real darts, the real, sharp points! ;) But he did awesome!! We have an electronic dart board in our basement. Daddy said we should get him playing that since he did such an awesome job with the real darts.
DeeJay the Clown made an appearance at the carnival. This clown is know for his balloon animals.
Marc decided to ask him for a tiger this time. (We have seen him many times and have had many balloon animals/things in our house.) Samantha was fascinated by him. Not sure if it was the fast-moving hands while he made the balloon tiger or the make-up. ;)
The finished product! Dee Jay told Marc to go home and feed him some Frosted Flakes........Tony the Tiger. :)
This cross-bow game was one I had never seen before. The kids had to shoot a suction-cup "bullet" at the bulls-eye. Daddy helped get him set up and aimed. Marc pulled the trigger but it startled him so much that the "bullet" was NO where near the bulls-eye. ;)
After all the games were played we decided to head to the cake walk. (on a side note.....I am been craving a piece of a good chocolate cake.) We decided that we had enough tickets to have all 4 of us play the cake walk. We thought maybe having 4 out of the 12 spots would give us good odds at winning a cake. Samantha had been confined to her stroller for about 3 minutes prior to the cake walk. She took off as soon as the music started. We found a game she is good at! ;-) She tried walking past Marc she was so excited to be out and walking! I did not get a picture of her doing the cake walk since I was trying to keep her in line. ;) And, we did not win a cake. :( The bot right next to Marc won it instead. Oh well. My fabulous husband had already planned to take me to a bakery he had heard good things about. They had yummy chocolate cupcakes! :)
