I've seen a lot of material online about using cut up straws as a base, and back in October I bought some, chopped them up, but never got round to using them. They didn't look overly exciting so I wasn't sure what we would do with them.
Today, I found out. As with so many of our activities, it was simple - I gave Isabelle the straws and some materials for scooping and holding the straws, and she was off.
Just yesterday, Isabelle received her big Christmas present - a kitchen. She loves the fact that the sink comes away, and so I used the basin from her kitchen to hold the straws. She immediately started running her hands through them and picking them up to look at the "tiny bits", before running her hands through them again. She spent around 5 minutes just enjoying the feel of the straws and how they felt in her hands.
Then, she remembered that she can blow through straws, so we spent a few minutes blowing and whistling through them at one another,
which she thought was hilarious!
Then, came the transportation. I have mentioned several times about Isabelle's firm inclination towards the transportation schema, and the straws today were another example of that. She started to pick the straws up and move them from the basin to the toy baking tray I gave her. She used her hands and the utensils I gave her, before simply picking up handfuls of straws and getting up to walk with them. She brought some to me, and then took them to her kitchen where she started to pile them into the oven.
I popped the basin back in to the kitchen, and she played moving the straws between the basin and the oven, and back again.
Then, it was dinner time, and another activity over. Only 7 activities left in our 50 day challenge!