Learning Resources Mess Free Play Foam

Blake loves sensory play and also getting messy. He's favourite activities at the moment feature water, kinetic sand or painting. I've realised recently that I haven't had the tuff tray out in awhile, so I've decided during the Easter holidays we are going to have lots of fun getting messy.

Foam and slime tend to be a very popular sensory activity recently which I've seen popping up on social media. We've yet to try these which I feel bad about however when I spotted mess free foam on Amazon I had to get some for Blake.

We decided to do the activity one day after preschool the other week. I had tried the activity with Blake previously however he wasn't interested at the time. However now he is absolutely loving it!

The messy free play foam is from learning resources and you can get various sized packs and I picked up the starter pack with 4 different colours. It's a strange sort of texture as it feels sticky but doesn't stick to hands etc or makes your hands feel sticky after playing.

It's also a non toxic formula that never dries out! It's easy to mould and a great activity to help develop fine motor skills. We love that its mess free and Blake gets really into playing with it and keeps him entertained for a good period of time. 

The only downside I can say is that it doesn't come with a container. However this wasn't too much of a problem as we have quite a few Tupperware boxes so used one to store it in. Amazon do sell a bigger set though that does come with a container which is worth looking out for.

    

Twinkl: Learning Resources

I love doing activities at home with Blake, quite a few months ago now I purchased a tuff tray so that I can do activities at home with Blake that are fun, enjoyable and some times messy. I was asked by Twinkl to review their site recently especially their birth to two years range of educational resources. 

I'd not heard of Twinkl prior to this and was excited to check out their site and see what kind of thing they did. Twinkl is a website with a huge quantity of educational resources for teachers, parents, childminders and for those that home educate their children. 

As I have a 16 month old I have been looking at the birth to two's section for fun ideas to do with Blake. I love that there is such a wide selection of activities including: 

- Busy Bags

- Playdough recipes

- Edible play recipes

- Sensory Play 

I did  a sensory based activity the other day which I found on the website using Oats, water and spices. Blake had lots of fun and you can read all about it in my next post. 

I love sensory play and occasionally we take Blake to a messy play session local to us that runs on a Saturday morning. So I was glad to see loads of ideas on Twinkl as it's given me lots of ideas for sensory play at home as well as loads of other ideas.

Twinkl is free to register and use a lot of their resources, however there are different levels of membership giving you access to extra resources. It is £29.95 for gold membership and their top membership platinum is £44.95 for a year. 

I have been given the platinum membership for 6 months, giving me full access for the whole site. I wanted to do this review sooner but I've been looking through all the resources and having fun deciding what activities I want to try with Blake. I've downloaded the whole birth to two years resource pack as I know I'm going to get so much use out of it. I've also had a look through the site to see what they do for older children and I'm impressed. Twinkl is going to be so helpful to us for years to come as their learning resources are for children up to 11 years.

One feature I'm yet to try is the create section where you can use their templates to create your own learning items which you can share on Twinkl after for others to use. Once I've given it a go I'll have to give you an update on how I've got on.