Free Play Activity : Stirring and Mixing

Henry is sometimes all business and no play.

He thinks a lot of things are ‘his job’.

As he often says, ‘It’s my job’ in his best man’s voice.

This day was no exception.

[His facial expressions in all of the photos show exactly his seriousness of the day. No smiles.]

Time for some free play.

I set out a bunch of bowls. One with some flour. One with some corn meal. I also set out a box of baking soda, a cup of water, a squirt bottle of vinegar and a set of old spices.

free play: mixing together ingredients (corn meal, flour, baking soda)

I believe it was Teacher Tom that I saw this from originally. He set out a bunch of materials like this with a classroom of preschoolers and gave them no direction. Step back to see what the preschoolers would create.

With it just being Henry, I have to play the part of another preschooler,
I can’t always just step back to see what he does. I like to let him play freely as much as I can, but he still needs encouragement or ideas to get him going.

Henry loved the spices. He asked me to help him open them, all I had to do was tell him once (with each spice) to just give it a little turn and it’ll open. Fine tuning those fine motor skills.

Henry poured and poured. Emptying a couple of containers completely.

Henry poured together more of the dry ingredients into one bowl. His mixture stayed in one bowl the entire time. [I thought there might be dumping back and forth, but none of that happened, and I didn't want to distract him from his thought process.]

Out came the vinegar. Or, as Henry kept calling it, the water. No matter how many times I corrected him, it was still water. Even after it hit the baking soda and fizzed up. The fizzing didn’t really get much of a reaction out of him. I thought he’d be more surprised. He just wanted to keep adding more, never realizing the science experiment he was conducting.

Henry stirred his mixture together. I helped a little because it was pretty thick. It was also pretty sticky. It stuck to the spoons. Henry didn’t like that. He had to clean it off right away with the ‘water’ (aka vinegar).