Sensory Baby Play: Exploring Ice (Sensory Saturday)

Happy Sensory Saturday!

This week has been hot, hot, hot. With days in the mid 90's, this lifelong heat-hater is definitely having to adjust to the new worries of keeping an infant cool, breastfeeding when both the baby and I are sweaty furnaces, and keeping my fair skinned red-head from being burnt up by the sun! With all of that aside, we were absolutely sweating our patooties off yesterday in our house (this is prior to the purchase of yet another air conditioning unit .. we couldn't take it much longer last night!), and K was into everything! What is the best and easiest way to occupy a newly mobile little munchkin butt? ICE!

Now obviously this is nothing revolutionary. I simply went to our refrigerator and pressed the ice button. Voila! Ice in a glass dish, a couple of different colored/different sized cups, and a slotted spoon = business! The best part? Kingston has never felt ice before. That meant that not only was this exciting for baby, but entertaining for Mama. I love watching him experience things for the first time. It is definitely one of the wonders of parenthood! (This also means there will be a billion photos to follow.. you've been warned!)

The first thing he did was pick up the spoon. He gave it a quick acknowledgement (while hamming it up for the camera), and then tossed it behind him. Then it was time to dig in! He had no idea what he was getting himself into. He reached in and wrapped his hands around the ice. 

He shivered a bit, and looked up at me grinning as if to ask, "Did you know about this Mama?!" It was so sweet. I told him that it was ice, which was frozen water. He loves to be in my arms when I get ice and water from the front of the refrigerator, so he seemed to make a connection between the words I was using. As he dug in, I used words such as cold, slippery, and wet to describe the attributes of the ice to him. While I talked, he used his fine motor skills to try to grab a slippery cube. He managed to wrestle one out of the dish, and paused to take a closer look. 

Then he turned his attention to the red and yellow cups. I pointed out the colors. He pulled out the red cup and felt the cubes inside. Then he started shaking all the cubes out onto the floor. He loved it! He was so proud of himself and shot me one of his devilish little grins before trying it again! 

He picked up one of the dropped cubes and showed his find to Krull. Krull was polite and feigned interest!

Hey brudder, want to play sensory?!

At this point, he noticed the big black spoon again. He picked it up and shook it at me while he simultaneously waved! (Such advanced motor skills on this kid! haha) 

Hi Mama! :)

Then he attempted to use the spoon in relation to the ice. I watched him as he tried to stir the ice and the bowls along with it! Then he tried to scoop the ice with his spoon. He did a really good job coaxing the ice onto the spoon. I was pretty impressed that he made the correlation that the spoon could pick the ice up. I gave him the names of the actions he was trying, "stir" and "scoop". 

We spent a lot of time dumping the ice out of the cups. I showed Kingston how to transfer the ice from the bowl to the cup and back again. He practiced picking up chunks of ice. It was difficult to keep hold of the slippery cubes as they melted. As they got smaller and smaller, I told K that they were melting back into water. Here he is squeezing the ice with all of his might, trying to hold onto it:

 Eventually, the cold ice found its way to K's mouth!

After all of the ice was melted, Kingston and I took turns splashing in the water. He loved watching me splash and then copying me. Since it was so hot in our house (and he had banana from lunch stuck in his hair!), I wet his head down and poured cups of water all over him. He loved it and shrieked! He is a total water baby. 

This is my new go to summer sensory activity. It kept his attention from the time I got the ice until it was completely melted! He loved it, plus it cooled us both off. I definitely want to try different variations of it in the future. I think "Sensory Baby Play" will be becoming a series over here at House of Burke because we can't get enough of these fun, simple activities!