Something nice for a change

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I have a real tendency toward being a Debbie Downer, and definitely post a lot of problem stuff, so how about something nice for a change.

I recently made moon sand and the kids, especially the Sprout loved it! The recipe is 1 cup of baby oil to 4 cups of flour. If you are making a big tub of it that works out to 3 bottles of baby oil to 25 pounds of flour. This filled an average sized plastic storage box about 1/3 full and cost about $15 for ingredients.

In the big tub I also added 20 drops each of lavender, peppermint, and grapefruit essential oils for the "invigorating" recipe on the back of one of the bottles. The scent combo works to make you feel more calm and awake at the same time (and smells lovely).

This stuff feels so cool! If you run your fingers through it, it feels loose like flour. If you squeeze it then it clumps together, so you can make sand castles and other sculptures. If you punch it, it gives good resistance while squishing enough to not hurt your hand.

I read that you can dye it, but I just left ours the off-white of the flour, and he's played a lot of games that involved snow.

Anyway, this has been the best sensory activity recipe that I've ever made. He's spent hours and hours over the last several days playing with this stuff.

What kinds of sensory or other activities have your kid liked?

That stuff sounds very fun, but isn't it kinda messy? Where in your house do you use it?

Yesterday, my DS4 sneaked into the bedroom while I was making dinner and found one of my old film cameras and figured out how to press the shutter release and advance the film. I was very impressed that he could figure that out. It makes a very loud, satisfying "click!"He spent the rest of the evening "taking pictures". He enjoys pushing buttons. At his preschool this morning, one of the aides told me he likes taking pictures with the i-pad too.

He's been using it in the living room where I spend most of my time. We have no carpet or rugs in our house due to allergies, so that helps. Also, the Sprout is pretty meticulous about his things. Like his action figures, he gets them out, lines them up, plays with them, and then puts them all back in their bag. He gets dusty playing with this stuff (but voluntarily goes to wash his hands and arms when he's done, because he hates being dirty), and there usually ends up a little ring of it on the floor around the box, but I just sweep it up and put it back in the box. He isn't very prone to throwing his things or dumping stuff out. This never would have worked indoors with my middle child, who liked to dump everything out and see how far he could spread and/or fling it.

I saw pictures of this stuff being used as an alternative to play sand in outdoor sand tables. That might work better for kids who like to really throw things around.

Thank you MiahClone, my kids love the shop bought moon sand... I always wondered how it was made but never thought to look for a recipe, it seemed too intergalactic to be "make able" on Earth. I threw out what was left of ours, last year. All my kids love it, even my big 12 yr old NT daughter plays with it and helps her brothers. It is mostly an outdoor thing at our house, they play with it in those plastic shell pools, spread it all around, add random nature bits. That's how ours got so feral, but that was after lots of play. I find it much easier to clean up than play doh or painting and my kids find it very satisfying. They can mould it, but it doesn't stick to their hands like regular, wet sand (my 2 kids on the spectrum hate that). Dusty will be ok, it's the grittiness of sand they hate.
I'm going to try this recipe, school holidays start here at the end of this week. Thank you so much! I'll colour some and let you know how it looks i am a little excited!

My kids also love bubbles, especially those bubble sticks they don't have to blow, you can just wave around and the bubbles pour out.
Also, play doh, painting, stamping, ball bouncing, cooking (especially if it involves watching the mixer, rolling out dough and using biscuit cutters then sitting in front of the warm oven to watch... It's winter here).

My youngest one with pddnos loves smells, I play a game with him where I collect things, make him close his eyes and try to guess the smell, nice smells like chocolate, oranges, mandarins, coconut, fresh leaves, raspberry cordial, fresh bread, banana etc.... He loves that. He also has some nice scratch and sniff cards that he uses. He also likes firm pressure, so likes to have the rug folded over him and then we pretend we can't see him, he thinks its hilarious every time. Biggest boy likes firm pressure too, I put a bean bag on his back, then lie on top of it... He's bigger than me so it doesn't hurt him. He loves it.
He also likes lying in the hammock and water play, likes it when we tie a hose to the play house slide and put a sheet of plastic at the bottom, slip and slide fun!

All of this (mostly the story with the camera) made me think of my youngest (NT) son's daycare - they ask people for their broken electronics and gadgets, because the kids love playing with stuff that has buttons or switches, even if it doesn't do anything beyond that.

I might have to try making some moon sand for my kids too.

Oh and both my children love photography, Though my youngest who is seven and has Autism is probably the most random. He will borrow my Nikon camera and go around taking pictures of everything, even toothpaste tubes (I can trust him to be careful with my camera, though my wife is always nervous about him having it). Funny thing is that as an artist I can actually appreciate his pictures better than his sisters. Its as though he has a natural eye for an interesting composition

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Autistic dad to an autistic boy and loving it - its always fun in our house

I have Autism. My communication difficulties mean that I sometimes get words wrong, that what I mean is not what comes out.

While the moon sand sounds really cool, we got a LOT of mileage out of big bags of rice when my daughter was young--just emptied it out on a bedsheet on the kitchen floor and let her run her fingers through it, pour it in and out of cups (nice quiet swishing noise), etc. When she was done, we would pull up the corners of the sheet to get the rice back into a single pile and dump it into the contained for next time.

The moon sand sounds like a lot of fun! I can't wait to try it especially with the scented oils. I have some store bought moon sand but totally forgot about it because when I first bought it a few years ago my daughter was too sensory defensive. But she is totally ready now!

It sounds like great fun.

Have you tried letting your kids play with damp cornflour ?
It can never decide whether to be a liquid or a solid.
I always loved that crazy stuff as a kid.