Forest Sensory Table

Greetings readers,
Today in the crazy creative twos classroom we made a forest sensory table. I first got the children to collect rocks from the playground, collected sticks and paper towel rolls. I saved a large box and broke it down so the cardboard would be a flat surface to put the forest into. The first day I let the children paint a piece of white paper blue so that it would be the sky and the backdrop for out forest sensory table. Some of the children loved paint and didn't want to stop. Some when they had gotten paint on their finger already had to stop because they didn't like the paint being on their fingers. The second day I let the children glue rocks onto the cardboard and also let them try to glue the rocks together so that they could make a cave for the bear since we were learning about forest animals also. Some of the children were able to balance the rocks on each other to make a cave made out of rocks but the younger twos just wanted to glue the rocks on the cardboard. Because Abby's does the Reggio curriculum I let the children do something new to our forest every day and then on Friday they could play with the forest with everything in it. The third day I let the children glue mulch from our playground to the rest of the bottom of the forest floor. The fourth  day I let the children paint the paper towel rolls with brown and green paint. I glued the painted paper towel rolls onto the cardboard. When they were dry I let the children put the sticks into the paper towel rolls so that the branches that came off the stick would like branches to a tree. Friday I let the children play with it all day. They loved playing with the sensory table forest. They loved pretending that the cows and other animals were climbing the trees and hanging there. They are so funny. I loved doing this activity with them. They had a lot of fun pretending the animals were walking around and eating grass or the bear was going into his cave. The blog that I got this activity from was Crozet Play School : A Reggio Inspired Preschool. I used what I had and I think it turned out really great.