This one was lots of fun and so easy! The box contained 100 coloured straws, a cheese grater, plastic bowl with holes in the bottom, netting fruit bag and a plastic pot into which I’d cut a few holes in the lid.
The key to success with these boxes so far has been giving her a range of things to play with that she doesn’t normally have access to. The straws were a complete hit! She almost didn’t need anything else in there.
She gathered them, piled them, stacked them, rolled them, threw them and giggled quite a lot!
She was very serious about poking them into all of the holes in the various containers and spent a long time in deep concentration.
This pot with the holes in the lid was her favourite.
She repeated this over and over again!
Straws in the grater!
This is what my living room floor looks like this week (and kitchen and wherever else she trails her straw bundles to!)
And when you have exhausted all other options, seeing how many you can fit into your mouth is apparently very fun too 🙂
I love the idea of straws in the grater! we tried some straw play today but he didn’t find it too exciting, maybe we will pull out the grater
I love your discovery boxes, what fantastic fun you find. We have added straws to our playdough this week which has resulted in some interesting sculptures.
I really love your discovery boxes too. I think it’s great fun that that you wrap them up. Thanks for sharing all your ideas with the Play Academy. Hope you’ll come and join us for the Carnival of Junk Play tomorrow.
Anna! I’m glad I found your site. Our daughters are about the same age, and it looks like we’re up to a lot of the same things. I love this discovery box idea, and can just picture the piles of straw all over my floor, and adding to the pile of blocks, glitter glue bottles, and cardboard boxes! 😉 I look forward to reading more of your posts.
I just found your site and love your ideas!
Love the idea with the straws and a grater! I’m going to include it next time we play with straws (we did it a few weeks ago – http://wp.me/p1h6yF-5)
I love the discovery box idea. My little one loves to collect things. I bet after a few Mom made boxes she would love to put together her own.
I’ve done a similar thing with dried spaghetti and a spice jar with holes in the top. Marlow has loved that activity for months!! It never fails to keep him entertained for at least 10 minutes. I even took it on a long haul flight we had – fabulous!
How did you cut the holes in the lids?
straws!! brilliant. How come I never thought of that. I did similar activity with popsicles before. will try with straws this time. i would love to put a link to this post on my blog. http://completetoddler.wordpress.com/
thank you for the idea.
We tried the straw activity today. I just put some pictures on my blog about it. We are going to continue this week and I still want to put holes in some container lids to see how they use those. Thanks for the great idea!
Not a good choice to give a child a cheese grater–
As a teacher and a Mom- I’ve seen kids easily scrape and cut fingers and knuckles.
Try a plastic colander. Nice idea with straws!
Found this via Pinterest and just wanted to say THANK YOU!!! Linked to you in a post about it: http://nycjenny.com/2012/06/08/pinterest-saves-the-day/
These are great ideas, except for the cheese grater….A little worried my child would slice his skin off on that
This looks like a super cute idea. But giving a toddler a Cheese Grader dose not sound like a smart or safe idea to me…. I cut my self all the time on that stupid thing cooking and i know how to use it lol. IDK what would happen if i gave it to my son…..