Sensory Play for Infants and Toddlers Using Yogurt and Food Coloring

The toddlers (18 month olds) in our care have moved to purposeful play, they no longer wait for us to initiate play with them.  Though they don’t orally communicate their needs, they tell us their needs by signing, pointing, crying and most often touching the object.  We taught them basic sign language to communicate some of their food needs.At this age, they still connect with objects by putting them in their mouth but, not as often as when they were younger (oral stage).  As they get older they connect with objects that create different stimuli and intentionally model their environment. Being a product of a mixed age group family daycare has many benefits for the small and older children.  The smaller ones emulate what the older ones do, and the older ones help to nurture and play with the younger ones.  The older children have been playing with shaving cream and food coloring and the pre-toddlers wanted their play.  So we got them some organic yogurt and food coloring. What you will need for this project is yogurt, food coloring, paintbrush, large shallow container, and floor covering (this may be better outdoors but due to our October climate in Illinois this was done inside).We added the food coloring to the yogurt and then invited the pre-toddlers to play.The paintbrush helped facilitate intentionally focused play. These three played alongside each other using their own paintbrush to blend the colors.  Some children are more willing to participate in some experiences than others.  Also for some children, the touch of a certain consistency is not appealing to them. I have children that love to play with anything squishy while others will not venture near anything to wet or icky.  One child kept playing with the yogurt for a very long time, which blended into a green hue.  

These little ones enjoyed this activity and we keep repeating it.  It’s always a good thing to repeat activities loved by children.  Using objects in different ways create a great learning experience as did the paintbrush in the yogurt.  They love painting with paintbrushes, so adding this to the yogurt was our way of teaching them other uses for a paintbrush.  Hope you will loads of fun doing this activity with your little ones – Miss Sue 🙂

Senu and Heru love making playdough