For those of you who've wondered why there's been birdseed all over my carpet - here you go. I set up this dry sensory play experience for August and gave him some containers and tools so he could do some transferring. He's genuinely played with it for hours and I can see he's learned a whole lot in the process - win win.

WHY DO THIS?
Scooping and transferring is a life skill - we do this more than we think. Transferring rice into a pan, pouring cups of tea, moving roast potatoes onto a plate, putting something in a microwave safe bowl. We can do this accurately and without making a mess because we're well practiced and we've learned over time how different textures move and react. We wouldn't free pour rice into a test tube because we know it would rush out everywhere! Our kids are learning all of this stuff through play.

HOW?
Gather a texture! We used bird seed. You could use rice, oats, beads, water, slime, sand etc.

Add some containers, tongs, scoops and spoons. The texture will react differently depending on which tool you use, which is great for kids to see. It's very hard to transfer seed with tongs!

LANGUAGE OPPORTUNITIES
Can you hear how in the second video we've moved into imaginative play and we're pretending to make smoothies?! What food could you make together?

Watch Auggie do some transferring here