One of my new goals is to start sharing varying activities that you can do with both toddlers and infants. I am all about being able to adapt activities to keep everyone busy so mama can have a break! One of the things that really makes that possible is our Scholars Choice Active World Tray.
Using our active world tray allows me to;
- Contain a mess a lot easier
- Have a safe and large area to set up varying activities for my children. Both Lily and Mason can fit inside the tray together and have space to play freely
- Clean up easily
- Use my creativity to come up with new and exciting ways to use the tray
But most importantly keep the kids occupied for sometimes HOURS! Yes mama's I said it hours!
What I love is that I can set up an activity, leave it in the tray and the kids can go back and forth to it all day.
I was almost too excited to sleep the night that we got our tray because I couldn't decide what activity I was going to set up for Mason and Lily the following day. Unfortunately Mason ended up napping through this one - but it was nice to spend some time with just Lily. For this active world tray setup I was able to use items that I found around my house. My goal is to use items around the house or found outside to help you all be able to have fun with your kids on a budget and get the most out of the activity. Each week I will be posting a new activity with step by step instructions on how to complete it. I hope you will share your activities with me afterwards and show me how much fun you and your child(ren) had!
Theme: Car Wash Station
Supplies:
- cars, trucks, buses etc. - kitchen scrubber, brushes or dish cloth for washing
- water
- soap
- towel for drying
I added in our Melissa and Doug cleaning kit that came with a scrubber, spray bottle, caddy and pretend cleaner. This is optional but I saw it with Lily's toys and thought it went well with the theme.
I also took out our Usbourne Book called "Baby's Very First Bus Book" we got from @alicesbooknook. It went along well with the theme and added an extra dimension to the activity. Lily loved reading the book before we started the activity and when she was cleaning her bus was talking about the different animals in the book. This also would have been a great part of the activity for Mason if he joined us. However I am sure he would have been right in the tray with his sister.
Once we were all done playing clean up was easy! I dumped the water onto the grass, hosed off the tray and let it dry in the sun while we continued out play outside of the tray. What I love is that you can take this activity so many different directions. I love watching Lily play freely, make a mess and use her imagination. Once she was done cleaning all of her cars off she decided she wanted to take the play outside of the tray and clean off her car!
