In common with quite a few other bloggers, I have been inspired by Jennie at Edspire to buy a Tuff Spot, or cement mixing tray, to add a new dimension to our messy play.  It arrived last weekend, and on Monday the children couldn’t wait to get started.  I asked them what they wanted to play with, and they suggested flour.  I had set aside an hour before bathtime for the activity, but they were so engrossed that I let them carry on for an hour and a half, and it would have kept them busy for much longer if we had had time.

These are some of our ideas for playing with flour.

• play the flour cake game: make a flour cake (like a sandcastle), place a sweet on top (we used some raisins wrapped in foil instead), take turns to cut a slice off the cake until it collapses, the last person to slice the cake can use their mouth to pick the sweet out of the flour – in our house the last bit is optional and if they don’t want to do it they still get the sweet!
• set up a village scene with wooden houses, using the flour as snow; drive cars down the road between the houses (Owl and Monkey took turns to do this, and both spent a long time getting the scene just right.)
• add split peas, and mix to make a cake; Rabbit turned hers out onto a plate and stuck a feather in top; Tiddler found it was easier to turn it over and just use the bowl as a cake, decorating the top with his small Postman Pat van and some more flour!
• drive cars, trains and Postman Pat’s vans (we have a big one and a small one) through the flour, and sprinkle flour and split peas on top.
• spread out some of the flour and split pea mixture on a plate, make a hole in to plant a seed (another split pea), then add a feather to be the plant that grows up.
• write words and draw pictures in it: I wrote some words for Rabbit that I knew she would recognise, and she enjoyed reading them to me.
• pat down the flour and walk in it to make footprints.

Have a look at these lovely blogs for more Tuff Spot inspiration:

Moon sand dinosaur world

Painting with trains

Oats so simple sensory play