Spices Collage

J asks me all day long to “shake shake shake”.  No, he’s not asking me to show off my best dance moves (which there are none!), he’s asking me to let him shake spices.  You see, he really likes to help me cook.  His favorite part is helping me with the seasonings by shaking spices.

The other day, I remembered that I had a mixture of spices left over from our spice paintings.  So, I decided that we should do another activity with the spices.

J has also been quite the collector on our walks lately, so I have all these random leaves and flowers in the garage.

So, I took the leaves, flowers, and spices, and make a natural spice collage with J!

I set up the invitation like this.  The plastic is clear contact paper, sticky side up.  I laid the leave and things on the side, along with the spices.  Note:  The spice container says Crushed Red Pepper, but it was just an empty container that I washed.  None of the spices I used were hot.

J immediately went to the spices and shook (and giggled) until…

all the spices were gone!

He really enjoyed not only the shaking of spices, but also placing the leaves on the sticky paper. 

Things we learned:

• Noticed the smell and taste of the spices
• Felt the texture of the spices and the leaves.
• Talked about words like shake, sticky, nature, grainy, leaves, flowers, and many more!
• He noticed the sound of the spices hitting the paper.
• Worked on fine motor skills (twisting open the container, and picking up the spices)
• Worked on large motor skills of shaking and swishing the spices around

This can be turned into a  sun catcher if you cover the work with another sheet of contact paper and hung it in the window.