Water Play (Frozen Rubber Fruit)

Every weekend, we would comb the shopping malls for stuff that we can use as teaching aids. And last weekend, we found some rubber fruit at 50 cts each so we bought 6 of them. I was actually looking for small animal figurines but the cheap ones too ugly (grossly inaccurate also) and the beautiful ones are too expensive. I suppose I would eventually buy Toobs because they are quite affordable and nicely made, not to mention they have almost all the common animals. Sophie is starting to appreciate small figurines so I want to get her some animal replicas... I just hope Sophie will not try to "eat" them though.

Anyway, I froze the rubber fruit in ice cubes for Sophie's water play. I could make 10 cubes but I only had 6 fruit so I added food colouring in the rest of the ice cubes. Then, I put them all in a bucket to entice Sophie when she was ready to do her water play.

It was an instant hit! She was fascinated by both the rubber fruit and the fact that they were all suspended in extremely cold and hardened water. And when she saw the ice slowly melt away exposing parts of the rubber fruit, she became even more intrigued. It was quite fun just watching her make sense of her new "toys".

Then the food colouring started dissolving in the water and Sophie became quite concerned. I guess she must have thought it was dirty or messy. Very soon, the water became greyish blue (I forgot about that!) and we could no longer see the rubber fruit inside. Well, at least she was not drinking the water! I gave her some time to look for those fruit without actually looking... it was quite educational.

However, I decided that we would both be more comfortable with clear water so I got rid of the coloured water and refilled the tub. Then I asked Sophie if she could hand me each of the fruit. To my surprise, she could hand me the correct fruit that I had asked for. I have never consciously taught her "strawberry" or "lemon" yet she knew them. It must have been "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle and "A Color Of His Own" by Leo Lionni.

All in all, everything went rather well. Sophie enjoyed it so much that she climbed into the tub and played with the water. I wonder if she would ask for bath instead from now on...