Edible Insect Dig in the Dirt

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Sensory play is the best! With little Miss 19m getting involved, I am always trying to keep our play medium taste safe or better yet, edible.

Here is a flash back to when she was 15 month old. I had been meaning to write this one up but it got lost in the baby brain memory fuzz. Scrolling through photos as I was backing them up, I came across these shots. So four months on, here it is!

Our edible dirt is completely edible! I would even take a leap and say it could be a refined sugar free sweet snack (clean hands being used of course).

We used a handful of pantry ingredients to make this sensory medium that tied in beautifully with our bugs!

To make your own edible dirt, all you need to do is throw these ingredients into your food processor or Thermomix and pulse until they are the desired consistency. We kept ours quite chunky. Be warned though, if you pulse to far, you will have a wet ball of the mixture instead of this crumbly texture.

• 1 cup Sultanas/ Dates
• 1/4 cup Desiccated Coconut
• 1 tablespoon Coconut Oil
• 4 Weetbix
• 4 tablespoons Cacao

We then added some cooked curly fettuccine worms as an added creepy crawly garden friend.

This mixture made the perfect sensory medium for an insect dig on a wet windy day when a trip into the garden isn’t the best idea.

I added some plastic insects, flies and spiders, threw in some gardening tools and sent the girls on an insect hunt.

Miss 4 got to work matching the bugs up with those on our Bugs Alive Activity Sheet. Miss (then) 15m was more interested in just eating the dirt. Why not? Seriously, you could roll it into balls and call it snack time if you wanted too!

There are so many benefits to sensory play.

• Cognitive development
• Fine motor skills
• Problem solving
• Language skills
• Enhanced memory functioning
• Learn sensory attributes (dry, wet, sticky, slimey etc)
• Hand eye coordination
• Cause and effect

The list goes on and on!

Babies learn so much about their environment by putting things into their mouth. Making this activity taste safe, opens up even more learning experiences to this sensory play!

The girls really enjoyed this play session. Their hands were busy moving through the mix the whole time. Once Miss (then) 15ms attention drifted else where, Miss 4 set to work moulding the moist mix into shapes and making mounds only to smash them down.

Sensory Play is so much fun! Looking back at this months later, it makes me wish to recreate it and see how the girls interpret the same activity now they are that bit older. Will they play the same way? Where will these props lead them in their play?

I guess it is time to have those questions answered! I’m off to make some more edible dirt!

Have fun and enjoy this recipe for fun!

Dani D x

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