The latest ‘Creative Baby!’ session focused on ‘Eat, Drink and Make Merry!’ – an exhibition depicting food, drink and celebration. Inspired by the music, food and costume depicted in the paintings, we presented sensory play opportunities for the babies, offering new and exciting ways for under-one-year-olds to engage with the exhibition.
We began with an exhibition tour, looking at some of the paintings and playing along with them. Dressing up, exploring multi-textured fruit baskets, and making music helped us to ‘step into’ paintings featuring ornate costumes, bustling marketplaces, and wandering minstrels.
Exhibition tour
Exhibition tour – exploring the fruit found in the painting ‘The Spanish Fruit Seller’
Dressing up alongside the portraits- photo Sarah Batsford
We enjoyed some parachute games and songs themed around the food in the exhibition, then made our way into the sensory play space – all of which was inspired by the food found in the paintings.
Sensory play space – spot the giant doughnut!
There was so much to discover; here are some of our favourites:
- Giant dinner plates which we could lie in to feel different textures:
Exploring different textures in the giant dinner plate
- Giant lollipops and sweeties which could be rolled around and scrunched to make a lovely noise:
Giant lollipop and sweeties
- Surprising ways of looking at kitchen utensils – the lightbox brought the colours of bottles and icecream sundae glasses to life, as we stacked them, looked through them, and felt their texture:
Icecream sundae glasses on lightbox
- Colour-changing lights – mesmerising from inside a foil-lined tent:
Changing colour light tent – photo Sarah Batsford
- Lots more dressing up and exploring different textured fabrics:
Dressing up
Dressing up-
- A very intriguing pineapple which prompted lots of investigation as most of us had never encountered a whole one before:
Pineapple investigation
Giant cupcakes and fruitbowl
- Games of peek-a-boo from behind the giant food:
Peek-a-boo!
We also made a sensory toy to take home, using just a tissue box and some fabric squares. Many of the babies love stuffing and emptying the box, exploring the different textures and patterns of the fabric, and watching them ‘disappear’ and ‘appear’. This is proving very popular at home – one parent sent us the photo below with the message ‘We had a great time, as always. Xanthe loves her new toy, so much so that we are unable to part her from it without her immediately bursting into tears!’
Fabric pull-box – photo Jenny Wade