Glorious Gloop!

 

This afternoon Bee and I have been further broadening her sensory horizons and playing in gloop! We haven't tried gloop before but I saw it on the shelf at Toys'r'Us and thought "why not?" It's designed to put in the bath but I thought that may be just a little too much sensory overload for Bee and bring on a meltdown so we started small, although still with a bath...

To start with I gave Bee some of her plastic drumsticks and we did mixing, slowly building her confidence by allowing her to interact with the gloop without touching it. She got braver as the activity progressed, handling things that had gloop on them. She enjoyed digging out gloop with her spade and filling a little bucket, then pouring it all back in and laughing as it went splat back in the baby bath!

After leaving Bee to lead the play for a while I took the tools away from her and tried hiding her little Makka Pakka and Iggle Piggle in the mixture, hoping she would be brave enough to put her hand in to retrieve them. She tried, touching the surafce with her finger but couldn't quite work up the courage to place her whole hand in. She asked me for the tools back, wanting to dig out the toys but I re-focused her back on the bath and showed her how to poke at them with her fingers. It took repeated encouragement but she eventually uncovered enough to feel confident picking them out, Makka Pakka first then Iggle Piggle.

As the session wore on Bee became more confident in touching the gloop although still had some small moments when it touched the palms of her hands, which brought on some frantic hand-washing motions until she felt it had gone. Afterwards I took her upstairs for a bath to wash off all the gloop and we had just as much fun doing splashing and washing her doll!

 

Overall we had lots and lots of fun and the gloop went much more sucessfully than I'd anticipated. We explored texture and smell (mmm cotton candy!) and, in Bee's case, taste too! I'm going to continue with the gloop in a bowl for a few more sessions and then *maybe* try a shallow bath. We'll see how it goes.