J-E-L-L-O

I've read that at Kate's age a great learning tool is allowing her to explore her sensory skills.  One way of doing that is to explore different textures.  Feeling is her main mode of beginning to understand the world around her right now, well, feeling and tasting, so whatever she can wrap her tiny fingers around gets a thorough examination and then goes directly into her mouth for a bit of gumming.

We've tried to let Kate explore as much as possible and introduce new textures, even the messy ones, in a safe learning environment.  We've made a rice bin and a bean bin that we let her play in while we 100% supervise because those little buggers can end up in one's mouth just too quickly.  Playing with either inevitably leaves rice and/or beans all over the floor, but we are ok with that.  A quick sweep and we are back to a semi-clean floor again.  (I would say clean, but who are we kidding - with two adults, one child, and one dog, clean is a relative term.)

This afternoon we let Kate have a little Jell-O fun!  She got to squeeze it between her fingers, feel it between her toes, and taste it, and we think she loved it!!

It's wiggly! It's wobbly!

It's slimy and green!

It slips on your belly!

And does not keep you clean!

Our Jell-O melted pretty quickly in the afternoon summer heat, so we followed up our Jell-O fun with some much needed bath fun and some patio spray down fun.  It was well worth the mess!