How my toddler and I turned a Dollar Tree find into a 10 day experiment.
I feel a little bit like I am writing an elementary school lab report with this post, but this activity turned out to be such a hit, that I had to share.
How it worked:
1. Traced grow toy starfish on paper
2. Measured with ruler
3. Wrote measurement in number form
4. Dot marker charted measurement
5. Put grow toy starfish back in water
6. Repeat until day 10
(Regrettably, we didn’t measure all 10 days. I made the chart for only select days. I did not anticipate how excited my toddler would be to check in on her growing starfish everyday. If we do this again, I will definitely make space for daily measurements.)
What we used:
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Plastic container of water
Ruler
I snagged a 3 pack of sea creature themed ones at Dollar Tree a few weeks ago, but if no such luck, here’s a pack on Amazon. But seriously- check Dollar Tree first!
3, 10 day grow creatures for $1.25 = a whole month of play
What’s to love for littles:
Practicing patience
This was a 10 day project with the starfish growing little by little every day. I got the question, “Did it grow yet?,” a lot.
Responsibility and natural consequences
My toddler liked to take her starfish out to play- because if you don’t know, starfish love to swing and slide.
It only took one time of leaving it out, resulting in a shrinking starfish, for her to take responsibly for putting it back in the grow tub.
Introduction to the scientific method
Does a toddler need this? Absolutely not.
Was it funny to hear her try to say “hypothesis”? Absolutely.
Number Concepts
Numbers don’t really mean anything to a toddler until around 3 to 4. Grasping a 1:1 correspondence comes through tangible experiences like this.
To support this, I had Big Sis dot marker the number of inches on our chart after we measured each day.
Introduction to a ruler
Again, does a toddler need this yet?
Nope. It was just something I modeled and showed her how it works to introduce the tool.
Result
The starfish grew from 2.5” to 5.5” in 10 days.
And mostly, we had a lot of fun along the way.
Let me know if you try this out with your little one! Tag @PlayPro_Mom in you play pictures.
