Oil Spills Tray

(Open ended play)

We decided to introduce water pollution with an oil spill activity. It is a really fun but simple enough for a 2.5 years old. This hands-on activity teaches kids about how oil spills effects and how difficult they are to clean up.

Materials

For oil spills activity:

-water, we added blue color

-oil, we used grapeseeds oil

-a boat toys

-a fish toys

-a feather

-a spoon

-a shallow tray, we used a square glass baking tray

-a tray

For clean up:

-water

-soap

-a big bowl

-a tray

Instructions:

-present the materials in front of your kiddo

-let your kiddo play and explore freely with guidance and supervision

Y led this activity from start to finish. She poured in the water into the glass tray.

She poured in the oil and then played right away.

Hands dipped fully into the liquid! She realized something was different. It was her first time playing with oil in liquid form. She played excitedly nonetheless.

All toys in, including even the feather, and she played on most of the time took the oil as a kind of a challenge. All were slippery and tend to run away from her grip, except for the feather that was glued to her hands all the time. She tried to scrub it off but it just wouldn’t let her go.

She kept on playing for quite a long time actually up to a point she started to get irritated with the oil on her everything. Yes, her full body was covered in oil by then.

I offered her to “Would you like to wash yourself?”

“Wash! Yes!”

It is not shown here, but I prepared the soap on a jar that needed to be pushed down to let the soap drip. She used to it already. The look in her eyes said it all.

She kept on adding the soap even asked my help to scrub oil off her hands. I was pretty sure she realized that so much soap was needed.

We washed the fish, feather, boat and spoon as well. She took a bath afterwards to clean the rest of her body.

She peeked over the tray again after bath. The fish had returned to its squeaky clean state, but the feather had not. It was clear that we couldn’t get the feathers back the way they had been.

“Shall we say thank you and bye bye to the feather?” I consoled her.

She said, “T-kyou,” walked towards the trash bin and said “Bye bye!” while throwing the feather.

#oil #spills #toddler #play