Old MacDonald's Farm Tuff Spot

It is our fortnightly #RhymeTime post and today’s nursery rhyme is “Old MacDonald Had A Farm”. This has to be Adam’s favourite nursery rhyme of all time! His love for the rhyme started when he received Orchard Toys Old MacDonald Lotto game (affiliate link) for Christmas one year. For some reason Adam calls Old MacDonald “Papa E.I.E.I.O.” so the name has stuck in our house!

Six months ago we made a Harvest Sensory Bin using different cereals. I wanted to enlarge this idea and incorporate more farmyard animals. We couldn’t resist creating an Old MacDonald’s Farm Tuff Spot.

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I used the left over material from our DIY grass Tuff Spot mat to create the base. There was nearly enough material to cover the whole of the Tuff Spot. There was a big enough gap to leave room for our messy sections of Old MacDonalds farm. We used Chocolate Angel Delight to create a muddy pig sty for the pigs and Hartley’s Lime Jelly for the grass in the sheep’s field.

As we like to recycle the majority of our play activity materials we reused many food items for the other fields. Each section was made using a different type of food and the fields were fenced in by using Weetabix.

For the horse field I used a mixture of lentils, chick peas and corn kernels. This mixture was recycled from our Ice Dinosaur Sensory Bin. The cow field was made from black turtle beans recycled from our Neon Space Sensory Bin. The goat field contained malt wheats and the remaining fields were created from multigrain hoop cereal.

I wanted a way that Adam could transport the different cereals and use our various fine motor skill tools. I created two silos from recycled Soya milk containers. I cut a hole in the front and covered each container in wood effect contact paper. I added a cut up toilet roll to create a shoot for the grain to go down.

For Christmas Adam recieved a Little Rhymes Old MacDonald Mug which came in a box that was perfect for this activity. Inside the box I placed our favourite fine motor skill tools – Helping Hands, Super Scoopers and a Jumbo Tweezer.

Adam fell in love with the Old MacDonald’s farm Tuff Spot immediately and instantly knew it was “Papa E.I.E.I.O.” We spent ages singing the song whilst he played with each area of the Tuff Spot. I was impressed that he went for the fine motor skill tools first and got full use out of the silos.

As the majority of the Tuff Spot was made from cereals Adam kept munching away throughout his play and in between singing. Interestingly by the time Adam got to play with the Tuff Spot the green had vanished from the jelly.

Adam was fine about moving the sheep around the jelly field but would not touch jelly. He loved moving the black turtle beans around and exploring the different textured cereals with his fingers. Another Tuff Spot success!