Stackable Egg Carton Snowmen on the Light Table

Hi There!

This week, we are joining up with the Light and Reflection Series to explore winter and Christmas themes.  Be sure to check out And Next Comes L and Where Imagination Grows to see what they were up to as well!

These stackable snowmen has been a long time coming!  On occasion, I get Costco organic eggs which come in a clear egg carton.  I highly recommend saving the container!  We have used it for color mixing (colored water and eye droppers), we’ve used it in the sandbox (for scooping and making cookies), and now we’ve cut it up to make stackable egg carton snowmen!  Since they are clear, we put them on the light table and they looked amazing.  Coincidentally, my friend over at Still Playing School posted about her Egg Carton Snowmen on the Light Table around the same time as this post – great minds think alike. 🙂  Be sure to check out her post as well!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Clear egg carton (clear cups or containers would work, too)
• Sharpie
• Scissors
• Shaving Cream (to extend play – I’ll explain shortly)
• Clear bowls
• Light Table <— aff link to our favorite light panel!

Once we cut up the egg cartons into individual cups, we drew buttons on some of them, and faces on the others.  My husband even drew some arms beside some of the buttons – too cute!  My daughter also contributed by drawing faces on about half of the egg cartons.

Can you see the eyes and the carrot nose pointing down on this snowman?  This was my daughter’s drawing 🙂  I don’t have a lot of pictures at this stage because the lighting was tough (I got a lot of blurry pictures :-(), but we enjoyed stacking and decorating our Christmas tree cups as well.  To extend the play (in other words, to keep the play going), we grabbed two clear bowls and sprayed shaving cream around the bowls like a snake.

We added some glitter and stuck the bowls in the freezer on a cookie sheet.  My daughter is not a big sensory play fan, but somehow freezing the cream really encouraged her to touch the shaving cream.  Freezing shaving cream helps prevent “instant” sticking to the skin, so she was able to touch it without getting a lot of it on her hands.  Plus, it feels cold like snow which she loved!  And, the glitter helped, too. 🙂

Here is the last picture of our snowman standing proudly on top of his frozen shaving cream mountain right before the light underneath our table went out.  My daughter was sooooo excited to play that we didn’t have time to wait for our batteries to charge.  The play had to go on! So, we took the tray out to the dining table and continued stacking our egg carton snowmen.

She started to get brave as she pushed her hands on the frozen shaving cream.  Then, she launched into a fifteen minute sensory experience (maybe twenty minutes – seriously!).

She squished it between her fingers.

She rubbed it between her hands.

She got MORE and continued squishing and rubbing.  Then, she looked at her hands and told me that she had birthday hands.  I can’t believe how engaged she was with the frozen shaving cream, but that’s the power of sensory play!

Then, we added some clear jewels and craft sticks to continue her deep engagement in this play.  She built a fence of fire around the mountains by sticking craft sticks into the shaving cream.  I’m going to stop here, though: Are you completely frightened by the mess??  I kind of was, too.  But, she was just so darn happy and engaged that I couldn’t stop the activity.  Plus, half way through I thought that I could take the whole tray and put it in the bath for her to clean up – it worked like a charm and she loved cleaning her snowmen!

And, these my friends, are happy toes.  When I was sitting on the floor with my son as my daughter continued to play, I noticed this sweetly curled toes as she talked and played with the snowmen.

Little brother was happy, too!  After his nap, he was able to play with some craft sticks on the floor with me (very well supervised, of course!). He enjoyed when I put them in a cup and he could shake them and dump them on the floor!  So cute and lots of learning there, too.

And, to think that this long, engaged play all started with a few stackable egg carton snowmen on the light table. Who knows where play will lead your child!

Don’t forget to check out the other posts in this series:

Christmas Trees & Snowmen Light Table Play from Where Imagination Grows

Tracing Christmas Shapes on the light table from And Next Comes L