A sensory tuff tray exploring coffee beans using a manual coffee grinder, old coffee machine, cafetiere and some information on how we extended the coffee beans activity once they had all been ground up!
Disclosure - this post includes collaborative and affiliate links
A few weeks prior to this coffee beans sensory play tray activity, I had picked up a manual coffee grinder in a charity shop and ‘left it’ in the playroom for the children to discover and try to figure out what it was and what it could do... The children loves exploring and experimenting, and here is what we got up to when we finally got round to using it for real!
Coffee Beans Sensory Play Tray | Tuff Tray Ideas
I know some of you might be wondering why I was so excited to find this little bit of equipment? Well as well as the obvious ‘cause and effect’, using the coffee beans grinder helps with their proprioceptive input by adding a little resistance when using the muscles and the joints in the arm and shoulders and also develops motor muscle planning by having to appropriately sequence and time body movements to reach a desired outcome with refined control. Using the grinder also requires a degree of postural control when co-ordinating the arms to make the rotation movements! .... all that physical development from a little bit of fun huh?
Using the coffee beans added a lovely sensory element to the activity and allowed for observations of changes taking place. We talked about how we grind the coffee beans into granules and then use the granules in the cafetière to make coffee by adding water and pushing down the plunger.
Adding in some other resources such as scoops, tweezers and containers meant that they could also have lots of fun filling and pouring!
How would you extend this activity further?? Coffee playdough? Coffee cake? Setting up a coffee shop? Sequencing?
Well we repeated this activity a few weeks later and added in some vintage weighing scales.
Arthur was fascinated as to why the coffee beans (which looked like a large amount) didn’t weigh more than the two tiny coffee cups (which looked like a small amount) and we had lots of language around the theme of “look what I’ve noticed!!”
Here is how the coffee grinding tuff tray activity developed as the children extended their play and took it in their own direction...
I did resist their request to add water at the very start of the activity yesterday as I wanted to make sure they had fully explored the dry materials first (and I needed to find the oil cloth to cover the floor as I knew this would get messy!). Once the green light was given they were away - mixing, pouring, squeezing, mashing, even feet stamping (close the doors to your carpeted rooms!) adding in flour and calling it hot chocolate.
Arthur requested ice cube trays to freeze his concoction...We left it overnight and then continued play today with the iced coffee cubes - they do look quite a lot like chocolate don’t they??
This experiment was great for noticing differences and changes and creating & thinking critically by testing and developing their own ideas.
You can see some more of out tuff tray ideas in my post 19 tuff tray activities for open ended play.
Sarah x
Using the coffee beans added a lovely sensory element to the activity and allowed for observations of changes taking place. We talked about how we grind the coffee beans into granules and then use the granules in the cafetière to make coffee by adding water and pushing down the plunger.
Adding in some other resources such as scoops, tweezers and containers meant that they could also have lots of fun filling and pouring!
How would you extend this activity further?? Coffee playdough? Coffee cake? Setting up a coffee shop? Sequencing?
Well we repeated this activity a few weeks later and added in some vintage weighing scales.
Arthur was fascinated as to why the coffee beans (which looked like a large amount) didn’t weigh more than the two tiny coffee cups (which looked like a small amount) and we had lots of language around the theme of “look what I’ve noticed!!”
Here is a link to a similar coffee grinder from Amazon - affiliate link
Here is how the coffee grinding tuff tray activity developed as the children extended their play and took it in their own direction...
I did resist their request to add water at the very start of the activity yesterday as I wanted to make sure they had fully explored the dry materials first (and I needed to find the oil cloth to cover the floor as I knew this would get messy!). Once the green light was given they were away - mixing, pouring, squeezing, mashing, even feet stamping (close the doors to your carpeted rooms!) adding in flour and calling it hot chocolate.
Arthur requested ice cube trays to freeze his concoction...We left it overnight and then continued play today with the iced coffee cubes - they do look quite a lot like chocolate don’t they??
This experiment was great for noticing differences and changes and creating & thinking critically by testing and developing their own ideas.
You can see some more of out tuff tray ideas in my post 19 tuff tray activities for open ended play.
Sarah x
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