Squeezy Paste

When squeezing tubes of toothpaste becomes an Olympic event my girls are bringing home the gold baby. Until that glorious day we may as well do it for fun.
As well as the benefits for fine motor control (with the squeezing action) there are many sensory play aspects to this activity as well.
I loved watching the different things the girls did with their tubes; Bubble pretended she was icing a cake and was very particular about where she squeezed her paste and how much, Squeak just loved squeezing the tube as hard as she could and wanted to paint with it using the brushes.
In the words of Bubble, this activity was "really super cool".

WE USED:

* large tubes of toothpaste
(we bought ours really cheaply on clearance. Dollar stores often stock cheap paste as well)

* clear PVC sheet
(ours is a section cut from a shower curtain but you can also buy clear PVC at craft stores. Failing that you could just use a wipeable placemat, glass or plastic top table, plastic tray or something like a large baking dish)

optional ; brushes and scrap cardboard (for clean up)

I covered the tubes of toothpaste so they didn't resemble anything in the bathroom using big label stickers the kids had drawn pictures on. I wanted to differentiate between tubes that were for craft activities and those for personal use!

I just laid our sheet across the table but you could tape it if you need to. A wipeable placemat or series of placemats would work well for this activity as well.

The girls both had different techniques for squeezing their toothpaste and had fun working out the best ways to do it.

Squeak squeezed as much as she could out of her tube and then used the toothbrushes to paint and make patterns.

She especially enjoyed mixing the colours together.

Bubble used her tube for imaginary play, turning this empty ice cream cup into a 'cake' and making 'snails' with her toothpaste.

Bubble icing her cake.

Clean up was made very easy by using a folded piece of scrap cardboard to scrape the paste up (this works well for cleaning up paint as well), then the mat went into the shower for a quick wash down.