TV-Free Toddler - Tea Flower

Today's TV-Free Activity: Tea Flower Watching
Materials: Clean glass jar, jasmine tea bloom (or other blooming tea ball), hot water, crayons
Ages: 2+
Time Filled: 15 minutes
Note: This is NOT self-directed.  Close supervision required.

You may have noticed a lapse between posts.  I must admit, I have fallen off the TV-Free wagon.  This is because, simply, I have not slept in 5 months.  I had foolishly hoped having a newborn would afford me better sleep than I had been getting while pregnant.  I was enormously uncomfortable, besides just being enormous, and had to pee every 2 hours all night long.  I had this blind, naive hope that Malcolm would be sleeping more than 2 hours at a stretch by this point, but he seems to have regressed to sleeping 90 minutes or less.  So now, while I blessedly don't have to pee all night long, I am still getting up all the time to void liquid, just now it is from my boobs.

Anyway, I digress.

I fell on this activity purely by accident.  I a fun craft in mind for today after lunch, but needed to stop at the craft store for some glitter and glue this morning on the way home from getting Lucy at preschool.  Then, I realized how insanely difficult it is to "stop by" anywhere with two small children.  So I was going to skip TV Free today (again) and clean up the kitchen while she watched 20 minutes of Dora.  I was cleaning up lunch and noticed the box of jasmine tea blooms I had left out from when I went through my extensive tea collection a week or so ago.  These "blooms" are dried jasmine tea tied cleverly so that when the are steeped in hot water, the ball opens to reveal a lovely flower, all while brewing a cup of yummy, fragrant tea.  I thought Lucy would enjoy watching the flower bloom.

Which she did - look at her oozing excitement! :-P  She actually did say "That's really cool, Mama!", so she did think it was fun to watch - only it was taking too long to hold her attention for very long.

What she DID enjoy was drawing on the hot glass with a washable crayon.  She found a yellow crayon on the floor and started to draw on the jar.  I was about to stop her (I thought she would have to push too hard to make a mark and possibly spill the jar of hot water), when I noticed that the heat from the water was melting the crayon.  It was like she was using a mess-free paint brush!  I am not sure if regular crayons would work as well as the washable ones since they are much softer than standard crayons.  And the really cool part is that the crayon literally just wipes right off the jar.

I like this activity for a number of reasons.  1) It uses your senses - watching to flower bloom, feeling the hot glass, smelling the jasmine tea, tasting the tea.  2) It provides an opportunity to talk about being patient and delayed gratification (I am certain my 2 year old is not the only one who has trouble with this).  3) It is a different sort of art project - one that can be wiped off and done over again as many times as you want with little or no mess.  I am sure there are other things that are at work here, but I am too tired to think of them.  Lucy was really focused during this activity.