Flour Castles

This was a firm favourite of mine and my pupils when I was teaching and now I get to do this activity with my own child. And he loves it. Easy to set up but it’s messy. Very messy!

Although we have put this activity in the game section, it works on so many levels. I would regularly do this activity in the classroom because it teaches so many skills: anticipation, communication, counting, addition, taking away. It is also a great activity to have a shared experience with a child. Some children can be difficult to engage with and therefore share any moments with. I am yet to teach a child that isn’t fascinated by this activity. Whether it is the visual of the flour going up in the air and the contrast between the black and the white or that the adult is prepared to get messy. Either way it works.

Set Up

I use any type of flour I can find in the kitchen cupboard and a child’s plastic drinking cup to create the castles, I make flour castle exactly how you would make a sand castle. My only tip is to put as much flour into the cup as possible and compact the flour so it’s tightly in the cup. Just like a sandcastle you need to quickly turn the flour castle out. There is an art to this. I regularly end up with collapsed flour castle but there is learning in that.

From experience pour the amount of flour you want into a tupperware box which has a lid on. I have had incidents where the whole bag of flour has been tipped over the kitchen flour. Whoops.

I use black paper because I find the contrast between the paper and white flour more effective. And don’t forget babies are attracted to black and white images.

When everyone is sitting comfortably, it’s time to splat. I would always splat quickly to show my baby what is going to happen. Remember our little ones have short attention spans. You want to show them quickly that this activity is worth hanging around for. Once my son understands that this activity is fun, I take things a little slower. To build as much anticipation I hover my hand over one of the sandcastle and depending on what we are working on I will either say “ready steady” or “1, 2".” I then pause and wait to see what he says. When he was younger any vocalisation or body movement he made, I would assume was an intentional communication and therefore splat. Now that he’s older I wait until he says “go” or “3.”

Once all the flour castles have been splatted I tip the flour back into my container and build the sandcastles again.

Depending on my son’s attention span I then stop splatting and let him splat, mark make. Whatever he decides. The flour is his to play with.

My clean up tips are have a hoover ready and a damp flannel to clean the flour off hands, feet, legs, bums.

The fun you both will have, is worth the mess. Trust me.