Oh yeah, cotton balls

Recently, during one of my rounds of nursery duty at co-op, I brought along a bag of cotton balls. The babies (one and two year olds) enjoyed emptying out the bag and using the cotton balls to fill containers, in this case the seats of little riding cars. I counted to see how many they could squeeze in and they found that amusing. We lined up the cotton balls in rows, balanced them on our heads, stuffed them in our shirts, etc.
Then one day at home, while the baby was a bit fussy and I was trying to work in the kitchen, I pulled out the same bag of cotton balls and let her use them with my pots and big plastic utensils. She had a ball transferring them from pot to pot with the big spoons. She was having so much fun that the big kids had to join in.
They're still using the same cotton balls but they've traveled to the kiddie kitchen. Pretty soon they'll be too gross to use anymore, but we've gotten quite a bit of fun out of them. Sometimes I just forget about these simple activities.