sensory bin

This Valentines sensory bin was made at the last minute with very few items but still captured the attention and creativity of the kids! Last year for our Valentine’s Day sensory bin, I used red paper shreds as the base. I hadn’t planned anything out for this year so I used pink and purple beaded garland and shiny foil heart garland as the base. I threw in a few plastic heart shaped containers and in one of them, I put a costume jewelry ring. The container with the ring led my boys to come up to me, open the container and ask, “will you marry me?”!

We had a few friends over to make crafts and play and as always, the sensory bins were very popular with the kids. Our farm sensory bin also got played with a fair bit because I haven’t finished disassembling it.

The kids and their friends danced, ate, guessed how many conversation hearts were in the container (214), made crafts, played in the sensory bins, and played with the chocolate playdough. Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

I don’t drink coffee and we got a Keurig for Christmas last year, so the only coffee The Husband drinks is now from there. I had a large bag of coffee beans that we bought in Ethiopia over 4 years ago (yuck) and a small bag of grounds that are probably even older. I’m not sure why I bought the beans as we have never at any point had anything in the house with which to grind them!

I kept both bags with the intention of making some type of coffee sensory bin at some point. I then heard that September 29 is National Coffee Day so that gave me great motivation to make it in time to share it before then with you in case you wanted to make one of your own!

I started with a base of coffee beans and coffee grounds and then it was actually Einstein’s idea to add the K-cups which I thought was pretty brilliant! Then we added a few packs of Coffee Mate that he had picked up at a hotel at some point (that child is always “collecting” random things!).

I wanted to add something to represent sugar but I didn’t have any sugar cubes. I ended up using two of the salt blocks that we made last week for our history class. They look just like rectangular sugar cubes!

I added two little coffee cups (well they are tea cups but they work well as scoops in this bin!) and a toy spatula.

The kids are liking the bin, particularly the smell of it! It has been a wee bit of a challenge to get them not to open up the packets that are in there though!

If you are looking for more sensory ideas or information, you may be interested in my book.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

Every year, The Husband travels to Moab, Utah to go mountain biking. The kids are always full of questions about what it’s like there and I had planned to make them a special desert themed sensory bin while he was gone this past time but didn’t get it made until just last week. It may not have been in time for his trip, but it was in time for our official homeschool start and as always, the Sensory Bin was a very popular station!

This was a very simple bin to create. For the base, I used sand. I added a Desert Toob which had in it the little tourist man, many different animals that can be found in the desert, and a cactus. I also added some stretchy snakes, a piece of cork in the form of a cork coaster and a large squishy lizard. I had also bought a large squishy orange snake for the purposes of this bin but it had mysteriously gone missing from my sensory bin storage before I made the bin. My curious kids must have happened upon it at some points and taken it somewhere to play with!

The kids liked all of the items in the bin but the squishy lizard and the stretchy snakes were among the favourites. They used the cork coaster as all kinds of things, they scooped with it, pushed sand with it, set things on it, made it a character in their story, and used it to cover animals from the sun. I had bought a pack of them at the dollar store for sensory bin purposes and it worked really well for this bin.

You can find many more sensory ideas in the Sensory Bins book.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

With all of the sensory bins and activities we have done over the years, we had yet to use water beads. I had a misconception that they were sticky and gross, so I had been avoiding them! After this experience, I can say that we will be using them on a regular basis from now on.

Please note that due to the potential for sea glass to be sharp and the potential choking hazards of the rest of the items, this tray is designed more for older children than for toddlers. Even with older kids, this is a tray that should be used with adult supervision.

To create this water beads sensory tray, I used a glass 9×13 inch cake pan. I lay sea glass, glass beads, and water beads into the bottom of the pan. For the water beads, I used two shades of blue aa well as clear beads. I then added water.

The kids loved watching the water beads grow from those tiny little dots to marble sized balls. They also loved how the clear water beads were invisible underwater. This fascinated them! They would scoop their hand into the water and ask someone else to guess how many water beads they had in their hand. Since you could only see the blue ones, the other person would guess a small number and then they would delight in pulling their hand up out of the water to reveal a large amount of beads. I was even amazed at how invisible the clear ones were underwater!

The textures between the gel feeling of the water beads to the sharp rough edges of the sea glass to the smoothness of the glass beads to the moisture of the water gave this tray a lot of variety. This sensory activity held the attention of my kids for a long time and they used it for weeks. We probably would have kept it for longer except that it was beginning to feel a bit slimy! The kids have already asked me to make this one again.

Another caution I will give as well for the water beads is that when they escape the tray, they feel pretty yucky to step on in bare feet!

You can find many more sensory ideas in the Sensory Bins book.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.