Mailing out sensory bags

I’m building up my caseload slowly. To do so I am accepting kids in areas that I wouldn’t normally. Part of my normal service area, pre-COVID, was 45-60 minutes away from my house. This week I contacted the office for a different area that is about an hour and a half away and have started hearing from Service Coordinators there.

In the past, I have dropped off little therapy gift bags on their front porch. It had a little container of playdough, colored pompoms for matching, bubbles, and pull back cars. It was easy to drop them off because I only had a hand full of kids at the time and I have family in that service area. When I was going out to see my family, I was able to drop off the bags.

Now that I am getting families further and further away from my house and away from each other I knew I didn’t want to drive an hour and a half or more away. Trying to deliver bags could take a whole day or maybe more if I have a full caseload. So, I am looking into options I can mail out.

This time I am mailed out sensory bags. I saw a post on Pinterest for Sensory Activities for babies and saw a sensory bag with water beads. I figured this would be an awesome thing to mail out to families. The water beads are tiny when dry and then you need a ziplock bag. I decided to use a freezer bag because I felt like it might be stronger for little fingers. I put dried water beads in the bag and put it along with the directions in an envelope to mail out.

I have one kiddo that is only 1, so that family could tape up the bag so it couldn’t be opened and the little one couldn’t try to eat it or anything. Although for older kiddos the families could take water beads out in a little container or the kiddo could put their hand in the bag. When I would bring a bucket of water beads to therapy all the kids loved them.

It seemed to have gone well. The 1 year old wasn't too interested in the sensory part of it. They only carried the bag around. The older siblings enjoyed it though. Another wasn't so sure at first but slowly warmed up to touching the water beads themselves, not through the bag. I love sensory bins for exploration. They can work on so much and some kiddos really need that sensory input. You can see my post on Sensory Bins here.