Sensory Bins

Many of my kiddos enjoyed playing in sensory bins and often I only had beans in it. Sometimes I would use Water Beads as well, but there are so many more options. You could use pasta or rice. You could color it or leave it plain. Either way I wouldn't go to cook it later, you never know what the kids will put in it. I've had kids put their hands and their feet in my bean box. I've had a kid sit in my bean box. So depending on how big of a box you use, I wouldn't want feet seasoned pasta for dinner.

Finding things you can play with in your sensory bin is easy, hit up your kitchen- measuring cups, measuring spoons, bowls, spoons, cups, funnel. Put animals or dinosaurs in the sensory bin, they can "eat" the beans. Construction vehicles like dump trucks and diggers. A lot of pretend play can done in a sensory bin. Items can be hidden in a sensory bin.

I will hide puzzle peices in the beans. Kids will dig them out, can name the peices, complete the puzzle. You can work on target words "hide, dig" and the names of puzzle peices like the animals or vehicles for example.

Fillings options:

Water beads can be found on Amazon and pretty inexpensive. I got 50,000 beads for less than $7. A little bit goes a long way, I usually do a cap or two full for a 6 quart container. You take the little, dried beads and cover them with water by a lot. I usually pretty much fill the container with water. Let them sit for awhile, a few hours at least, and let them pulp up. You can pour out any extra water if you want. They are squishy and slimy and kids love them. Make sure the box has a lid and they will stay moist for days. Although after a couple days rinse them off, they can get extra slimy. Also they break easier the longer you have them. When you're done with them you can let them air out and they will eventually dry back up. You could use them again. I haven't tried it but other therapists have.

Here's a sensory bin that smells amazing, it's made from coffee grounds and coffee beans. I can't take the credit for this one, one of my awesome Mom's made it. You can reuse your morning coffee grounds (dry them out in the oven low and slow) or that old coffee you got as a gift but didn't like so it's been sitting in the cabinet. Here it has some dinosaurs in it but we've also played construction with it, using dumptrucks and diggers. If you had enough coffee grounds you could hide the dinosaurs and play paleontologist discover the dinosaur bones with little brushes. The beans can be rocks as you dig them up. As a coffee lover, I love the smell. If they get wet, or to try to keep them more sanitary, when you're done back into the oven low and slow.

This St Patty's Day bin is made from oatmeal. If you have some old oatmeal laying around, color it with food coloring, add some gold coins for this St Patty's theme. Or make it your buried teasure for the pirates. Again this is one of my amazing Mom's ideas.

This bin has colored pasta. My friend nicely made it for me when she made a senosry bin for her own son. With cold and flu season, I hadn't brought any senosry bins. They are too hard to clean with all those runny noses. Now with Coronavirus, I won't be bringing my own senosry bins in to homes even when I can go back to work. Too many germs, but I might try to get my families to make some for their own homes or divid this one up.

I have a sensory bin board on my Pinterest page. You can find it here.

Now please share pictures of your sensory bins. We all need new ideas and to have be socail in some way. Over the iternet is the safest way during this time.