My good friend at http://ourdayinschool.blogspot.com/ introduced me to the blog http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com and she has a ton of ideas for Sensory Bins. (I think she calls them sensory tubs but I like the word bin better, not that it really matters ;-) I thought it might be fun for Nattie our 3 year old so I decided to put one together. I didn't want to go out and buy anything, I just wanted to use what we had laying around the house so she could use it today. This is what I came up with:


I put plates, forks, and spoons in there because everyone knows that in December we eat. Well, at least at the Jones house that's what we do. I put in some ornaments from the tree and some keychains as well which she liked putting on the plates and then burying them in rice. I put the rice in there as "snow". I put the little stocking in there and then (not in this picture) I also added a pinecone. I thought that would be fun. She loved it! I honestly thought she'd get bored of it after a couple minutes but boy was I wrong. I think she played in it for a good hour and then stopped and cleaned up (she had to vacuum a little bit because she did get some rice on the floor, and yes I have my 3 year old vacuum... she loves it and she knows that if she makes a big mess she's the one that will be cleaning it not me, she has a little vacuum she uses and not the big heavy one Mommy uses.) Anyways...


I put another bin next to her sensory bin so she could measure and scoop rice and whatever else into it and then dump it back. She had a blast. Her favorite thing was to use the spoon to put rice into the dish she has in her hand.


Here she is after she put the rice on the plate with the spoon and now she is dumping into the play pan.


And then she'd dump it out and start again.

When she got the pinecone she had a blast with it. She wouldn't look at me directly for a picture of this however. This picture is one of my favorites though so I'm not complaining.

When my two older girls, Syssa and Mara, got home from school they loved playing with it too. They weren't has happy to clean up after themselves but after a few whines they did it. Thank you to the people who brought this idea into my life... I will be doing a new one every month now!