As you may have noticed in my previous post about our favourite EarlyON centre in Hamilton, my little guy is always particularly thrilled by their ever-changing sensory table. The first one he really enjoyed was one that was filled with all kinds of colourful legumes, which he sorted through and manipulated with various sand toys and kitchen utensils. He loved it so much that I had a hard time dragging him away, and he spent almost an entire hour playing with it– I thought that was a pretty good attention span for a 15 month old at the time!
Over a month ago, my loving little baby brought Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease home with him from daycare. I’ll save the fun details on that for another post, but needless to say we were house bound for about a week and I had to come up with things to keep him entertained. I remembered his obsession with the sensory table at EarlyON and yearned for a similar hour of peace and quiet in our own home where he could play and I perhaps could get some tidying done.
It only took me an hour or two to gather all of the supplies I needed– and you don’t even need to go as full out as I did. I ended up going to Winners and they had two different sand play sets for $4.99 each which had colourful shovels, rakes, moulds, and funnels with water wheels underneath them. In addition to being useful for the sensory bin we can use them at the beach later! I also decided to just buy a large, shallow bin with a lid that latches shut. You could easily use any storage bin that you have around the house, but when it came down to it I decided that the fairly toddler-proof lid was worth it to me, especially since I can see us having different versions of the sensory bin around for the next few years.
With all of those supplies acquired, I stopped at Walmart and stocked up on their Great Value bags of legumes to fill the bin. I bought four different regular-sized bags including red lentils, black beans, rice and bean mix, and green peas. The total cost was less than $10. If you’re using funnels make sure the legumes will be small enough to fit through the holes– I ended up returning a bag of red kidney beans once I got them home and compared them to the funnel holes for size. I ended up topping the bin off with popcorn kernels which we have boatloads of in our cupboard.
Let me tell you, when toddler woke up from his nap and saw the sensory bin that was just like the one at EarlyON he was ecstatic! He played at it for over half an hour while I was able to tidy in the kitchen. I’m really lucky that he’s not obsessed with throwing the beans out of the bin and that only a few make it onto the ground by mistake. I keep my handy Dyson V6 Cord Free vacuum handy in the kitchen all of the time for high-chair clean-up so at the end of sensory bin time I just zip around and suck up any stray beans.
I’ve had the bin set up for a couple of months now, and my little guy regularly goes over and asks to play with it. I’m always happy to oblige since it keeps him occupied and gives me a bit of free time. We’ve have lots of other children visit who are also thrilled by the bin.
I’ve been saving empty coffee cans from work so I can store the legumes for later when toddler grows bored of them. I plan on refreshing the sensory bin with another experience in the next little while, and eventually hope to have maybe three versions on rotation for him to keep things fresh! I’ll happily post my sensory bin updates as they happen!
Do you have a sensory bin for your little one? Send your ideas my way so I can use them to inspire my next sensory bin refresh!
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