Toddler Tuesday – Sensory Bins

I’m really excited to start sensory bins with Lucy! I’m not sure if they are an official Montessori activity or not, but they really seem to fit with the ideals. Its like an ever evolving treasure basket on steroids. Lucy is on the young side for them but she loved that tray of wheat so much and after watching her spend 30 minutes scooping and dumping with a measuring spoon and cup, rubbing her fingers in it and making little roads, I thought she was ready for a more put together sensory experience.

I’ve seen lots of ideas for themed sensory bins and I plan to switch Lucy’s out every month or two so I’m sure those will come in handy but for this first bin, I wanted to put it together myself. Since she is currently loving all things froggie and fishie, I did a pond theme. Of course, my ideas are by no means unique  and after I came up with my ideas, I saw a few pond bins online that had pretty much the same things I thought up anyway :-) but at least I tried. The rest of the items where found by walking up and down the aisles of Hobby Lobby looking for pondish items that were inexpensive.

I started with some aquarium beads.

I’ve seen a lot of bins that use pebbles or rice that has been dyed but I though I would stick to large (read: easy to clean up) filler for the first basket or two while Lucy practices the “keep the items in the bin” concept. Then I added:

Felt lily pads

Foam fish

Log

Water lily (just a flower I found at hobby lobby that looked lily-ish, I cut off the flower part)

Frog life cycle animal set (eggs, tadpole, froglet and frog)

At $5, the animal set was my “splurge,” and it took me over budget but since realistic animal figures are one of the few toys Lucy can be counted on to love, I felt it was worth it. I don’t think she will quite get the life cycle aspect but it was the only frogs they had and someday it might be useful.

It’s ready to go!

I spent a little over $11 but my goal is to keep it under $10 for the first couple baskets since I’m starting from scratch, but once I have enough fillers and basics to reuse, I hope to get it to under $5 a bin.

She’s been playing with it for about two weeks now and it is still a hit! Every few days she picks a new favorite part and explores that. At first it was the beads, then the frogs, now she really likes the little fishes and will have the frogs pretend to eat them. Too cute!