Valentine's Day Inspired Sensory Bin

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I recently had been searching the internet for a toddler curriculum for my 18 month old and came across, My First School Curriculum, by Kid Activities with Alexa. This curriculum is perfect for littles ages 13-24 months old. It has daily activities to work on language development and includes sensory activities, gross motor, fine motor skill, and art activities to learn through play! There are 12 units and they include holiday activities.

Since Valentine's Day is near I decided to try the Valentine's Day Inspired Sensory Bin with my little one. In the guide it gives you a list of materials that you will need for each activity and then a description to go along with the activity. I took some ideas from the curriculum guide and then added in some of my own. It's great that the activities can be easily adapted.

What is a Sensory Bin?

First off I'll start with what a sensory bin is. Sensory bins are hands-on tools for children to explore their world through their senses. They are perfect for calming, focusing, and engaging your child. 

What Skills are Used?

There are so many skills that your child can work on while using a sensory bin. Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain's pathways, which lead to the child's ability to complete more complex learning tasks. Sensory play supports language development, cognitive growth, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and social interaction.

Materials

Sensory bins can be so easy to assemble. Here is what you will need to get started:

• Plastic container - I like to use one that has a lid so I am able to store it for later.
• Rice - you can use colored rice (I'll put the recipe below)
• Items to put in the container - you can use items from around the house or go buy some pieces from the Dollar Store.
• For this activity, I purchased different Valentine's Day themed items from the Dollar Store
• Items for scooping, pouring, and holding
• I used a plastic cup and utensils from my little one's play kitchen

You can use a variety of items. A lot of them you may already have around the house.

Colored Rice Recipe

• 1 cup of rice
• 1 tablespoon of vinegar
• A few drops of food coloring of your choice

Put rice in a ziplock bag or a small container. I used a small Pyrex container. Then add in 1 tablespoon of vinegar and a few drops of your choice of food coloring. I used a fork to mix the ingredients together. Once well mixed lay the rice on a tray to dry. It takes about 5 hours to dry. 

Ready to Go

You are ready to start your activity! I suggest working with your little one on this activity. By working with your little one you can model and scaffold as you work. When I worked on this activity with my little one I narrated her play. This helps expose her to a variety of vocabulary. We talked out the textures of the items, sizes, colors, and the names of the different items we were using. This activity can be messy, so I suggest completing it on a surface that is easy to sweep. For us we completed it on our hardwood floor and I had my little one help me sweep up the rice at the end of the activity. 

Adaptations for Older Children

This activity is not only great for the little ones, but older one's as well. If you have an older child, 3+, you can work on a variety of different skills. Here are some ideas, counting, colors, letters, sounds, and sorting. For example: If you wanted to work on letters and/or sounds you could have a poster board with a few different letters you would like to work on. Put items that match those letters into the box of rice and then have your child find the items and match them to their corresponding letters. If the letters you want to work on are d and m put a dog, duck, dinosaur, dice, money, monkey, mouse, etc. in the container. Then your little one will put the d items under the letter d and the m items under the letter m. 

I hope you have fun on this activity with your little one. Let me know how it goes or if you have any questions.

Happy playing!

-Marrisa