Love Is In The Air... And In Our Sensory Bin!

Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

Now that my son is almost 3 years old, I want to introduce him to different holidays. I started with a Valentine's Day sensory bin. This was so much fun to put together. I decided to use a bigger bin with more surface area for each holiday bin that I create this year. It was so inexpensive to walk around the dollar store and collect all of the items for this bin. 

Here are the items I used: dry bean mix, plastic heart containers, foam glitter hearts, pipe cleaners bent into hearts, sequin mix, plastic rose petals, red cups, small red scooping cup

The cups were great for scooping and pouring. The small plastic heart containers were so much fun to fill with dry beans and we ended up shaking them like maracas. My son had so much fun with this bin. He enjoyed it so much that he actually sat inside the bin a few times! See photos:

It was so exciting for me to watch my son explore this bin with all of his senses. There are SO many ways to play and learn from this bin. For example, my son explored by scooping and pouring beans, watching rose petals float into the bin like a feather, touching the soft texture of the pipe cleaners on his face, exploring a tiny bean in his hand, digging his fingers though the beans, shaking and listening to the plastic hearts filled with beans, practicing opening and closing the heart containers, identifying and saying "heart" while holding one from the bin, etc.

Exploring sensory bins definitely beats playing with a battery operated plastic toy any day. It is amazing what can learned through play. I look forward to creating a sensory bin for each holiday of the year for my son moving forward.

-Deborah