Sensory Bins

My friend and fellow teacher, Amanda, put me on to the idea of sensory bins. Her baby is a few months younger than Dub and when I saw how much fun he was having playing in his bin, I knew it was something we had to try.

Bins can be themed: numbers, all things that start with A, fall, Halloween, nature...whatever you can imagine. The point is that you get the senses involved in the process.

We made our first bin a Halloween bin, and W has been having a blast. We chose dry black beans and a bag of white northern beans to mix up in our plastic box. Then I buried Halloween themed items. We only play with the bin outside because of a few throwing incidents that caused me to have an OCD setback, but W is pretty good about rounding up beans that have escaped and putting them back in the box.

At first, he was very tentative about getting involved. He only stuck his fat index finger into the beans and then shook his head no. Exhibit A:


But it wasn't long before the colorful things poking up out of the beans lured him in. The first day, he used the toys to dig for other toys. Today, however, he really got into it and even wanted to put his bare feet into the beans.

BAT...he said it! Look at him working on the b sound! Amazing!

It's a really fun thing to put together and to play with. We've had such a good time uncovering the buried items. Each time he makes such a sound of exclamation that I know it's doing something good for his giant baby brain. :)


I don't know what this is, really, but it makes an excellent shovel.

What is this?

I want to put my feet in here...feels weird.

You can read more about sensory bins here!
I'm thinking that our November bin is going to involve trimmed up hay and some acorns, leaves, pumpkins, tiny scarecrows - all things that you can pick up at any craft store for pretty cheaply! We've even been picking up items on our afternoon walks to add to the bin. Excited.