Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

The other day we wound up home on a snow day, which gave us a nice long day to work on some Valentine's Day projects and crafts. 

One activity was setting up a Valentine's Day sensory bin. 

Before this week we had note yet tried a bin of rice for our sensory play. We decided to try it for this round. 

I purchased a large bag of rice (several pounds) at our local grocery store. 

Big Brother was eager to set it up so he opened the bag and emptied it into the bin. He also helped add all of the other materials too. 

Next we added in small plastic and foam hearts, both packages I found at our local dollar store. We also added in some larger sequins, a few broken pearl necklaces (from the dress up bin), and red straws cut into pieces. 

I was recently looking at some online articles which talked about how Montessori classrooms use rice as a material for practicing pouring skills. I was inspired to add some empty baby food chairs and measuring cups into the bin and see what happened. 

Big Brother found him self drawn to using the tools for pouring. He started with pouring from the jars into the cups and vice versa.  Later he practiced not only pouring into the jars, but tried pouring through the straws too. 

The rice seemed to be a material that he really enjoyed and it engaged him over a couple of days. We'll definitely try some variations on this material. 

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