Desert Animals Sensory Bin

A few weeks ago as we explored our Simple Summer Theme - Desert Week- we knew it would be a great week for some sensory play!

This was especially true when a new sensory material arrived from Sands Alive! for us to explore. 

Although we've seen Sands Alive! advertised before, we'd never had the chance to explore the material ourselves. We were pretty excited when they offered to send us a free sample. The kit arrived and the boys couldn't wait to dig in. The set we were sent was a pirate treasure theme, which came with the sand, figures/stampers, "rocks," treasure and a treasure box, a shovel, and a treasure map.

We let the sand air out at first, and then dug into playing. It was very cool for everyone to explore! The sand was both soft and sticky. It cleaned off the hands easily, but could stick together enough to build a small mountain! The stampers left footprints and the shovel could "dig" into the sand. Yet the soft material also allowed a lot of room for individual creativity. 

We took out the items that had come with the kit and added in some Safari Toob Desert animals. The boys loved matching the animals to some of the books we had read, and eagerly began building desert mountains with the animals (and lone hiker.) 

The boys enjoyed setting up different scenarios with the animals. 

They also decided they wanted to pretend there was treasure buried under the mountains, and used the treasure from the original kit. 

The Sands Alive! Sand proved a perfect material for pretending to create a desert. We are looking forward to other ways to play with the sand - and of course look forward to exploring the original kit more too!