sensory: Sea Life Sensory Bin

I love sensory bins with all my heart – I mean ♥!  They are such cool cheap activities for the little ones, that usually for little miss V provide her at least an hour of entertainment.  Sensory bins, ever since I introduced V to them, are really the only regular thing besides her Little People that can captivate her attention for more than 15 minutes – wink wink – can you see why I ♥ them oh so much?!  I usually do them indoors and keep them in a separate area from her toys, so it’s a special thing to do.  She will sit in the sunroom, on the floor, separating and sorting colors, rocks, rice, and beads throughout the day entertained by  it.  In the sensory bins I make for V, I always include some spoon or bowl to scoop and sort, that is her favorite thing to do.  So today I have for you a Sea Life Sensory bin.  This is another project for which you can utilize all that Kool-Aid dyed pasta!  I mixed it up a little bit in this one and used the blue & green dyed ziti from the original pasta batch I did, and to add some texture I dyed some rigatoni using the same dyeing method with a packet of blue Kool-Aid.

My sensory bin (I believe was meant for an outdoor drink bin) is perfect for sensory bins because it is clear (it won’t distract from what she is working with), it is really deep (which I’d like to think would provide less spills – but right now it’s just about the thinking ;).  It also has handles which I find are great for V because she likes to pick it up and carry it to the chair, carry it to the table, carry it to the floor, carry it to the couch, okay, I think you get the picture – she’s a toddler – she likes to rearrange things CONSTANTLY! :)  The smaller plastic sea creatures I got at Walmart in the party favors aisle, the shells & blue glass beads are from the Dollar Store, and the larger Finding Nemo characters I got at a kids consignment sale (knowing I wanted to make an ocean/sea life sensory bin in the future!).  I always, at all times, am looking for cool little things to add to sensory bins on the cheap (you don’t want to see my hoarded stash – HA! – it’s the whole Monica’s closet thing – my house may look put together, but don’t open my sewing room door because your jaw will fall to the floor – no joke – one of these days I may post a picture of this atrocity – NOT! ;)

So to summarize, to make this bin, you will need:

1. a plastic bin/tub, preferably deep with handles
2. Kool-Aid Dyed Pasta – ziti in blue and green & rigatoni in blue
3. sea life creatures
4. shells
5. blue glass beads
6. (not pictured) but I feel is necessary, at least for our bins – a scooper, sorter, bowl, spoons, etc..

and voilà – it’s a Sea Life Sensory Bin! :)