Sensory bins are a great way for your child to explore their senses, use their imagination and build upon their verbal skills. While sensory bins often look like a daunting task, setting them up in alot easier than you may think!
I had the idea of setting up a rotation of 6 sensory bins for the Christmas season. After a few years of setting up bins, I knew the best place to find my sensory items was the Dollar Store.
Making sensory bins an easy process starts when you are shopping- especially is you are making multiple bins at once. I tried to divide my shopping cart into 6 separate “sections” and as I found something I liked, I would decide right then what bin it would go in. This also helped keep my final cost low because I was not buying items that would later not have a place and go to waste.
Things I Purchased:
-Tinsel (Red, Green, Blue/white
-3 packs of fake snow, 1 pack of foam fake snow (I mixed both together for the snow bin)
-2 blank ornaments with removable tops
-A funnel (it came in a pack of three but only used the small one since it fits in the ornaments)
-String of silver ornaments with beads
-Red and green acrylic paint
-1 bag of rice
-1 box of pasta
-1 small white Christmas Tree
-1 package of glittery holiday items (the stars, snow flakes, stockings, and trees all came in one pack)
-1 pack of silver and white glittery balls (seen in show bin)
-1 box of small bells
-1 package of red/green/white pom poms
-1 box of small presents
-1 stem of fake poinsettias
-1 red spoon
-1 Santa themed bin
Bringing my grand total to just $24! Six activities for less than twenty five bucks and now to mention that all of these items will be stored away and used again next year. Now I already had the shoebox containers used to hold the sensory items on hand, but I double checked and Dollar Tree does have them if you don’t have any.
The first thing I did when I got home was color the rice and the pasta knowing it would need time to dry before going into the bins.
To color the past and rice red and green, I did 1 cup pasta to 1 tsp acrylic coloring in a ziplock baggie. I’ve read that if you want to make you color stretch farther, you can add a 1-2 drops of hand sanitizer. Once the pasta and paint were in the zip lock bag I would mix and move the past around to distribute the coloring. I would add more paint if needed (the rice took a lot LESS paint to color than the pasta did). After colored, I set them out on paper towels to dry for a few hours.
Next, I laid out my six shoe size box bins and started distributing the items into each. It didn’t take long to get everything set up since I already had a pretty good idea of how I wanted things to go.
Be sure to follow along with us on Instagram to get a look at how the girls like these sensory bins!
As always- sensory activities of any kind require full supervision of an adult.
If you are looking for other fun activities for your little one this Christmas, you can grab a 15-page *free* Holiday activity bundle below:
