I haven’t really gotten into the whole “Sensory Bin” thing mainly because Little Bug is Little Bug and I knew we had to reach a certain point before it would even be wise to attempt to bring out a bucket full of rice or beans and expect for the majority of them to stay in the bucket as opposed to out of the bucket.

Feeling like we had reached that level of maturity, I bought a big bag of beans, a plastic bin and dumped all the beans into the bin.

I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw the idea to take an ABC Puzzle and dump all the ABC pieces into the beans, mix them up and put in a measuring cup for scooping, but as soon as I saw that idea, I knew my girls would love it!

We had some time to kill before leaving for dinner with friends so I pulled out our ABC Puzzle Sensory Bin, gave the girls one rule: Keep the beans in the bucket and let them go to town. They loved this!!

They both enjoyed playing with the beans and, at first, that is all they wanted to do. They would put their hands in, scoop with the measuring cups and move the beans around in the bin.

They would find a letter and then put it in the puzzle.

For the most part, they both did a very good job of keeping the beans in the bin.

They played very well with this activity together for about half an hour.

I think they would have gotten in if they both could have fit!

Our first experience with a Sensory Bin was very positive and I think I will have to plan to do more Sensory Bins with them in the future. This particular bin was extremely easy to make since it just involved dumping beans and our ABC Puzzle in!

- Elaine