Sensory Bin #5: Oobleck (solid or liquid?)

Sunshine's sweet Godmama got the kids Dr. Seuss's "Oobleck" story, along with the ingredients to make our own oobleck.  After reading the story (which they loved!), we made oobleck.  It's the strangest sensory experience.  It's sort of a solid until you pick it up, and then it turns to liquid.  I don't know any other way to explain it than that.  Oobleck is easily turned into a homeschool science experiment, a sensory bin, or just an entertaining rainy day project.  Sunshine was not a fan of this experience, but the older kids were absolutely fascinated.  I think it was just a little too weird for her.  She definitely laughed a lot and enjoyed herself, but was finished with it pretty quickly.  I promise you though, most kids will love playing with this stuff!

Sensory Bin #4

SNOW!  Ok not real snow, but the kind that you buy in powder form and then "grow" with water.  What an interesting consistency this was!  The older kids loved it ... Sunshine, not so much.  She didn't mind playing with it as long as she wasn't actually touching it.  She was definitely intrigued but she didn't love it.  I really liked this one, I just wish the "snow" was actually cold with as hot as it has been outside.  THAT would have been cool.

The "snow" lasts for days or weeks depending on how you store it - and if it deflates a little, you can bring it back to life with a little spritz of water.  This is pretty messy though, definitely an outdoor sensory bin or one with a big mat underneath it.  Because of the consistency, it gets everywhere.  But it's uber-fun!

Here's a quick video I took while making the snow so you can see how quickly it grows (sorry, I am SO not a video person).  It's pretty cool and was a fun little science experiment for the kiddos.  Don't mind Lovebug showing his disdain for sitting in the grass :-)

Sensory Bin #1 - Water Beads

Sensory Bin #2 - Coffee Beans

Sensory Bin #3 - Dyed Spaghetti

Sensory Bin #3

I cooked up Sensory Bin #3 today - Dyed Spaghetti!  Lovebug picked the color.  Although it was supposed to be blue, it turned out more greenish-blue.  Guess I needed more dye?  I also could have used more spaghetti!  I could have easily cooked the entire 48 oz box of pasta for my 18-qt bin.  I used a Wilton Gel Food Color and only needed the itty bittiest amount - it well worth the investment in those dyes!  It was a gorgeous day today, so we headed out front on the shady side of the house.  Grass and cooked spaghetti = double sensory experience!

This one was not Sunshine's favorite at all.  I did coat the spaghetti in olive oil so it didn't stick together and she just didn't like having her hands messy.  I was eventually able to coax her into playing with it and she even picked it up, but she still was never as into it as Sensory Bin #2.  This is good though, it give me a point of reference and I'm slowly figuring out what sensations are bothersome to her.  And she still did have some fun with the spaghetti, albeit brief ... and that's also good because it shows me she's getting more and more comfortable with sensations that she doesn't like!

UPDATE - I pulled this bin out again after nap when Angel was home from school.  Angel was super-interested and couldn't wait to play so of course, Sunshine had to get in on the action too.  She sat for a long time at her high chair and played with the spaghetti this time.  Don't know if it's because it was the second introduction or we were inside and there weren't distractions?

PS - I would be ever so grateful if you would take just a moment of your time (seriously just a moment!) to click on the 2 links below and vote for my blog on these sites.  I am trying to get the word out about my blog and build my readership so that I can reach more families and hopefully help them through their adoption or cleft lip & palate surgeries.  I promise I won't continue to bombard you with annoying requests to do this all the time!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sensory Bin #2

Well I certainly couldn't have predicted the complete success I'd have with this one - coffee beans were a HUGE hit with Sunshine.  They were mostly just the cheapo ones (about 36 oz. - still kind of expensive for a sensory bin, but so worth it!) and about a pound of chocolate beans mixed in that my mom gifted me.  The "regular" coffee smell overtook the whole first floor, so we didn't smell much of the chocolate unfortunately.  I'm guessing this is a total of about 3 1/2 lbs of coffee beans in an 18 qt. bin.  I wasn't sure how Sunshine would react because of the smell and because she got coffee residue on her hands.  But wow, she was in love.  She tried to dump anything and everything into the bin and got mad at me when I told her it was nap time.  LOL.  She also got very territorial when Lovebug tried to jump in for some play.  Oh you gotta love it.

As you can see, we did this one inside and it worked out nicely.  If I had enough forethought, I would have grabbed our vinyl mat for the floor, but it was fine without it.  Sunshine was sure to grab any straggling beans to put right back in the box anyway.  This sensory bin was definitely well received - I will be sure to pull it out again (like after nap today!).


SENSORY BIN #1 - WATER BEADS

Sensory Bin #1

I am on a mission to create an arsenal of sensory bins for Sunshine to play with over the summer ... mostly outdoors but inside too on rainy days.  I thought playing with a variety of texturey sensory items might help with some of the small issues we're trying to work through.  So I'd like to introduce our first sensory bin of Water Beads.

To say the older two were in love with these cool beads is an understatement.  They couldn't get enough of them!  Angel was trying to stick her face into the bin until I caught her.  LOL.  The barrel of monkeys went in and out of the beads as did the little Polly Pocket dolls over and over - the whole afternoon was spent playing with these.  Sunshine, however, was not nearly as interested.  When I put her hand in the bin, she got mad at me.  LOL.  I tried multiple times though and even put her foot in it.  She really didn't like that ... at first.

Shortly after, she sat down and started taking off her 2nd sock and shoe and signed for "help" to get completely into the bin.  LOL.  I eventually took her pants off too because they were getting soaked. And by the end of the afternoon and into the evening, she was sitting in the bin!  Score!  It took awhile - you can even see the lighting change from the bright sun to the cool shade.  But we finally got there and she loved them.  She was squooshing them all over the ground with her feet too.

And you can see what the result of 4 neighborhood friends in addition to my 3 kiddos did ... there were beads EVERYWHERE and they made such a mess squooshed all over the patio.  No worries though, I picked up as much as I could and just hosed off the rest into the grass ... made perfect sense to me at the time :-)  I am so thankful my mom spent the afternoon with us - the kids always have a blast with her and she was so helpful with cleanup ... thanks Nana!

So what are water beads?  I think they are actually meant to be decorative material for flower vases but they are oh-so-fun to play with.  They start out very small (like the size of tiny seeds) and then when you add water to them, they (slowly) grow into these little soft, squooshy balls.  The inside consistency remind me of the gel inside a diaper (not that I would know what that's like, since I have never let me child's diaper get big enough to explode, LOL).  And they are so fun and feel awesome on your hands and feet (again, not like I would know because I didn't put my feet in the bin either, LOL).

A lot goes a long way too ... I bought a pound of the beads not really having any idea how much that would be ... I have multiple uses still left in the bag and I really put too many in the bin anyway.  And I have also read that you can let the beads dry out and re-use them.  I'm not so sure about that, but it's worth a Brownie try this first time around.  It may be more trouble than it's worth but we'll see.

So YES, this one was definitely a success!  I'll be doing many more posts over the coming weeks and months about different sensory bins, so excited to give more of these a try and see what the kids think of them!