Sensory Bins - Sports & Bugs

We've been exploring sensory bins a lot lately. I mentioned before that I'm a kinesthetic learner so I'm naturally drawn to this type of hands on hands on play/learning. I was pleased to find out that toddlers in general also learn a lot through this type of exploration.  I recommend reading this post if you want to find out more.  

When I watch the little guy playing with his bins, it looks like he's doing one big science experiment. It's almost like I can hear the questions he's asking, the hypotheses he's making and conclusions he's drawing from this type of play. I love watching him learn. And as an added bonus, sensory bins provide us with a lot of independent/focused play time for Chase. He can sometimes play with them independently for 30-45 minutes.  This is a long time for him! He'll also often come back to them several times throughout the day.  

The pictures above are of Chase exploring a sports themed sensory bin that we had out for the last couple of weeks.  Lately, I've been into creating activities for Chase based on his current interests.  These days, he's OBSESSED with sports so this bin got a lot of daily use. 

Here's a closer look at our sports themed bin.  It includes a basketball whistle, sports medal, miniature clapper, basketball felt, rubber basketball keychain and various sports themed miniature balls, slinkies, painted wooden circles, and erasers.  I used pink beans as the filler. 

Chase has been into bugs lately.  When picking him up from day care the past couple of weeks, I find him and some of the other kids often playing around with rolly pollies outside.  They have been fasciated with these critters.  Chase is also into lady bugs and has been watching this and this lady bug video on You Tube.  

The two bins above are of the same bug/critter themed sensory bin I put together this past Sunday.  I first used split peas as the filler, but they were too hard to clean up so I switched them out for penne pasta. Aside from the filler, this bin includes various plastic bugs/critters, lady bug and bumble bee pencil tops, erasers, twigs, rocks and a magnifying glass. Most things from both the sports and bug/critter bins were purchased from Party City and Education Station. 

Sports Felt Board Pictures

The little guy's teacher at day care has been so awesome with him! She does all sorts of fun activities throughout the day that have really helped with his development. To show our appreciation, I wanted to gift her something that she could use in her classroom.  The theme this week at the day care is sports, so I created 4 sets of sports themed felt pictures for his teacher to use.  The felt board you see in these pictures is the one we use at home.  

These were pretty easy to make: (1) I searched for sports related pictures on google images (2) arranged the pictures on PowerPoint (3) printed them on iron on transfer paper (4) ironed them onto felt fabric and then (5) cut the pictures.  And voila! - super cute felt board pictures at a fraction of what they would cost you when purchased at the store. 

I loved these felt pieces so much that I ended up making a second set to keep.  The little guy has really been into sports lately so I know we'll get a lot of use out of these. 

Summer Fun

I'm not thrilled about the quality of these pictures, but that itself represents where I'm at right now. It's been busy around here, as in go go go. I've been busy crafting, creating, teaching, learning, experiencing, etc.  In order to make time for these things, better picture taking and blogging has fallen by the wayside. I've been okay with that.  But I do see this blog as a way to document my family's journey so here I am again making an effort to be a better historian. 

Alright back to the matter at hand...I created this summer bucket list a while back to capture what our family wants to do this summer.  We've done around 30-40% of the activities already.  We'll probably end up doing most of the things on this list.  Some activities will be done in the fall - the benefit to living in SoCal is the great weather throughout most of the year. 

This was fun to create.  I haven't had time to scrapbook in a long time so I was happy to use supplies in my scrapbook stash that were otherwise collecting dust.