Christmas Sensory Bin

Invitation to play and create with trains and ornaments!

Simple Christmas sensory bin set up

I thought it would be fun for Liam to create his Christmas sensory bin and he was super excited when he saw the colored rice drying on the counter. Get your quick and simple recipe here! Lately, he has been helping me gather items for the bin too. He seems to enjoy the complexity of assembling it from scratch! I made a few small purchase with an AC Moore coupon for a small selection of mini ornaments (maybe $5). The mini ornaments included bells, stars, bulbs, and snowflakes. From our collection, we added the red and green gems and white pom poms. I had him find some trains with cargo loaders.

First we dumped! Then we mixed and swirled the colored rice around!

Liam was a bit discouraged that the rice did not cover the entire bottom of the bin, so I cam up with the idea of cutting branches off our tree and using white pom poms for snow balls. That seemed to distract him enough. Plus the tree branches made for an awesome extention activity with fine motor skills.

Smells wonderful!

and then the pretend snow came……

Thomas was delivering ornaments and Rocky was lifting jingle bells!

It seemed like our bin needed a tree

We filled the container with small rocks and he stuck our branches into the rocks to make a pretend Christmas tree for the trains. He went off to find his wooden Sir Topham Hat to oversea the work. I found ornament hangers and thought hey this is a good fine motor activity! He was very eager to decorate the tree and worked quickly at putting the hangers on each bulb!

This sensory bin went beyond simple sensory play! He created a small world for his trains with the sensory materials and brought them to life with his own stories and ideas!

Liam had lots to play with in this Christmas sensory bin. It has been one of our best yet with many small activities for him to play with again and again. He particularly relates to the trains and knows them all, so I hoped he would be able to play a bit longer with this bin.