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Calm the Holiday Overwhelm with a Christmas Discovery Bottle

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This time of year, Moms need a backup plan.


A little tool that mom can pull out of a cupboard and hand over to a kiddo who needs a little bit of quiet time.


We all get overwhelmed by our environment.  The constant input of stimulation from people, schedules, work requirements, holiday activities, holiday clutter, school and activities that keep going (but then add the additional celebration activities to the already full schedule…)


It can take a lot to keep it together for an adult who is managing the day’s requirements, let alone a child who doesn’t quite know what is happening next.  Or why.


Sometimes a bit of a calm, slow, deep breath is in order.  And it can come in the form of sensory integration, including a discovery bottle!





We made this Christmas themed discovery bottle very quickly and have been pulling it out every day since.  A sensory bottle like this is calming, relaxing, and may be just the thing to settle the feeling of holiday overwhelm.


Kids can calm their feeling of holiday overwhelm by relaxing with a Christmas themed sensory discovery bottle, while looking for shapes in their environment. Great learning tool for preschoolers!


Christmas Shapes Discovery Bottle

This post contains affiliate links.  See our full disclose here.

Make a sensory discovery bottle to keep in your purse for overwhelmed shopper helpers or excited cookie baker assistants and have a backup plan on hand!


Kids can calm their feeling of holiday overwhelm by relaxing with a Christmas themed sensory discovery bottle, while looking for shapes in their environment. Great learning tool for preschoolers!




To make this Christmas Themed Discovery Bottle

You’ll need just a few materials to make a discovery bottle with a Christmas theme:


Kids can calm their feeling of holiday overwhelm by relaxing with a Christmas themed sensory discovery bottle, while looking for shapes in their environment. Great learning tool for preschoolers!





This sensory bottle was fun for my preschooler and toddler to prepare together.  We scooped the split peas and grass seed into the bottle while they worked on fine motor skills with their scooping (I love giving them developmental training skills when they don’t even realize they are building skills!)


Cut up the Foam Craft Sheets
into basic shapes (More skill areas! This time, my daughter worked on her cutting skills, and is foam sheeting ever a great way to practice precision in learning to cut!)


Kids can calm their feeling of holiday overwhelm by relaxing with a Christmas themed sensory discovery bottle, while looking for shapes in their environment. Great learning tool for preschoolers!



We made a circle that looked slightly like an ornament, a square that we turned into a present, a triangle (tree-ish looking thing?).  Pop the foam shapes into the discovery bottle.


Screw the lid onto the bottle with a bit of glue.  (The glue part is important for busy little hands!  Use super glue to keep the lid in place.)


Proprioception with a Sensory Bottle

Now is the fun part!  Hand over the discovery bottle and encourage your kiddo to shake, shake, shake!  The proprioceptive input from a discovery bottle is calming heavy work and will provide a time of relaxing as they watch the falling peas or colored shapes.


READ MORE about Sensory Bottles HERE.



Shape Identification and I Spy Activity

Now, use your discovery bottle to work on a few learning skills.  Show your child how to shake up the bottle and look for shapes hidden in the green peas.  There are a few ways they can use this discovery bottle in learning:
  • Ask them to name the shape.
  • Name a shape and ask them to shake the bottle until they find that shape.
  • Ask them to shake the bottle and name an object in the room that matches the shape they’ve found in the bottle.  (This is a great activity to do while being carted around a grocery store or other busy shopping area!)
  • Name an item in the environment or room and ask them to find the matching shape in the bottle.
  • Work on colors and counting by asking them to find three red items in the bottle.
  • Ask them to find an item in their environment that matches the color of the shape they’ve found in the bottle.

I Spy is such a great way for kids to work on visual scanning and visual memory needed for handwriting, copying words and math problems, and reading.  Kids need to scan their visual field while pulling important information and finding needed items in a busy background.  When copying math problems from a vertical chalkboard at a distance, they are shifting their head and eyes from a horizontal to vertical (and sometimes rotating their head and neck) to copy written material.  Visual tracking allows a child to copy and place written work in the correct spots on their paper, while scanning back to the overhead position without losing their place.


Hopefully this Christmas Discovery bottle is helpful this overwhelming and busy Christmas season. May it be a backup plan that works for you and your little helpers!

Stop by and see more Christmas Discovery Bottle ideas from the discovery bottle blogger team:


Sunny Day Family | Christmas Tree in a Bottle
Preschool Inspirations | Jingle Bells Discovery Bottle

Christmas Handwriting Activities

Writing out that Christmas wish list is a difficult task that brings out tears instead of holiday excitement.  I’ve got a solution for your kiddo with handwriting difficulties: a packet of modified paper for all of the Christmas handwriting tasks that come up each year.  Use this handwriting pack to help kids who struggle with handwriting to participate in holiday traditions while even working on and developing their handwriting skills!

Working on handwriting with kids this Christmas season? Grab your copy of the Christmas Modified Handwriting Packet. It’s got three types of adapted paper that kids can use to write letters to Santa, Thank You notes, holiday bucket lists and much more…all while working on handwriting skills in a motivating and fun way! Read more about the adapted Christmas Paper here. 


Kids can calm their feeling of holiday overwhelm by relaxing with a Christmas themed sensory discovery bottle, while looking for shapes in their environment. Great learning tool for preschoolers!


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Some of our favorite Discovery Bottles for Sensory learning and calming input: 

Math Dominoes Discovery Sensory Bottle

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Using things you have in the house for learning and play is the way to go when purchasing items is expensive and excessive.  We made this Dominoes Math Discovery Bottle for some sensory math practice this past week using a few items that we had on hand.  The nice thing about this sensory discovery bottle is that you can use different materials based on what you’ve got.  There is no need to purchase specific items for this math activity.  AND, once the learning and discovery is done, you can re-use the liquid inside.  Read on to see how!


Make a math inspired dominoes sensory or discovery bottle with light! this is perfect for Kindergarten and First grade math.


We are including affiliate links in this post just in case you decide you need or want to get the items that we’re sharing.  This post is part of our month-long Learning with Free Materials series where we are sharing learning ideas for homeschoolers and school-extension activities using items that are free or mostly free (i.e. CHEAP or you already have in the home), and is part of the 31 Days of Homeschooling Tips as we blog along with other bloggers with learning at home tips and tools.



Make a math inspired dominoes sensory or discovery bottle with light! this is perfect for Kindergarten and First grade math.

What is a sensory bottle?

Sensory bottles, or discovery bottles are a calming bottle designed to allow a child to focus and re-group.  This math sensory bottle is sure to provide a calming effect as your child does a little math, too.  You can read more about how to make a discovery bottle.
Start with any brand of body wash.  Don’t worry about waste, you’ll use it again after this activity has been done again and again.  For the math portion of our discovery bottle, we used 

mini dominoes. You’ll want the  to be plastic for the discovery bottle material. Other options to use in a math discovery bottle are
foam craft sticks
that you cut into rectangles and draw dots just like dominoes onto each side, or making your own dominoes with craft sticks like Mommy Needs a Coffee Break did.

Make a math inspired dominoes sensory or discovery bottle with light! this is perfect for Kindergarten and First grade math.
Find a clear plastic bottle with a lid.  A wide-lipped opening would work better, but any recycled plastic jar would do.  Pour the body wash into the jar.  Fill the rest of the jar with water.  Add the dominoes and fill the water to the very top so that there are no air bubbles.  Exact measurements of soap/water ratio are not needed.  The soap gives the water a great bubbly consistency and will “float” the dominoes when shaken.  Give your discovery bottle a good shake and swirl and watch the dominoes fall and float to the bottom.  
Make a math inspired dominoes sensory or discovery bottle with light! this is perfect for Kindergarten and First grade math.

First Grade and Kindergarten Math with a Discovery Bottle

Now for the light part of our light discovery bottle: We pulled out a small flashlight and watched the bubbles float as the dominoes sank through the soap and water mixture.  This added sensory component made our discovery bottle extra fun and even more of a discovery!  We tried to follow the falling dominoes with the light and name the number by quickly counting the number of dots.  My oldest daughter was challenged to quickly add up the total number of dots on the spotted domino.  

A skill that is done in Kindergarten math is identifying a number based on dots seen on a dice or domino.  This skill is important in number identification and processing for math.  My soon-to-be Kindergartner tried to name the numbers that he saw by counting the dots.
Re-use this bottle!  Once the kids have used this discovery bottle for addition, subtraction, and calming sensory input, re-use the soapy water.  Add it to a recycled foam soap dispenser
like we did in our foam fine motor workout sensory bin, or just use the soap and water mixture in a recycled soap dispenser at your sink for hand washing.  The body wash will provide a great scent and you’ll have clean hands, too. 

We’ve joined other bloggers in a monthly Discovery Bottles Blog Hop.  You can see all of this month’s light inspired discovery bottles below:
Rainbow Discovery Bottle | Preschool Inspirations
Color and Light Discovery Bottle | Left Brain Craft Brain
Phonics Discovery Dishes | One Time Through

You will love to see our other discovery bottles:

How to make sensory bottles
I Spy Sight word sensory bottle

Fine Motor Workout Foam Sensory Bin

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This foam sensory bin is a fine motor workout and SO much fun!  We actually did this activity (and took these pictures) last summer, but I’m just getting around to sharing them. 
 
 The secret to the foam is not what you might expect.  We used a common household item that you probably just throw away.  The hand strengthening that happens with this foam sensory bin is such a workout!   
 
Kids can get messy in the soapy foam and explore the senses, too.  This is a perfect outdoor summer activity, but could definitely be done indoors in a bin or sink.
 

 


Foam Fine Motor Strengthening Activity:

 
{This post contains affiliate links.}  To make our foamy soap, we used 

these soap dispensers. But don’t waste the bathroom soap! Save the containers after the bathroom/kitchen soap has been used up. Recycle the dispensers to create a foamy, soapy, sensory play activity that the kids will love!  You’ve probably seen this sensory foam activity.  We’ve never played with that version of sensory foam, but the colors and sensory fun of our activity reminded me of Fun at Home With Kids’ foamy fun.

Fine motor strengthening workout activity with foamy, soapy, sensory play!
 
It is so easy to make a soapy foam with these recycled dispensers.  Did you know you can re-use the dispensers?  Simply add a bit of liquid dish soap in the empty container and fill the rest of the container with water.  We added a squirt of liquid watercolors before putting the lid on and giving the dispenser a gently swirl.


Fine Motor Strengthening Workout:

Pressing the dispenser is really a great hand strengthening work out.  Not only that, if you position a bin on the ground, they are getting a workout to their whole upper extremity as they put weight through their arms.  They are moving around and shifting their upper body weight in a quadruped position while experiencing sensory input.  What an activity!
 
To extend this foamy sensory fine motor workout a bit more, try these ideas:
  • Add scents to the foam
  • Encourage your child to practice writing letters and numbers in the foam.
  • Hide animal figures or magnetic letters in the foam.
  • Continue the foamy play once the bubbles start to fade, by adding water at ta high pressure from the hose or kitchen sink.  The pressure of the water will bring the foam back to life for a second round!



 Sidenote: You can totally re-use these foam soap dispensers in the bathroom.  Just add a bit of scented liquid body wash and fill with water.  Instant scented hand soap for washing up at the sink.

Sensory Gardening with Kids

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It is that time of year when we start to dig up the dirt and grow our garden…all with the kids!  Digging in dirt and kids go hand in hand so when we started our garden for the first time last year, the kids were all over it.  They were my biggest helpers when it came to planting, weeding, and of course, taste-testing!  This post includes pictures from last year’s garden, and we can’t wait to get started on our garden again this year!


Gardening with kids. Make these small adjustments to your garden to make it a sensory sanctuary in your own backyard!



This post contains affiliate links.

Sensory Fun Gardening with Kids


You know we LOVE sensory play, right?  Gardening is the ultimate sensory activity when it comes to kids.  There are so many of the senses addressed when a child is outside in the dirt.  There is the calming and relaxing environment of quiet outdoors, soft dirt, cool colors, and the warm sun.  Digging and turning dirt is a wonderful proprioception activity for kids (and adults) who need to address movement and grading of muscle use in activities throughout their day.  The resistance of weeks that need pulling will provide feedback to muscles and joints.  Kids can taste, see, feel, and smell so many textures, tastes, colors, patterns, and olfactory experiences depending on the fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs that are planted.

Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!

Make a Sensory Garden for Kids


Gardening is already such an amazing wealth of input to the senses.  How can you make it even more of a sensory haven for kids to calm, relax, or provide stimulation?
Sight:  Plant brightly colored flowers.
Plant flowers in a pattern order.
Use brightly colored garden markers.
Add flowers or bushes that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Garden Hanging Butterfly Feeder
or hummingbird feeders can easlily be added to gardens by hanging to branches or walls.
Add textures to borders.
Add height and depth to gardening surfaces by using wall hangers, raised potted plants, or tables. A Vertical wall planter
encouraged overhead reach and visual attraction to different planes.

Sound:  Add bird feeders or wind chimes
to the garden.
Add water features to the garden. A solar powered water feature
can be easily added to a garden space.
Plant ornamental grasses or taller plants that will add a soft sound in the breeze.

Taste: Plant a variety of sweet, bitter, tart vegetables and fruits.  
Add edible flowers to borders.
Encourage cooking with kids using the produce from the garden.

Touch:  Plants can provide a variety of textures.  Some leaves are soft and fuzzy, and others are sharp and prickly.  
Pulling weeds in different soil experiences is a great sensory activity.  Pull weeds from dry soil and wet soil.
Add rocks, pebbles, bricks, and gravel for texture.
Play in mud puddles.
Walk barefoot in the grass and dirt.

Scent:  Dirt is such great scent!  Add novel scents like mint, lavender, tomato plants, basil.

Proprioception:  Add plants that require a bit of “oomp” to pick or harvest, like radishes, potatoes, carrots.  
Have children dig!  Moving soil provides heavy input to upper and lower extremities.  
Push wheelbarrows with varrying weights of dirt. (I love the sze of this Kids’ Wheelbarrow!)
Lift and carry buckets of water.
Pull the hose from the hose hook-up.
And wind it back up when done!
Use gardening tools like a hoe, garden rake, scoops, shovels. Kids can use adult sized tools but a child sized rake, spade, hoe, shovel set. would be great too.

Vestibular:  Encourage children to get down on the ground to garden.  
Jump in mud puddles.

How to incorporate sensory play into playing gardening with kids

Sensory diet activities can be specific to sensory system like these vestibular sensory diet activities. Sensory activities can be prescribed according to need along with environment in order to maximize sensory input within a child’s day such as within the school day. Using authentic sensory input within the child’s environment plays into the whole child that we must understand when focusing on any goal toward improved functional independence. 

Many sensory diet activities can naturally be found outdoors. In fact, outdoor sensory diet activities are a fun way to encourage sensory input in a child’s environment and without fancy therapy equipment or tools. 

It’s a fact that kids are spending less time playing outdoors. From after-school schedules to two working parents, to unsafe conditions, to increased digital screen time, to less outdoor recess time…kids just get less natural play in the outdoors. 

Knowing this, it can be powerful to have a list of outdoor sensory diet activities that can be recommended as therapy home programing and family activities that meet underlying needs.

That’s where the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards and Sensory Challenge Cards come into play.

They are a FREE printable resource that encourages sensory diet strategies in the outdoors. In the printable packet, there are 90 outdoor sensory diet activities, 60 outdoor recess sensory diet activities, 30 blank sensory diet cards, and 6 sensory challenge cards. They can be used based on preference and interest of the child, encouraging motivation and carryover, all while providing much-needed sensory input.

Here’s a little more information about the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards
  • 90 outdoor sensory diet activities
  • 60 outdoor recess sensory diet activities
  • 30 blank sensory diet cards, and 6 sensory challenge cards
  • They can be used based on preference and interest of the child, encouraging motivation and carryover, all while providing much-needed sensory input. 
  • Research tells us that outdoor play improves attention and provides an ideal environment for a calm and alert state, perfect for integration of sensory input.
  • Outdoor play provides input from all the senses, allows for movement in all planes, and provides a variety of strengthening components including eccentric, concentric, and isometric muscle contractions. 
  • Great tool for parents, teachers, AND therapists!


Be sure to grab the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards and use them with a child (or adult) with sensory processing needs!

Outdoor sensory diet activity cards for parents, teachers, and therapists of children with sensory processing needs.

Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!

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Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!

Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!

Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!

Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!
Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!
How to grow a sensory garden

Get the things you’ll need: 

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Stress Reducing Sensory Bin

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Sometimes a mom (and the kids) needs a little stress-reducing.  We’ve done lavender scented sensory play before (a few times!) for a scented relaxation activity.  This stress reducing sensory bin is not scented, but it is stress relieving with it’s sensory play, resistive activity with proprioceptive input, and general slow-down-time-to-play-together-fun.
 


Stress Reducing Sensory Bin for Kids (and Moms)

Stress reducing sensory bin with strengthening, fine motor play, and proprioceptive feedback
This post contains affiliate links.  
Gather your sensory bin materials:
field corn
balloons
 
Start to play!  We played in the corn a long time.  We pull this bin out all the time for sensory play and it’s common for the kids to ask for it at least once a week.
 
This time, I showed Little Sister and Big Brother how to place the corn kernels into the balloons.  What a great fine motor dexterity activity!  Tripod grasp on the kernels,  bilateral hand coordination to manage the balloon, eye-hand coordination (visual motor integration) to place the kernel into the balloon…this was therapeutic fun!

Once the balloons were filled up, we had our own sensory bin full of DIY stress balls!  It was cool to manipulate the corn in the balloons with a resistive gross grasp (using all of the fingers together at once to squeeze the balloon)  A gross grasp of the hand is essential for many skills and requires strength and endurance to complete tasks like managing scissors or a hole punch.

Proprioceptive Sensory Bin

Proprioception is a sensory process of the body that allows input to be regulated and responded to with motor movements and positions.   The proprioceptive system receives input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, stretch, movement and changes in position in space.  Our bodies are able to grade and coordinate movements based on the way muscles move, stretch, and contract. Proprioception allows us to apply more or less pressure and force in a task.  
 
This gripper activity will not only provide a strengthening exercise for the hands, it also provides feedback to the muscles of the hands. It can help busy hands to slow down given resistance and amplify the feedback of the muscles of the hands. 
 
This is a GREAT exercise to “wake up” the muscles of the hands before a handwriting task.  Kids that press hard when pressing too hard when writing with a pencil would really benefit from the feedback this proprioceptive activity provides.
 
Create a Proprioception activity for hands with a relaxing corn sensory bin
We threw the large balloons around the room and listened to the different sounds corn made when the smaller and larger balloons were shaken.
More relaxing activities for play:
lavender sensory bin 
 Calming Waterbead Sensory Bin
 Sensory Water Bin Play

Rainbow Smoothie Recipes for Kids

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We LOVE healthy fruit and veggie smoothies in our house.  When the kids hear the blender blending, they come running!  So when I saw this smoothie recipe below, I knew I had to feature it.  I love the rainbow of colors in the smoothie recipe.. Then I started thinking that we need more colors of smoothies here! I can’t wait to try all of these smoothie recipes with my kids.  We’ll sip our way through the rainbow!


Kids will love these healthy smoothie recipes! Sip your way through the rainbow with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple smoothies. From Sugar Aunts.

A Rainbow of Smoothie Recipes:

RED SMOOTHIE: Watermelon and Lime Smoothie from Housing a Forest
ORANGE SMOOTHIE: Tropical Orange Delight smoothie from mom Endeavors
YELLOW SMOOTHIE: 
GREEN SMOOTHIE:
BLUE SMOOTHIE: Blueberry Kale smoothie from Coffee Cups and Crayons
PURPLE SMOOTHIE: Very Berry smoothie from Crazy Adventures in Parenting



And make a rainbow of colors with a Rainbow smoothie recipe from Jodie Fitz

What is your favorite smoothie recipe?

Valentines Sensory Bin

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valentines day sensory bin

Today I have a Valentines sensory bin that is so easy to set up, and you can use the materials you have on hand, while helping kids develop fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, crossing midline, and so much more. Sometimes simple play ideas are the best.  A simple bin of corn (or dried beans/peas/lentils/sand/flour/rocks…) and a few spoons, scoops, and bowls are all a kid needs for imaginative sensory play, creative language development, fine motor skill work, and learning through play! These are the kind of Valentine’s Day activities that can be added to OT plans.   We made this Easy Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin with just a few items and had a day of fun.  

This is a Winter sensory bin that we love to use for Valentine’s Day therapy!

Easy Valentine's Day sensory bin idea for scooping and pouring. Sometimes simple play is the best!


Valentines Sensory Bin

This post contains affiliate links.  

Pouring and scooping items into bowls with spoons works on eye-hand coordination, transferring, motor control to manage the spoons, and hand dominance as they scoop with the dominant hand and assist with the non-dominant hand.  Encourage your child to use their dominant hand and to scoop from left to right as they transfer corn.  

Here is information on the development of eye-hand coordination skills and how that development impacts function and performance of daily occupations.

Scooping and pouring materials encourages left to right progression in reading and writing.  Using two hands together in a coordinated manner is bilateral hand coordination and essential for so many functional tasks (tying shoes, buttoning, cutting with scissors).

How to make a valentine’s Day sensory Bin:

To make this Valentines sensory bin, you’ll need just a few materials:

  • Bin or container
  • Sensory medium (dry corn, dry beans, rice, etc.
  • Scoops (measuring spoons, kitchen spoons, tongs, etc.)
  • Small cups or bowls for scooping and pouring
  • Felt or paper hearts

You can also add Valentine’s Day sensory bin materials like the ones found in our new Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit. The Kit contains 25 pages of hands-on materials designed to develop and refine fine motor skills in kids, but some of those items are perfect for adding to sensory bins like this one. Simply cut (or have the child cut out) the images of hearts and other Valentine items. Then, you can scatter the sensory bin items into the sensory material. Hide them and have the child find them.

Click here to access the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit and add these resources to your therapy toolbox.

While they are building motor skills through scooping and sorting, they are experiencing tactile sensory input.

For kids struggling with tactile discrimination, this can be one way to challenge and experience these skills in a safe manner.

Corn sensory bin for scooping and pouring fine motor play

 

We have a big old bin of field corn always ready to go for sensory play fun.  I threw a bunch of  red measuring spoons and some red/white cups.  

heart sensory bin. This is fun for Valentine's Day!

Add a few felt hearts for fun.

Make a Valentines fine motor sensory bin using materials in your home

Scooping, pouring, and dumping the corn is such a fun way for preschoolers to play.  Even the big kids got in on the fun.  They love to pretend to serve up lunch in the little bowls, mix, and pour concoctions in their corn kitchen.

Valentines Sensory bin for kids to help with fine motor skills
Pouring and scooping is a great fine motor activity for kids.

Looking for more EASY sensory bins?
  We’ve started a series covering easy sensory bins from A-Z (and are working our way through that series very slowly!)  Here are some more easy sensory bin ideas:

Bottles and Brushes Sensory Bin
Beans and Bugs Sensory Bin
Corn and Cookie Cutters Sensory Bin
Sticks and Stones Sensory Bin

Want to add more Valentine Fine Motor activities and movement tools to your skill-building?

The Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit is here! This printable kit is 25 pages of hands-on activity sheets designed to build skills in pinch and grasp strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, precision, dexterity, pencil control, handwriting, scissor skills, coloring, and more.

When you grab the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit now, you’ll get a free BONUS activity: 1-10 clip cards so you can challenge hand strength and endurance with a counting eye-hand coordination activity.

Valentines Day fine motor kit

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

Little Blue Little Yellow Magic Foaming Dough

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Oh, how we love sensory play activities!  From water bin play to soda dough, we love to get messy and learn through the senses.  We decided to give magic foaming dough a try, and oh boy.  Was this ever fun!  This crumbly dough is moldable, soft, and the best part is the magic.  It brings a little science into the sensory play while entrancing the kids with the foaming, goopy, messy fun.  (This post contains affiliate links.  We received a free book to complete this post. Our opinions are our own.)
 
We were honored to review Asia Citro’s new book, 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids and check out all of the best and easiest play time activities.  We really had a blast with our Magic Foaming Dough, but the pictures in this book really drew us in.  The kids kept pointing at each page  and saying, “OOOOh, let’s do that!” There are over 150 activities in the book that help develop creativity and skills…all without a screen.  I loved the easy directions and the fact that activities were budget friendly.  This would be a great gift idea for parents to keep kids engaged, entertained, and learning.


Magic Foaming Dough Activity for the book, Little Blue and Little Yellow:

Magic foaming dough to explore the book, Little Blue and Little Yellow
We’ve done a sensory activity to explore Little Blue and Little Yellow using Kool Aid puffy paint before so when we made this foaming dough, we were ready for the color mixing fun.

We whipped up a batch of magic foaming dough, following the easy directions in the book.  We separated the dough into two bowls and added blue food coloring to one bowl and yellow food coloring to the second bowl.   These colors looked great next to each other.

Like the directions said, it was dry and crumbly, but completely moldable.  We explored the colors and like in  Little Blue and Little Yellow, we pretended some of the yellow moved over to the blue, and vise versa.

The kids had fun guessing what color blue and yellow make when combined. (Baby Girl’s guess of It makes PINK!” was received by groans from Big Sister and Little Guy.  ((Guess we need to work on the color mixing with Baby Girl…haha!))

“Look it makes GREEN!”

Little Blue and Little Yellow made Little Green.

After the kids played for a while, I told them I had a surprise to make this dough magic.  They were SO completely excited!  I gave them a squirt bottle of vinegar.  (Icing squeeze bottles work really well for this part!) …and the magic begins!

It was really neat to see how much this dough foams up.  I wasn’t quite expecting such a reaction, but it turned out to be pretty magic for mom, too 😉

It was pretty cool to see the foaming yellow, blue, and green in different areas of our bin.



We had to get our hands in there to play.  Big Sister looooooved this!  She mixed up the colors even more to make a vivid green color.

She kept saying, “I love this stuff! I love this stuff!”



Even when the bubbles died down, it was still super fun to play with.  The mixture turned into a silky smooth goopy sensory bin.  We really found out what happened when little blue and little green gave each other a hug.  Just like in the book 🙂


For the recipe to make Magic Foaming Dough, get the 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids book.  You won’t regret it!

Corn and Cookie Cutter Simple Sensory Bin

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We are on a simple sensory bin kick around here.  We’re working our way through the alphabet (although, not necessarily in ALPHABETICAL order…) with simple sensory bin ideas that focus on two or three items that you’ve got around the house.  These sensory bin items have one letter in common.  So far, we’ve played with a B sensory bin and an S sensory bin.  (yup, definitely no organized order happening here…)  Today we explore Letter C with Corn and Cookie Cutters!


 Letter C Sensory Bin

Corn sensory bin with cookie cutters

For a Corn and Cookie Cutter Sensory Bin, you will need:

((This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.))
ABC cookie cutters
shapes cookie cutters
field corn

 

A large shallow bin

We have a bin that is filled with field corn at all times.  Little Guy will ask to play with corn at least once a week.  We fill it with random things…

Today, it’s cookie cutters!

Field corn is a larger kernel that is used to feed livestock.  The texture of field corn in a sensory bin is great for tactile play.  It makes a great sensory bin base, and we’ve used it in lots of different sensory activities. 

The cookie cutters in the corn are great for sensory play.  Pushing the cookie cutters down into the corn was such a neat sensory experience.  We talked about shapes, colors while we buried the cutters and found them again.

letter learning with a simple sensory bin

We took the shapes out and replaced them with letters.  Little Guy is working on identifying letters. 

Baby Girl and Little Guy couldn’t keep their hands out of there!

Child playing in a simple sensory bin
Such a great sensory activity…just corn kernels in a bin.  Simple and perfect!

Sensory Handwriting Practice

The ABC cookie cutters were great for practicing letter formation.  The corn kernels gave great tactile feedback when tracing the letters.

Little Guy has been practicing his letter “S”, and this was fun for him.
letter tracing for pre-handwriting activity
Looking for more sensory bin ideas?  Be sure to follow our Sensory Bins Pinterest Board.

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