Simple Football Sensory Bin
Now N has joined in on the football craze, too! I recently found these cute tiny football helmets and we’ve done several simple sensory activities with them. The first one was this Simple Football Sensory Bin with just three different materials.
(N was 1 year and 2 months old.)
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Materials for Simple Football Sensory Bin for Toddlers
- Shoe box sized storage bin. {Don’t get them from Amazon if you can help it! I originally paid 99 cents at Walmart and they’re now down to 87 cents.}
- Dry beans. {I used pinto beans.}
- Mini football helmets.
- Football Easter eggs.
N and I have done several activities with the mini Football helmets. They’re good quality, but aren’t really meant to be toys. We didn’t have any trouble in the context of our activities, but I’m not sure they would stand up to really intense free play. If you want to use them that way, you may want to take off the face masks. Also, it may seem obvious, but after the third activity, I finally decided to stop playing with them on the slightly rough tiles on the patio, as the plastic does get scratched up.
Putting together this simple football sensory bin took just a minute. I put just enough beans into the box to cover the bottom and added three football Easter eggs, one of them open, the other two closed. I pulled out four random football helmets, mostly going for colorful ones. The Dallas Cowboys helmet was a must because that’s Daddy’s favorite team.
It was the first time we’d used beans and N focused only on exploring them at first.
When he finally pulled out the first helmet, there happened to be beans inside it. N was intrigued!
He spent some time taking the beans out and putting them back in.
It worked with the Chiefs helmet, too!
He’s recently started exploring how different items fit together, and this time was no different.
The beans made a unique sound on the plastic box and on the tiles and N started dropping them on purpose.
Once they were on the tiles, he explored the beans further by rubbing his hands over them. He always enjoys incorporating this type of sensory experience into his activities.
Most of the beans actually stayed in the box and those that were outside were easily picked up – way more easily than the rice we’ve often used. I think we’ll be doing more activities with beans in the future 😉
Have you tried making a sensory bin with beans? Would your child be interested in a football sensory bin? Leave a comment below!
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Our other football activities include
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This is adorable! I can tell he enjoyed this activity!
Thank you! Yes, he had lots of fun with this activity!