If there is one thing that my kiddos love, it is definitely animals. Include animals in any activity and they are instantly hooked! My kids’ favorites are African and Asian animals (giraffes and panda, to be exact!). But, with the weather turning colder, I wanted to focus on Arctic animals for some play.
My kiddos were gifted this wonderful Safari LTD Arctic Animal Toob for Christmas, and it has given them an alternative to their daily savannah play. Typically, the primary animals to come out during free play are the animals that mainly live in Africa (and pandas, of course!). However, since Christmas, these Arctic animals have made an almost daily appearance during free play time. And that is truly saying something!
I thought I’d capitalize on their peeked interest, given the season, and create a little open ended Arctic play set up!
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Materials:
- Sensory bin (Are you new to them? Check out our step-by-step here!)
- Drop cloth – makes clean up a breeze!
- Rice (white and blue)
- Painted chick peas (white)
- Wooden Trees
- Peg dolls
- Safari LTD Arctic Animal Toob
How To:
There are a couple of steps you will want to complete before you throw this sensory bin together. Those things will be:
- Dying the rice blue – the day prior
- Painting the chick peas white – preferably the day prior, but a few hours will work too!
- Painting the trees – the day prior
- Painting the peg dolls – the day prior
After those things are done, you can throw this bin together in no time at all!
*Note – You do not have to do any painting or coloring in order to create this sensory bin! You can leave the trees and peg dolls in their natural wood form, use cotton balls (or marshmallows) instead of chickpeas, and omit the blue rice using blue buttons, gems or pom poms in its place!
Now that everything is ready to go, lets throw this sensory bin together!
Related: Do you love sensory bins? Check out one of our all time favorites!
The Steps
- Be sure to lay your drop cloth down underneath your bin to catch all of the stray rice! Then, pour your white rice into the base of the bin so it covers by 1/2 inch or so.
- Sweep a small section of white rice over to make way for a blue ocean area. You can make this blue section as large or small as you want. I chose to keep ours a bit smaller since we were mainly using land animals.
- Take some white chick peas (or cotton balls) and scatter them around the white rice, or create a simple design as I did.
- Pop in your trees and peg dolls as you see fit.
- Lastly, add in the animals from your Toob.
Now, bring those kiddos in and get to playing!
Let the magic begin!
This sensory bin is truly magical. My kids (5, 3 1/2 and 1 1/2) played for hours! The animals set up homes, ran away from predators, played in the ocean, built things with the snowballs (white chick peas) and even got showered with ‘water’! They had a blast! And they played together. Considering their ages, that is something that this Mama is extremely proud of!
And once the animal play was done, we added a few small pouring pitchers, some wooden bowls and scoops and they just played with the rice! They collected it, traded it, and poured it into the bowls. It was beautiful to watch. All the while, I was actually able to make a full meal without 3 little boys running through the kitchen! A truly magical experience for us all, haha!
Sensory Bins Are Magic!
I can not say enough about sensory bins. I was terrified to try them at first, and there are plenty of people who think that I am crazy for letting my children play with uncooked rice and beans. But, now that I’ve seen the magic that they foster, there is no turning back!
Imaginative play, fine motor skills, following directions, teamwork, sharing, life skills…they are all encouraged during sensory bin play!
I strongly encourage you to try them with your littles. Even if things get a bit messy, don’t give up! Check out this post to see what you can do and how you can keep these bins interesting.
When I say the words ‘sensory bin’ my kids come running and that, is a beautiful thing!
Want to connect with me? Head on over to Instagram and see what we are up to! And check out my Pinterest page for all of the things inspiring our play right now!
Looking for a great indoor activity to occupy your kiddos on those cold days? Check out our awesome Fine Motor Snowman Indoor Activity!
[…] made ‘cupcakes’ in reusable liners, had rainbow play, used them as snowballs in our arctic sensory bin, and so much […]