Toddlerbot loves sensory bins. His first experience with them was our water bead bin during our bug segment over the summer. Moving into Fall (today being the first official day), we decided to work on our new sensory bin last week.
Over the last few weeks, as we've worked on our mindfulness on our walks to and from the park, we've been gathering things we've found in nature, and observing how trees are changing. Toddlerbot has collected different kinds of pine cones, different stages of acorns, branches with dried pine needles, and sweet gum seeds. We talked about how these are seeds for the trees to grow new trees, and the tree life cycle. And more recently, we've had a lot of fun crunching fallen, dried leaves. We've even been walking in a straight line for maximum crunch factor (and balance practice).
After collecting all of our goodies, we decided to dye some rice yellow, orange and red and leave it to dry in the sun. We also took a trip to Dollar Tree for some items we needed to round out our bin. You can see the finished product below!
The little foam pumpkins won't rot before the season ends in late December, but you could absolutely use real pumpkins. We also got fake leaves to reuse in crafts later, and because the the real thing would disintegrate pretty quickly. Lastly, we got paper shreds in Fall colors from the gifting section to simulate the crunch and feel of dried leaves (it works really well, actually). We were pretty happy with how it all turned out!
