Ocean Sand Sensory Bin

This sensory bin doesn’t coordinate with our current theme, but I was inspired to make it after finding the little sailboat while I was out thrifting over the weekend. I’m always on the lookout for items that will spark the imagination & this certainly did!

The sailboat is a bit fragile (this toy sailboat set might be a good option if you want a sailboat to recreate the play bin) so it works in a small bin where play will be limited to the bin and is for calm play only. It did require some hot glue before we could use it but I think it will hold up fine now.

I’ve been holding onto this bag of blue play sand for a while now so I finally brought it out to use in this bin. I bought it at Menards.

I added rocks, stick, various shells, and little glass bottles with corks {from Pick Your Plum}. I didn’t buy them for day care use, but they work for this! Again, rarely do I use glass materials for sensory bins, but with supervision, in the bin only, it is safe for the older kids. There are two sizes of jars so I saw one of the boys trying different corks until he found the one that fit. Also, there’s an opportunity to learn about capacity. The jar was too full of sand so he realized he needed to dump some out to put the cork top on.

There are also a few foam sea creatures – crab, fish and seahorse. They went over better than I thought they would!

This is a small bin, really made for 1 or 2 friends to play with at a time, but they couldn’t wait! They all wanted to play at once and it went very well overall but I will limit it to 1 or 2 in the future.

I love it when everything gets quiet during play. Not because I like quietness, but because I know they are fully engaged in their play!