Sensory bin maken; van sensory speelbak tot sensory play tafel voor baby, dreumes, peuters en kleuters
Introducing our Weather Sensory Kit! This fun and engaging kit is perfect for little ones who love to explore and use their senses. This kit includes: • 600g blue chickpeas • 9 wooden weather discs • Weather wooden shapes • 3 Grapat drops • 3 fabric clouds The chickpeas and loose parts provide a satisfying sensory experience for little hands to explore. The wooden weather shapes and discs add an educational element, helping your child learn about different weather conditions. Your child can use these pieces to create weather scenes, encouraging creativity and imagination. This sensory kit is fun and educational and helps promote fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving. Plus, it's a great way to keep your child entertained and engaged during playtime. Order your Kid Sensory Kit with a Weather Theme today and give your little one a fun and engaging toy that promotes learning and exploration. ⚠️Please note: This kit contains small parts that may pose a choking hazard for children under 3 years old. Please supervise your child during play and discard any damaged pieces. ⚠️ Check out our other sensory kits here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PirateMamaCreations?ref=profile_header§ion_id=36840025 Find us on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/pirate.mama/
Learn how to set up a rabbit sensory bin for your preschoolers. Lots of early skills explored as the kids engage with the bunny small world.
Brilliant small world play ideas that keep our kids entertained for hours.
Anya, the founder of Montessori From The Heart, is an educational coach, a blogger, an author, a digital creator, and an influencer.
Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. Today I'm talking small world sensory bases! Basically that's the stuff you create your small world on! Whether you're setting up a farm, seashore or dinosaur land there are so many great options to bring small world play to life and ignite children's senses at the same time! I share some of our favourites here. There are numerous benefits to small world play. Nurturing imagination, exploring new materials, acting out scenarios from real life, building language and developing social skills are just some that come to mind! In my previous post in the Resources for Play series I talked about some of the key resources needed to set up small worlds. Today I wanted to give you some inspiration of the types of sensory bases that you can use alongside these to set up amazing small worlds! Some of the sensory bases I've included are edible or taste safe, which are perfect for little ones who are still mouthing. Others are brilliant quick fixes on those days when you haven't got a lot of time to set something up. And there are several options that offer amazing sensory experiences, but are on the messier side! Whatever you're looking for I hope it sparks some ideas and encourages you to incorporate more small world play into your day! Wherever relevant I've included recipes so you can try it out for yourself. You can find links to all of the supplies mentioned in this post via the buttons below. Buy Sensory Play Supplies (Amazon US) Buy Sensory Play Supplies (Amazon UK) 1. Water Nothing beats play involving water! It takes minutes to set up and is guaranteed to keep little one's entertained. We often add blue food colouring to our water to enhance the look. Plastic animals, sea creatures, shells and pebbles are great additions to these play set ups. Buy Small World Play Supplies (Amazon US) Buy Small World Play Supplies (Amazon UK) Freezing water is another option and great for setting up polar small worlds. Or make an ice rink like we did for these penguins! 2. Bubble Foam As an alternative to water why not make up some bubble foam? It's great fun and makes a wonderful base for some ocean play. To make bubble foam put 1 part tear free bubble bath (or washing up liquid) to 2 parts water into a bowl. We usually do 1/2 cup of bubble bath and 1 cup of water at a time. If you'd like to colour your bubble foam add a little food colouring at this stage. Mix it up using an electric hand mixer until you start to get stiff peaks and then scoop it out into a tray for play. We usually make 3 or 4 batches of different colours to fill a tray. Get your FREE ebook For more simple DIY recipes & ideas for sensory play at home download your Beginner's Guide to Sensory Play by subscribing to Inspire My Play today. Get Yours Now 3. Play Dough It's no secret that we absolutely love play dough set ups in our house. I can't think of a more versatile resource! It also makes a great base for children to make their own small worlds. Homemade play dough takes a matter of minutes to make and you can easily change the colour to suit your small world theme! You can find our play dough recipe on this post 4. Sand Sand is great to incorporate into small world set ups. I especially like using kinetic sand because you can mould it and shape it easily without needing to get it wet. Because kinetic sand clumps together it also tends to create less mess than real sand! 5. Soil, Mud & Grass Small world play doesn't need to be indoors! You have a whole host of ready made sensory bases in your garden! A flowerbed, plant pot, pile of stones, collection of bark or garden lawn are great places for small world play. You could also collect up a selection of these resources and set them up in a tray inside. For indoor play a length of artificial grass is an easy option to have at your finger tips! We have a roll of artificial grass under our sofa, which gets used with our train track, building blocks and all sorts of small world set ups. 6. Cloud Dough This is one of the messier bases on this list but is such a great, sensory experience! Cloud dough is powdery but can also be moulded into shapes. It keeps for up to 6 months when stored in an air tight container, which means you can get lots of use out of the same batch. To make basic cloud dough simply combine 4 cups of flour with 1/2 cup of oil. If you're intending to use the cloud dough with a child who is still mouthing, cook the flour on a baking tray first at a temperature of 160F/70C for 5 minutes, in order to ensure any bacteria is killed. You can make brown or 'soil' cloud dough by substituting one cup of flour for a cup of cocoa powder. This is one of our favourite ways to use cloud dough! For some really messy play you can turn soil cloud dough into mud by adding a few spoonfuls of water, like we did for this farm small world above. Cloud dough can also be coloured by adding powder paint or grated chalk to the mixture, but be aware that this won't be taste-safe. To make this space scene I grated some charcoal into the flour and oil mixture. I also added a bit of bio glitter to give it a sparkle! 7. Artificial Snow It's not often that we get a chance to play in real snow in the South of England so I love to use it as a base for small world set ups. The quickest and easiest method is to buy some instant snow. Instant snow comes as a powder and all you need to do is add a bit of water and it expands in size. It's great fun and a good one to have in the cupboard for small world and sensory play. If you have time for a bit of DIY you can also make your own artificial snow. To make ours we used 4 cups of shaving foam mixed with 4 cups of cornflour (cornstartch). This should make a powdery snow that's also mouldable- a bit like cloud dough. It's not an exact art so just keep adding a bit more shaving foam until you get the desired consistency. 8. Rice Coloured rice is such a fun base for sensory play but it can also be used very effectively in small world play. Green rice works especially well as grass or use brown rice to emulate soil. Learn how to colour rice on this post here. 9. Spaghetti I just love the colours in this spaghetti ocean! And spaghetti is a great way of adding an interesting sensory element to small world play. To colour spaghetti simply cook the spaghetti as usual and then add a few drops of food colouring. Use tongs to toss the spaghetti in the food colouring and then remove any excess by rinsing the spaghetti. To make this spaghetti ocean I divided the spaghetti up and coloured some green and some blue. 10. Cereals If you're looking to set up small worlds for a toddler, sensory bases made of cereal are a great place to start. Because these are edible you can be confident that little ones can play safely and it won't matter if they have a little nibble too! Crushed up shreaded wheat, cornflakes or porridge oats all work really well. We love this type of base for farmyard play, diggers or a dinosaur themed set up. Looking for resources to pair with your small world bases? Do check out our post on the best resources for small world play.
Let's make a magical undersea world, where tiny hands dig into the depths of imagination and learning. Sensory bins have long been a staple of childhood education, these themed sensory play ideas offer a playful blend of
Toys, gifts and play ideas for the early years. Discover toys and play resources that have greater developmental and educational value for kids. Find simple activity ideas for learning through play!
Peuterspeelzaal activiteiten & ideeën
Small world play ideas for kids. From dinosaurs to fairy gardens, these mini world activities will delight children for hours.
Construction Small World Play Sensory Bin
Over 55 awesome ideas for sensory bins, tubs or trays, including ideas for exploring color, letters, textures, stories and more!
Ocean small world and sensory bin for kids. This is a fun summer themed activity or toddlers and preschoolers.
Small World Play is such an important part of early childhood development and it has numerous benefits for your little learners. As your child explores a small world, they’ll be developing their creativity and imaginative thinking as they create story lines and scenes. Oral language skills are developed as they role-play and narrate their thinking. […]
Turn a grocery bag into a painted paper bag bear den or cozy miniature cave for hibernating wildlife and other small-world play setups with this easy DIY. Autumn is turning to winter here in our
Small world play fuels the imagination. For both children, and parents. When I start to think about a world I want to create for Q I start by asking myself these questions, what inspires me, what brings me joy, and what can I share with Q? This post I dive deep into small world play,Continue reading "20 Amazing and Fun Small World Play Ideas"View post to subscribe to site newsletter.
De Play Tray is de ideale all-in-one speel-, sorteer- en opbergtray voor al wie houdt van sensorisch spel. Perfect om thuis, in je klas of praktijk te gebruiken. Dankzij het flexibele design met verplaatsbare compartimenten beleeft je kind uren speel- en leerplezier met educatieve materialen zoals sensorisch speelgoed, sorteerspullen en zand- en watermateriaal. De tray bij uitstek voor open ended play, small world play en fizzy potion play. De Play Tray biedt eindeloos veel mogelijkheden voor kinderen om te spelen, te creëren en te leren. De verschillende compartimenten zijn gemakkelijk te verplaatsen, wat het creatieve speel- en leerproces stimuleert. Doordat kinderen het deksel ook als extra bakje kunnen gebruiken, hebben ze dubbel zoveel speelplezier. Driedubbel leuk én handig is dat je de bakjes ook makkelijk kan stapelen. Dankzij het goed sluitend deksel is het sorteerbakje ook heel geschikt om alle mogelijke educatieve materialen en speelgoed in op te bergen. Zowel de sorteerdoos als het deksel zijn gemaakt van kwalitatief en kindvriendelijk materiaal, voorzien van antislip op de onderkant. Daardoor kunnen kinderen op een veilige en propere manier spelen met de speeldoos, die je ook heel gemakkelijk kan afwassen - met warm zeepwater of in de vaatwasmachine - én opbergen. Inhoud: 1 x bak (diep) met antislip siliconen voetjes 6 x uitneembare vakken 1 x deksel/bak (ondiep) met siliconen afdichting Kenmerken: Gemaakt uit hoog kwaliteit ABS-kunststof Stapelbaar Afmetingen: Diameter binnenkant : 39 cm Diameter buitenkant: 43 cm Hoogte 9 cm Gewicht3,20 kg Ontdek ook alle accessoires voor deze Playtray.
Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. Are you searching for fun and engaging winter-themed sensory and creative play ideas for your little ones? Look no further! This blog post is filled with easy and interactive activities that are perfect for preschoolers and young children at home or in an early years setting. From exploring winter through touch, sound, and sight, to incorporating winter themes into sensory play, these activities provide opportunities for play-based learning with the aim to support your child’s development. Get ready to have some winter fun with your little ones with these amazing sensory and creative play ideas. Frozen Bubbles This is such a magical experience to do with little ones! If you get a cold morning then it is well worth bracing the weather to blow bubbles and watch them freeze together! This works well when it’s about -2, -3C so as we have cold snap this week why not save this activity to try! Check out our blog post to find out how to do it. Frozen Pom-Poms There really is something magic about freezing things for kids to break free again! Add droppers, warm water, containers & scoops. This is great for fine motor skills and also provides opportunities for colour sorting, maths, exploring freezing and melting and lots more! Please supervise carefully. Pom-poms are a potential choking hazard to small children. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Snowflake Bubble Foam Bubble foam is always an easy win for us! On this occasion we added some snowflake cookie cutters and my little one loved exploring making and popping the bubbles! To make bubble foam simply mix roughly half a cup of bubble bath and 1 cup of water together in a blender or using a hand mixer. Spoon out the foam into a tray. If there’s any watery liquid left in the bottom give that a whisk too. I also some added scoops and bowls and sequin snowflakes that she enjoyed searching for in the foam! Once the foam disappears you can easily re-whisk it back into a foam. In fact, we actually left this in the tray for a few days then re-whisked it to use today and it was just as good as before! Winter Chickpea Sensory Bin It’s no secret that dried chickpeas are one of our favourite sensory play materials! They are so satisfying to scoop and pour (for grown-ups too!) and are a bit easier to contain than rice and other grains. They also last forever to re-use over and over. You don’t have to colour them, but it makes a fun change and it’s so easy to do! To colour dried chickpeas all you need is a bag or jar, a squirt of ready-mix tempera paint and a lined tray to lay them on to dry. You can find our step by step guide here. The chickpeas dry super quick, but if you’re in a hurry you can put them in the oven on a low heat to dry out for 5 minutes. These winter style ones will be perfect for all our seasonal play. Throw in some bowls and scoops and a poppet is great fun to fill with chickpeas too! You can buy our nesting bowl set here. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Arctic Small World Thanks to @minimundos_demimundo on Instagram for sharing this polar inspired small world in the PlayTRAY. There’s so much to explore with this one! Save this list of bases to try sometime : Water with blue food colouring Salt Dyed blue salt, Shaving foam, Oobleck (water & cornflour) Baking soda+water (add vinegar for a fizzy reaction!) Ice Art Freezing some water in a shallow tray makes a great canvas for some process art. You can paint on the ice with regular paint, paint sticks, watercolours or dilute some food colouring and drip the colour on using droppers. Each will achieve a slightly different effect. This is a brilliant one for encouraging kids to explore and experiment and a great opportunity for some colour mixing theory too. Iceberg Sensory Bin I realise this small world isn’t geographically accurate but when your 2 year-old insists we need polar bears what can you do? I wanted to share this particular set-up to show tray play doesn’t always have to be messy! My girls had just as much fun making up little stories with this set up. To make the sea we used a batch of dyed dry pasta I used food colouring for this batch but you can find more info and alternative options on a blog post I wrote here. The iceberg is a bit of packaging painted white and I used a bit of felt for the snow. The mountains are triangles of plywood with the tops painted with acrylic paint. Ice Castles Fill containers of different shapes and sizes with water and leave outside on a cold night to freeze. Use the ice like building blocks to create a castle, using shaving foam as cement! To decorate the castles we used droppers to squeeze coloured water over it and also used paintbrushes to paint the ice. This is a messy activity but incredibly fun! If you can, wrap up warm and do it outside. Also, having a bowl of water to clean hands is also handy. Shaving Foam Arctic Small World Whenever the freezer needs clearing of frost I can’t help but want to set up a small world with it! A quick squirt of shaving foam in the bottom of our playTRAY with a tiny bit of blue food colouring swirled in made the sea and then the frost/ice was laid on top. It inevitably gets a bit messy, but actually shaving foam is pretty easy to clean up. A bowl of water nearby to wash hands is useful and children often enjoy the opportunity to do some washing up! The mountains are a quick DIY using plywood and acrylic paint. The majority of our animal figures are from Schleich, which I highly recommend. Shop Schleich Animals (Amazon US) Shop Schleich Animals (Amazon UK) Cotton-Wool Snow For a low mess, easy option for pretend snow try cotton-wool balls! These are really fun to set up with construction vehicles. My littlest loved loading them up and moving them around the tray and clearing the road of snow. Card Puzzles Don’t throw your Christmas cards away just yet! Why not recycle them into some DIY puzzles? Make these as simple or challenging as you like to suit your own child. Or increase the challenge gradually by cutting the pieces in half each time they complete it. Obviously this isn’t just limited to Christmas cards but is a great way of reusing them! The benefits of puzzles are numerous... problem solving, reasoning about shapes, fine motor skills and concentration to make a few. And best of all this activity takes minutes to set up and is totally free. Winter Farm My kids love a small world farm and so I thought I’d make them a wintery version in the PlayTRAY! I also wanted to show you a few quick ways to make fake snow but you could just choose one and use it for the entire tray. Icing sugar and desiccated coconut are super easy ways to make pretend snow. Mixing equal parts shaving foam and baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) is another way we love. You can also switch the shaving foam for white hair conditioner and that works well too (and smells lovely!). We made our frozen elements by sticking the PlayTRAY segments in the freezer. The frozen mud can be made using chocolate pudding mix or by mixing 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of cocoa and and 1 cup of water, before putting into the freezer for a few hours. This slowly thawed throughout the day to make a fun, messy place to play! Shop Schleich Farm Animals (Amazon US) Shop Schleich Farm Animals (Amazon UK) Ice Skating Penguins To make skating penguins, fill a muffin tray with water and cover with tinfoil. Snap some craft sticks in half and carefully push them through the tinfoil so they are standing upright in the water. Place in the freezer overnight. In the meantime print and cut out the penguins. If you have a laminator, laminating them will give them better protection from the water. Once the water is frozen, remove the tinfoil and tape the penguins to the sticks. Remove them for the muffin tin and you are ready to play! They will glide easily over the glossy surface of the PlayTRAY lid These dancing penguins are available to download for free on our printables page here. An alternative method would be to freeze animal figures directly in the ice. Winter Woodland Play Dough One of mine & the girls favourite play dough invitations! I made this white play dough using our usual recipe and a generous amount of white icing colouring. Alongside the play dough, I put out some natural loose parts and some little trees. As well as making small worlds this is a lovely one for exploring patterns with the loose parts and making tracks in the play dough with the animals (swipe through to see pics) If you would like more info on our top small world resources check out our blog post about it. Making play dough is one of the activities in our FREE Beginners’ Guide to Sensory Play. You can download it by clicking the button below: Get your FREE ebook For more simple DIY recipes & ideas for sensory play at home download your Beginner's Guide to Sensory Play by subscribing to Inspire My Play today. Get Yours Now DIY Snow We have tried a lot of different ways of making artificial snow and this is by far our favourite! It’s so simple to make combining roughly equal amounts of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and shaving foam. It has a great texture and is cool to touch initially, just like snow! If your snow loses it’s ability to form snowballs over time you can revive it by adding a squirt more shaving foam. To fill the PlayTRAY base I used 4 cups of bicarbonate of soda and roughly 4 cups of shaving foam. In the U.K. it is pretty hard to get large bags of bicarbonate of soda in the supermarket but you can pick up KG bags of the stuff cheaply on Amazon (it’s also great for fizzy experiments so worth having a stash in the cupboard). Northern Lights A little twist on the classic nebula jar, we made some Northern Lights jars and it was so much fun! To make the forest scene I cut a piece of adhesive vinyl. If you don’t have vinyl, some black paper will do or you could even paint a forest on the jar using an acrylic paint pen. What you need: • A jar or bottle • Water • Ready mix paint • Cotton wool balls • Bio-glitter • Black paper or vinyl Method 1. Fill your jar about a quarter to a third full of water. 2. Add a generous squirt of paint and some bio glitter and mix. 3. Pull apart or unroll cotton wool balls and place them in the jar. 4. Use a paint brush or similar to press them down into the paint mixture. Keep adding more cotton wool until most of the paint has been absorbed. 5. Now add more water, choose a contrasting colour paint and repeat the process. Continue until you reach the top of the jar before replacing the lid. 6. Cut out a forest silhouette from black vinyl or paper and stick around the bottom of your jar. And that’s it! All mine were able to do this (just help with the forest scene) and each one was unique 🥰. They really are mesmerising to look at! Snow Subtraction Cloud Pom Pom Push I made this one as a visual way to explore subtraction with one of my little ones. The idea was to lay out the pom-poms on the holes and then push through the amount she was subtracting before counting how many were left. I made the cloud into a mini whiteboard with a piece of contact paper/ sticky back plastic over the top and then she was able to record her answer using a chalk pen before wiping it off. For those not ready for subtraction this is still just fun to use as a pom-pom push-it’s a great activity for strengthening little fingers (and they certainly needed it at first with some of these holes!). You could also use this for counting backwards or 1:1 correspondence-say the next number each time you push one through the hole. Winter Light Panel Play Do you own a light panel? This has been a fantastic addition to our play room For this activity I set out a collection of translucent loose parts to make snowflakes. Winter Sensory Bag This winter sensory bag is great for practising a bit of letter formation. Using a sensory approach like this should help children internalise how to form the letter more quickly as well as being more fun and appealing than pen and paper! To make the sensory bag I used hair straighteners to seal three sides of a laminating pouch, added some hair gel, food colouring and some snowflake sequins. I then sealed the final side of the laminating pouch. If you don’t have a laminating pouch or hair straighteners you can easily use a ziplock bag instead. We used ours on a light panel which worked really well but any surface with a contrasting colour would do. Frozen Penguin Eggs Children love to rescue anything frozen! One of the great positives about this activity as it takes the children a long time to do! Here's how to prepare them: 1. Blow up some balloons and let the air out again to stretch them. 2. Place your penguins inside the balloons. This can be a bit tricky but with a bit of patience you can actually get quite large animals inside. 3. Place the balloon over a tap and fill with water. 4. Tie the balloon up and place it in the freezer. Once they are frozen snip off the top of your balloon and it should be easy to peel off. I made a bit of oobleck to put in the bottom of our tray (2 cups of cornflour, 2 cups of water and a drop of food colouring). It’s not necessary but added another sensory element to it and the girls enjoyed playing with the penguins in it afterwards. I gave them spray bottles full with warm water and a little toy hammer to prize open their eggs. The beauty of this is definitely how long it takes- we got a good hours play out of this 😁 Fork Painted Polar Bears Painting with something other than a paintbrush is good fun and fork printing makes great-looking fur! We first made these last year and the girls loved it so much! Feed the Penguin Phonics This DIY game is perfect for practicing letter sounds and words! In this game, I hid the fish with letter sounds written on in a tray of cloud dough- it could easily be rice or anything else- this is just what I already had available to use. This idea was to search through the cloud dough to find the correct sound and then feed it to the penguin. You could easily switch this for words or for little ones posting poms-poms is also lots of fun! To catch the letters as they were fed to the penguin I attached a cardboard box to the back. I also made a hole for his tummy so they could see the contents! This penguin cut out and the fish are available to download here. Bead & Button Snowflakes This is such a calming & mindful process, plus the results are so beautiful! These look lovely hung up on a tree or in a window. All you need are some pipe cleaners to form the snowflake shape and a selection of buttons or beads to thread on. It’s such a great work out for little hands! 🖐 Frozen Play Dough and Wooden People I painted these little Elsa & Anna pegs for the girls to use in their play. I’m definitely not a peg painting expert but it wasn’t that hard to get something resembling the characters by using the right colours! And I think these would make a gorgeous DIY gift. You can check out the blog post here for the full details. Penguin Rescue Place little penguins (or other objects) into a tray or cake tin with water and a bit of food colouring and pop them into the freezer. Once frozen use warm water and a dropper, a spray bottle (because this is always a hit!) to help melt the ice. You can also use a spoon for chipping away at the ice and some tweezers for removing the penguins. I’ve found over the years that this type of activity is usually a winner. It can always be re-frozen and taken out again. Secret Ice Painting Have you tried this before? A little bit of table salt brushed around a cookie cutter or stencil creates a hidden picture on ice, ready to be discovered! We used watered down ready mix paint to reveal the hearts in the ice. You could switch this up for all sorts of themes! You need to be ready to do this activity straight away after prepping before the salt dissolves the ice too much. Either pop a tray of water in the freezer or leave it outside on a cold night to freeze over. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Arctic Small World Backdrop Try an arctic backdrop for enhancing your small world set ups. We made this particular scene using a cardboard box. To make the icebergs, cut out circles of cardboard that get increasingly smaller. Glue them together and invite the kids to paint them white. You can download our arctic backdrop printable here.
This volcano sensory bin for kids doubles as a fun dinosaur small world. This activity is great if you're doing a dinosaur theme.
Small world play fuels the imagination. For both children, and parents. When I start to think about a world I want to create for Q I start by asking myself these questions, what inspires me, what brings me joy, and what can I share with Q? This post I dive deep into small world play,Continue reading "20 Amazing and Fun Small World Play Ideas"View post to subscribe to site newsletter.
Anya, the founder of Montessori From The Heart, is an educational coach, a blogger, an author, a digital creator, and an influencer.
Roar, roar, roar!!! 🐾🦓🐆Welcome to safari and meet wild animals around. Let your child use his/her imagination and fight with tiger, feed giraffe and jump like a frog! 🐘This bin has a variety of different textures for children to try and develop their tactile sense. 🦒Sensory play promotes fine motor skills, cognitive development, problem solving, imaginative play, self- control and much more. 🦧Bin includes: Filler: - 3 cups of green rice (non-toxic food coloring) - 1 cup of brown rice - 100 rgam of green past - 100 gram of yellow pasta Tools: - 1 wooden tweezers - 1 tiny wooden scoop - 1 elephant plastic container Accessories: - 1 big animal 🦁🐼🐯 - 5 small animals🐒 - 2 mash animal stickers - Rocks - Marbles - Some plants and green leaves (may vary)🍀☘️🌿 - Some pompons - 2 wooden slices - 1 palm tree - 2 pinecones * Bin is not included *Animals and plants may vary. * Recommended age 3 years and up. Choking hazards! Supervision required! *You can find me on Instagram: happy_childhoodgoods Please visit our etsy shop to see all our products: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/HappyChildhoodGoods/edit?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. I often get asked for recommendations about what to buy to use with the PlayTRAY. The world of sensory and small world play can feel overwhelming! Where do I start? What are the must-have items? Do I really need to buy it all? There are definitely some basic items that are useful to have (scoops and bowls for example) but beyond that my advice is always start with your child's interests! What fascinates them? What will excite them and draw them into play? And yes, some of these items you might already have at home, or something that will work as an adequate substitute. So don't feel you need to buy everything, not all at once at least! By popular request I've put together a range of options for resources and supplies to go with the PlayTRAY based on different interests and themes. If you are giving the PlayTRAY as a gift, these ideas are a great way of filling the PlayTRAY to make something truly special to open! Many of these setups are a hybrid of bought resources and natural items. Where possible I've included links to resources to make it easier for you to source things to go with the PlayTRAY but please be aware that Amazon don't always direct you to the exact product I've selected, so do just check prices against other listings if they seem unusually high! As always do be aware of the age-appropriateness of the resources you choose. For example I wouldn't use the glass stones featured in some of these set ups until you are sure that your child won't put them in their mouth. To find out more about our award winning PlayTRAY visit our product page or click the links below. Sensory Play Starter Kit When it comes to sensory play there are definitely some tools that are invaluable! The set of resources pictured here will allow you to set up a range of activities. Bowls and scoops are a must for filling and pouring with dry materials like rainbow rice, oats and sand. These activities are the foundation of sensory play and I can guarantee you will get a huge amount of use out of them! The handy tools set by Learning Resources is another great investment for use with the PlayTRAY. Each tool is designed to work on developing children's fine motor skills and hand strength. We find these great to use with water play and for use with pom-poms and waterbeads. Another tool that is very useful is a set of liquid droppers. You can find them all via our Amazon store button below. Buy Sensory Play Tools & Equipment (Amazon US) Buy Sensory Play Tools & Equipment (Amazon UK) To complement these tools I've chosen a couple of popular sensory play materials- rainbow rice and play dough. You can find out how to colour rice here and how to make our super-simple no cook play dough recipe here. Another great starter option would be to buy a pack of waterbeads! Construction Tray Construction play is so much fun and a brilliant way to gift the PlayTRAY to any vehicle enthusiast! An option for a quick and easy base is to buy some play sand or kinetic sand. If you have a bit more time why not try making our sand play dough or use pantry items such as black beans, dried chickpeas and pasta, which are great for transporting with little vehicles. You can even use cereal, which is a great option for our youngest PlayTRAYers who are still mouthing! When it comes to vehicles there are two sets that I recommend. Le Van Toys make a gorgeous wooden set of vehicles that we love but we tend to save these for less messy set ups. If you are looking for versatility & value for money, CAT make a plastic set of vehicles that can be used for wet sensory play, like oobleck, and easily be cleaned afterwards. Both can be bought via the button link below. Buy Construction Play Resources (Amazon US) Buy Construction Play Resources (Amazon UK) Dinosaur PlayTRAY We used kinetic sand for the base of this dinosaur tray but this one could also be set up with play dough or pantry items. If you're looking for greenery for small world play, a good place to start is a pet shop. Plastic plants for a fish tank or reptile terrariums work really well as vegetation! These wooden slices and green boulders are something we use for a lot of different play scenarios. In fact, all of these items you will find useful to reuse! Buy Dinosaur Play Resources (Amazon US) Buy Dinosaur Play Resources (Amazon UK) Ocean Tray This is one of our favourite themes! Water play is a great place to start with the PlayTRAY and these resources will enable them to build their own watery worlds! Although we collect a lot of shells at the beach ourselves I do recommend the pack of shells from Amazon to give you a great selection of different types. We do love our Schleich animals but I also find this pack of assorted sea creatures invaluable! Because these are comparatively cheap I don't mind using them in all sorts of messy play scenarios like setting them in jelly or popping them in the freezer for some ice play! Buy Ocean Play Resources (Amazon US) Buy Ocean Play Resources (Amazon UK) Frozen themed PlayTRAY This one is such a hit in our house! We've also made this Frozen play dough kit as a gift for a few friends and it always seems to go down well. I painted Elsa and Anna peg dolls for this, but if you prefer you could buy little frozen characters (there are lots of options on Amazon). Check out our Frozen play dough kit blog post for full details on how to put this together. Buy Frozen Play Resources (Amazon US) Buy Frozen Play Resources (Amazon UK) Birthday Cake Sensory Play This is the perfect way to gift the PlayTRAY for a birthday and is one of my kids' all time favourite sensory play set-ups. This uses cloud dough for the base, which is a mixture of flour and oil. It's powdery, yet mouldable so it works well with cookie cutters and to make pretend cakes- you can poke in the candles and they will stand up! I added a little bit of vanilla essence to this to give it a gorgeous cakey smell. Adding candles is a must for this and if you can find some number ones too then it is a great opportunity to work on counting and number recognition. You can find the instructions below to make cloud dough. If you'd like a slightly cleaner option than you could substitute the cloud dough for playdough, but still add the vanilla essence- it's a must! Buy Birthday Play Resources (Amazon US) Buy Birthday Play Resources (Amazon UK) Space Tray These space figures from Safari are the perfect size for small world play! Use them with a base of black beans or make some moon cloud dough. Again, these can be substituted for black or grey play dough. I actually made these planets using air-dry clay but below I've suggested a set of planets that you can buy instead. Buy Space Play Resources (Amazon US) Buy Space Play Resources (Amazon UK) Arty Crafty PlayTRAY Okay, so this isn't small world or sensory play as such but the PlayTRAY compartments are a brilliant size for holding craft items so I had to include it! This is also a really inexpensive way to fill the PlayTRAY. Take a trip to a supermarket or craft store to stock up on crafty items. Alternatively, you can find some of our favourite craft supplies linked below. Buy Art & Craft Resources (Amazon US) Buy Art & Craft Resources (Amazon UK) I hope that's given you plenty of inspiration for resources to use with PlayTRAY and how you can gift it in an exciting and original way! Do pin this article to refer to later and for more PlayTRAY ideas do follow us on Instagram at @inspiremyplay. You can also find a selection of our favourite play recipes and PlayTRAY set ups in our PlayTRAY ebook.