Activities for Preschoolers: Creepy Crawlie Sensory Bin

This evening, the kids set up a mini beach in my kitchen. It looked something like this:

Uh huh. We even had to enlist the help of our trusty vacuum cleaner because there was more sand than I thought there would be so a "Montessori style" clean up session would have taken all night.

How exactly did we land up in this situation? For that, we've got to back track a little.

So Calla recently had two sensory bins with rolled oats right? (Read about them here and here) And as a parent, I'm all about fairness, right? So I had to make a bin specially for Poppy too. The original idea was to do a beach themed one, which was quickly scrapped when I realised we only had a grand total of 3 sea creatures.

What we did have lots of was creepy crawlies. So abort sea bin, launch insect mode!

In the bin were a bunch of insects, some pieces of paper (containing facts about insects), rocks and of course, sand. On the side, I provided a rake, a shovel, and a magnifying glass.

Don't you just love our insect set? You wouldn't believe if if I told you it was from the Dollar Store

I mean seriously! Look at all that detail! The Dollar Store rocks.

The tricky bit was to keep the bin away from the curious eyes and hands of the little one. So the box was set up and hidden under the kitchen cabinet.

These were hidden in the sand so Poppy had to look for them

I wasn't going to give her any instructions so I deliberately left some green peeking out from the sand, hoping that it would rouse her curiousity. She was so excited she practically wolfed down her lunch so that she could get to this sooner. But then again, maybe her excitement was due to the fact that I told her this was her bin, and Calla was to be kept away.

I set this up in the kitchen and waited very impatiently for Poppy to return from school

But what do I do, Mama? Now, she's 5 years old. So when I told her "Do whatever you want" like I did, I knew that she wouldn't take it to mean "throw sand all over the kitchen". There was one rule. No water". Not for this activity. Wet sand indoors? I'm not that hippie.

So she got to work. First just moving sand and bugs around.

Then removing bugs and cleaning them.

And then oh! A clue of sorts?

Then she got really excited when I told her there were 10 pieces of green paper, so she looked for them all, and after, they got pasted in our Insect Lapbook.

She got through the whole thing rather quickly and I thought Uh oh. Is that it? But no, she asked me to hide all the insects, rocks and slips of paper again for her to excavate. So I did.

And that's how I left her, when I left to put Calla down for her nap. When I returned, she'd gotten most of the stuff out.... and a large stash of sand under the kitchen counter. "I don't remember what happened, Mama. Maybe it was the wind". Nice try, young lady.

But she didn't manage to squirm out of that one. I explained that because the wind comes from the windows, and our kitchen cabinets were perpendicular to the windows, there was absolutely no way that the sand could have gotten there by the wind. Then she fessed up. And gave me a "wow you're really smart" look and once again believed that Mama knew everything.

Anyway. After reminders of "everything stays in the box ok?", we grouped and counted the rocks.

So that was that. An activity that kept my preschooler entertained for almost 2 hours, mostly independantly. And we kept the box. For good. Or so I thought.

Turned out that we had an early dinner and everyone ate quickly so we were done by 6.30pm. And since it was no longer a novelty for Poppy, I invited both girls to play for a little while. Ohhhhh the baby loved it.

She loved it a great deal. And her sand pouring skills were excellent. It's her aiming that needs improvement. And that, my friends, is the reason why we had an indoor beach in our kitchen this evening.