Our Latest Sensory Boxes

Spring Has Sprung and Ocean Fun are our two latest sensory boxes. I have changed my set up a bit and I am finding these to be much more user friendly.

As you can see we have lots of scoops and funnels and pots to plant things in. There are magnifying glasses and bugs galore. The dirt in this box and the sand in the other are made from a mix of wheat flour and baby oil. You just dump in a bag of flour and work in oil till it is the desired consistency. It feels a little like wet sand. I adore it because it holds shape for building castles and cleans up so easy. It also smells wonderful.



Our Ocean Fun box is half "sand" in the form of flour/oil and half aquarium rock. I got a piece of coral from the aquarium section of Walmart and some sea creatures and buckets from a discount bin at the craft store. I also got a tube for added fun.


I used to use a shoe box sized tub in an attempt to keep them on the table top but it was not working for us. Little hands got frustrated in such small spaces and the tubs ended up spilling. Also with so many kids in the house they all inevitably want to play and there is just not enough room for that in a small box. I upgraded to three large thin tubs from Walmart. They are just what we needed.





I found these adorable monkey rugs at Target in the dollar section. I bought four and put them around the tub. The rule is you pick a spot and stick to it. everything in the tub stays in the tub. Period. Spills are ok and inevitable. The box is about exploring and fun, but no throwing or dumping allowed. Also no taking the toys elsewhere to vanish into the abyss.

Emma's Sensory Boxes

My sensory boxes are finally taking shape. I have decided to make my boxes with single color themes and a few season/holiday boxes as well.

I started the boxes by selecting a base product and color for each box. Pasta, rice, split peas and beans are a few awesome base products. The nice thing about using pasta and rice is that you can dye it any color. I used cous cous for the brown and it took the dye perfectly and ended up as our favorite base because it feels like sand or dirt and looks great in the box.



For my pink box I used a mix of white and brown rice because I thought the two varieties would pick up the dye differently and and visual interest.



I started by mixing food coloring to rubbing alcohol. I tried using vinegar, but it made the pasta sticky.



The process was to add the base product to a gallon ziplock then pour the food coloring and rubbing alcohol mixture and shake. I let it all sit in the baggie for about 30 minutes flipping it over every 10 minutes or so to make sure the pasta got an even coat.

Then you pour it out onto a cookie sheet to dry like you see with the orange pasta below. While the pasta is on the cookie sheet you can add essential oils or candle scent to make your base product smell good too!





I used Orange essential oil for the orange pasta, mint for the green split peas, pumpkin pie spice for the brown, Grape for the purple, lemon for the yellow, and apple spice for the red.

The next stage was the hardest! Finding interesting trinkets that encourage the use of all of your child's senses can be trying! I added a lot of textures by adding pom pom's, curled ribbon, buttons, a bowl and some type of scoop, painted letters and shapes, toys and trinkets to each box. As we go through them I will add something that Emma can taste to each box.


I prepped our fall box to go the extra mile by finding some apples, Thanksgiving and Halloween trinkets to add and remove as the holidays come and go. One of the activities will be to identify the new items and the missing items!

I am putting the finishing touches on the boxes and then they will go into the storage closet and come out one at a time. Emma, Ava and Owen got a hold of the "pink" box tonight as I was working on assembling all the boxes. They immediately instigated a 2 hour exploring session and a lot of begging for school to have a Sunday school day added to our week!