Dollar Tree Valentine’s Day Sensory bin

How awesome is the Dollar Tree right? I love how you can go there and every time find something new that you never knew they had before. They have really changed since I first stepped foot in one and I am loving those changes. I was on the hunt for some fun things to make our recent Baby Valentine Party even better and I was pleasantly surprised with the things  I walked away with for all of our sensory play fun over the next few months. 

  Little Miss has been having a blast exploring her Valentine Sensory Bin  using materials from the Dollar Tree.

Their colored crinkle paper is awesome. She loves playing with paper and ripping it up so playing with this already ripped up paper and trying to rip it up has been great for her.  

In their Valentine section, they had these cute little hard plastic/glass like beads. I picked up a pack of red and a pack of pink and tossed them in. R likes to try and find them underneath all of the crinkled paper. I obviously do NOT leave her alone with this, or any of our boxes for that matter. So far, knock on wood, she has listened to all the talks we have had about NOT putting them in her mouth…now the paper is a different story…girl sure loves eating paper. 

 

I added some heart shaped cookie cutters I had on hand, the ice scoop from our ice maker in the freezer, some spatulas, and a heart shaped bowl I had on hand from the Dollar Tree a few years ago and let her go to town.  (The pictures don’t show the bowls and spatula because I needed to sanitize them from all the germs we had floating around our house. 

I let her explore for a minute or two on her own while sitting  with her. I then followed her lead and talked to her about the things that she was doing with the bin. We talked about the textures and sounds the paper makes when we played with it. When she looked for the heat beads we talked about how they fall to the bottom because they are heavy. It was fun to watch her try to get the beads from the outside of the container. She is super inquisitive and quickly figured out that the beads were inside the container and she could find them if she dug under the paper. 

At 10 months, R completely understands object permanence and taking the heart shaped pebbles and placing them under the paper was great fun for her. She loves to find things that we hide and can easily and quickly find them. 

What I LOVE about this sensory bin:

-It was cheap. I used things I already had on hand and added the few dollars worth of dollar tree supplies to it. Total cost = $5.00.

-The materials can be stored away and saved for future bins and projects making the cost of the bin go down even more when you look at it per time being explored.

-The talking points just with this one bin and the sensory experiences R had were too many to count.

-R expressed her personality in her own way and I was able to watch and learn how she learns just by watching her explore.