For our Halloween playdate, I intentionally built four themed sensory boxes for littles to explore and oh my goodness were they so adorable with it! I thought I would walk you through my thought process so you too can build fun little sensory boxes at home!
My parameters were that it had to be:
* baby & toddler-friendly - safe if ingested, mouthed, explored, manipulated
* allergy-friendly so no artificial dyes, colors, parfums
* (relatively) easy to set up/clean up/restore (because we had two sessions back-to-back!!)
* not too messy that the children would track it all over the gym but still provide enough texture and sensory for it to be fun fun fun!
These are the boxes I ended up with:
1. RICE
Rice is such a great allergy-friendly medium to explore as it gives the littles the scooping and dumping and pouring they crave for but it is still small enough that if they swallowed some, they wouldn't choke on it. I chose not to color the rice because I was worried about food dye allergies but that would also add a super fun element to the box! I paired it with some Indian corn, themed cups and bowls as well as some wooden spoons and spatulas for some scooping, swishing, shifting fun!
2. PUMPKIN WASH
Who doesn't love water, bubbles, and play?! I bought a few different sized and types of pumpkins, some orange IKEA brushes, little black cauldron pails, and squirted some gentle baby wash (thank you Offspring Natural!) into the water to bubble and the kids had a BLAST splashing and scrubbing and squealing!
FALL EXPLORER
I wanted to give the littles an idea of autumn and falling leaves so I filled up one of sensory boxes with orange/red/yellow leaves that the kids tossed in the air and explored along with some little pumpkins and heavy giant acorns from our Thanksgiving decor!
PEEK-A-BOO! BOX
Streamers, plush pumpkins, felt cut-outs, balls, themed buckets and napkins, fine-motor manipulatives and tools, tweezers, scoop scissors. It was an explosion of orange but the kids had a great time crinkling and rummaging through to see what they would discover!
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