Valentine’s Sweetheart Sensory Bin

I love a good sensory bin as you could probably tell and we have also been trying to incorporate Montessori more and more into our daily routine. I came across some super cute Valentine’s sensory bins and decided to put a little spin on my own one.

To start with, I dyed a bag of rice pink a few hours before fully putting the bin together. That was the process I was most afraid of but it actually was fairly easy! I knew that my kids would absolutely try to taste test what they were working with so, I just added 2 TBSP of water to a 2 lb bag of rice and then slowly added in some neon pink food dye until it had dyed every single grain of rice and was the desired color. I let it sit in a metal bowl before transferring just to make sure all the rice was dry and that the food coloring had set in.

After the rice was all dry, I then transferred it to a clear sensory bin. I snagged mine from Amazon for about $15 but any type of bin will work. Ikea also sells a sensory table if you’re looking to have one available for the kids all the time. Eventually, we will purchase it because I want to have it available to them at all times.

Learning Through Play

Now comes the fun part and that’s adding all the “toys” into the bin. I use that term loosely because it’s meant for them to really think and problem solve which is where the hearts that open and close come into play. I threw in the cookie cutters and the measuring spoons as well for learning. The gems were just to give it that fun feel but we did touch on the different shapes and colors that they were.

They had such a blast playing with it and really enjoying taking the rice and “cutting out” letters along with measuring it. We talked about how one was bigger than the other and also went over the letters they cut out. This is where you can really take the opportunity to teach them all about the different things that are present in the sensory bin. I let them go wild with it first before attempting to teach because if I don’t they certainly are not going to listen to a thing I have to say!

Below are some more fun photos of the kids enjoying the sensory bin!

They had such a blast with this sensory bin so we will definitely be doing them for every holiday! And then of course have one that we use all year round when we get our Ikea table!