Plastic Easter Egg Sensory Bin

This Easter sensory bin is such a simple idea, yet it has provided HOURS of fun for all three of my girls.  As I have mentioned before we have a HUGE collection of plastic Easter Eggs and I am always looking for new and different ways to use them.  This sensory bin was a spur of the moment attempt to keep Clara (11 months old) occupied while we decorated the house for Easter. I filled our sensory bin, which is just a large under the bed storage bin that I picked up at A.C. Moore, with all of our plastic Easter Eggs and the Bunny Egg Dipper Tongs that we use when we color Easter Eggs.  (I was excited that they get to use that more than once during the season too!)  Later I added an Egg Carton that they enjoyed filling up with eggs. 

Since there are a variety of sizes of eggs Juliette especially liked putting the little egg in the medium egg inside the large egg and surprising Emily with it. 
I thought it was pretty amazing that this bin kept a 7 year old, 4 year old and 11 month old busy and playing with each other.  These pictures make me smile every time I see them!

After a few days Clara discovered that is is also a lot of fun to climb into the sensory bin of eggs!!

Check out some of our other SENSORY FUN activities.

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Baby Fun ~ Big Buttons

 

Clara is 9 months old and wants to do everything that her big sisters do.  She loved playing with our collection of  really big buttons.

These REALLY BIG BUTTONS are a lot of fun for all ages!  We use them for sorting, patterns and now baby play.  Clara enjoyed exploring them.  She looked inside the container, picked up the buttons and especially liked dumping them all over the floor.  This is a great activity for developing fine motor skills and cause and effect relationships.

Stick It

This is one of the first activities that I did with Emily when she was a baby/toddler.  She was not that impressed with it, but this is just another example of how different my two little girls are because Juliette LOVED it!

I taped a piece of clear  contact paper on the tray of Juliette’s highchair and gave her pieces of paper from our scrap box.  I showed her how to put the pieces on to the paper and how they stuck to it.  She got to work right away, she put them on then pulled them off and moved them around.  This project is also great fine motor skill practice.  It  is also one of the first activities that she has spent a really long time working at and it thrilled me to pieces!

Once she was finished I pressed the contact paper onto a piece of construction paper and cut around the edge of it.  We chose yellow since according to Emily that is Juliette’s favorite color.    

Puffy Paint Sensory Fun!

The other day Emily and I had a great time making some puffy paint pictures together.  It was even more exciting to share them with Juliette!  After they came out of the microwave and cooled for a little bit we set it on Juliette’s tray to see what she would do with it. 

To our surprise it did not go  into her mouth!!

She loved touching and feeling the different textures.  The smooth paper is a great contrast to the stiff, rough puffy paint. 

Feather Fun

Emily was  recently working on a project that involved feathers and I thought that they would be a great sensory experience for Juliette.   

She loved  picking them up, feeling them, and being tickled by them too.  Of course since she loves sticking everything in her mouth I had to watch her like a hawk, but she did have a great time and it did take awhile for her to try putting them in her mouth.

Having Fun Learning

Our Week Having Fun Learning Together!

Emily is 38 months old and Juliette is 10 months old

 

During Music Class Sarah introduced the kids to the piano/keyboard.  Emily was very excited about this and followed Sarah’s direction once it was her turn at the keyboard.  She loves listening to and watching my mom play the piano and is so excited to learn how to play herself, even though right now we are just starting out with very very basic concepts.

 

We made pumpkin bread with our friends at Sarah’s house.

 

The girls did a find the V letter hunt with the bingo dauber.

 

We did a listening and following directions activity/game that went really well.  I am excited about doing more of these kind of activities to strengthen their listening skills.  It also reinforced placement concepts (ie. under, above, in…)

   I made another Which One of These Is Different printable for the girls to do since they liked the other one.  In this one they had to find the different shape.   I had Emily point to the one that was different, tell me why and then circle it.  She did really well with it. 

We worked on patterns with these printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 

We did the letter V and made a Vase with foam and felt flowers.  It came out really cute, I can’t believe that we are almost finished with our alphabet book! 

Emily painted with bug sponges.

 Emily LOVES frogs and her friend got her this cute Melissa & Doug Funny Frog Gamesfor her birthday.  We brought it to Aunt Jennifer’s house and everyone had fun playing it.  It was good practice with colors and taking turns.  Each player spun the spinner and then had to through their frog onto that color lily pad.

For our stART project we read Splish, Splash, Spring and Emily drew a picture of herself with a rain hat and umbrella.

 

Emily helped me fold towels.  She always asks to do the little ones so I give her the washcloths, hand towels and dish towels to fold.

 

Tiny Tot School

Juliette has been very busy!!  She went to Mother Goose Time at the library again this week and had a great time.  She is always on the go and I can’t believe how daring she is, she wants to walk so badly.  I also noticed that she is gesturing so much more recently.  She is pointing and waving at things that she wants or likes.  She practically lunges out of my arms if she sees something that she wants to get closer to.

Juliette is very strong she was pushing Emily on this lion walker. 

The babies watching the big kids at the keyboard.

 

Aunt Christina trying to get Juliette to walk, it really looked like she was going to let go and walk to the froggy!

Juliette “helping” fold clothes, she loved playing in the laundry basket.

Juliette and her friends hanging out in the play pen.

 

Our favorite books from this week:

• Rosie’s Walk ~ Pat Hutchins
• Splish, Splash, Spring ~ Jan Carr
• The Amazing I Spy ABC ~ Ken Laidlaw
• Little Lamb: Finger Puppet Book ~ Chronicle Books

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Having Fun Learning

 
Our week in TOTSchool/Preschool 

Emily is 37 months old

Juliette is 8 months old

Emily and her friend went to the Circus!   Both girls really liked the glow in the dark bracelets that my friend got for them from the Dollar Tree instead of buying the over priced light up toys that they sell there

Emily’s favorite part was seeing the elephants.  

This week we made the letter P for Piano.  I thought that Sarah did a great job putting this together for the Girls.  The finished P’s looked so cute! Emily loves using the bingo dauber.  She used this print out from Confessions of a Homeschooler to make the  letter p. The girls made Easter Egg Collages.  First they colored an Easter Egg printout, Emily used green since that is her favorite color.  Then they had foam stickers, shiny stickers, ribbon and pom poms to decorate their egg with.  I really liked how this project came out.

We also made Pizza’s for lunch.  These were really yummy and went along really well with our P theme!!

Emily received the Leap Frog Word Whammer Fridge Phonics for her first birthday.  We have always had it out around the house but the only thing she ever really did with it was push the button to listen to the ABC song (which is actually how she learned to sing her ABC’s)  Since she has been watching Leap Frog - Letter Factory, she is obsessed with letters and has really started to enjoy using the Word Whammer.  She was able to follow the directions to make the words.  Here she is pushing the letters that she put into the correct spots. 

For our stART project we read Good Egg and Emily painted Tin Foil Easter Eggs.

For some fine motor skills practice I cut up straws and gave them to Emily to thread onto some green lanyard.

Emily helped me make The Pioneer Woman’s Prune Cake.  She loved sifting the dry ingredients together as well as practicing scooping, pouring and dumping!

Emily recieved Dr Seuss Super Stretchy ABCsgame for Christmas.  Since she has been doing so well with her letter recognition I thought she would enjoy this game and boy was I right!  We have played this every day this week and she absolutely loves it. 

This game is excellent not only for letter recognition but also for following directions.  It is similar to the idea of twister, you have to try to put your hands, feet and even ear to  as many of the letters as you are directed to.  For each one you are able to do you get to keep that letter token.  The winner is the player that has the secret letter at the end of the game.

After art group on Friday we drove out East to visit Emily’s cousin.  My sister-in-law invited us over for lunch and then to go to a bunny program at their local library.  Emily was so excited to get to hold a little bunny.  The woman that came did a fantastic job talking to the children about bunnies.  She also taught them to count in sign language.  Emily was really into it so I think I am going to start trying to teach it to her and Juliette.

Emily holding the bunny on her lap while her cousin pet it.

Emily and me with the bunny.

 

Tiny Tot School

Juliette is doing so much recently that I am so excited that I am able to include her in my TOTSchool post!

Juliette loves other kids, while the girls were working on their projects she was excited to be “playing” with Braeden.

     

   I put four of the balls that we had in Juliette’s toy box into this muffin pan.  I moved it around and she watched the balls move in holes.  She enjoyed picking them up and banging them together.

While she was playing I caught some of it on video.

 

Our favorite books from this week:

• Little Critter’s Easter ~ Mercer Mayer
• Good Egg ~ Barney Saltzberg
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom ~ Bill Martin Jr.
• Bye-Bye Big Bad Bullybug! ~ Ed Emberley

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!