sensory table

do you need a toy that keeps your child busy all year round, always changing and always something new to discover? I thought you would say yes, then you  my friend might want to get a sensory table, or as some others might say a water and sand table. So if you want to know how to make one go Here, CC's Grandpa made this in like an hour, he's really Awesome at stuff like this and the materials costed less than $15, each with lots of lumber leftover to yes make yet another one, I haven't decided if we really need three of these suckers at our house so the lumber is waiting to be cut into something else fun...

So back to the Sensory table, we had one of these amazing things at the Day Care I worked at. I feel in love with all the fun things you can do! As always I have some ideas pined on Pinterest, but here are my notes as to what we want to do:

Obleck was what we did first, it's just corn starch and Water, we had hours of fun with this slime, and it stores for awhile before it gets yukky... just add water untill it's slimy and thick enough to grab but slimy enough that it will slip through your hands... This is a super fun and messy time!

Add fun toys like animals, figures, or shapes, letters for learning and discovery to :
Water Beads, Rice, Sands, Shaving cream, water, beans, corn feed.

CC loves to play house, give her baby a bath, cook something, play baker and decorate cup cakes pizza, cakes or what ever she cooks up,

If you like to garden get some coffee beans or regular beans, fill the tub up give kiddo some safe garden tools and a pot with some silk plants and let their creativity go crazy!

Some other messy ideas I want to try are spaghetti painting ( cooked pasta noodles with paint on them, you mix it up and play with the noodles. Bubble wrap painting getting some bubble wrap taped to the bottom of the tub and put some finger paint and mix it around, when they are done mixing one or two colors of paint lay a piece of paper on the bubble wrap and you will have a print of their work of art!

Need a seasonal sensory/learning activity what about can pumpkin that they can "finger paint"  or add some pine cones and cinnamon in the tub keep the lid on for a couple of days and the pine cones will smell like cinnamon. or what about fake snow in a jar ( sorta like water beads) or real snow from out side, or old flower petals from a floral shop (most times they throw way older flowers they cant sell, perfect for a sensory table)

Again countless ideas for not much money, I spend $8 on 25lb of rice that we will have endless hours of creative fun by hiding things in the rice, coins, pom poms, figures, magnets, and so on.

So happy playing that is what childhood should be all about! and find more info on my Preschool Pinterest board