Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin

It is Sensory Saturday and we have not had a good sensory bin in a couple of weeks! This week, I decided to set up a sensory bin for Valentine’s Day. I cannot even begin to explain my children’s excitement when they came down to the sensory bin filled up! Clearly they had missed sensory play themselves.

Celebrating Valentine’s Day

My children love to celebrate all the holidays, as I am sure most children do. Valentine’s Day is such an easy holiday to show them some extra love. We truly do not celebrate this holiday in big ways in our house but we make sure each person feels some extra love. Our favorite way to celebrate is the Valentine’s Day Door Hearts. Beyond that, we sprinkle in multiple activities centered around hearts and love. As we have always talked about, sensory play entertains my children for hours. Making this sensory bin was actually quite simple. My youngest and I took a quick trip to the dollar store and gathered a handful of items for Valentine’s Day. Things like foam hearts, some bins with hearts, and some roses. Then we dyed our rice.

How to Make Colored Rice

So there are a couple of ways to dye rice. The first is with food coloring and vinegar. You can actually see the recipe here and learn how we have made it this way in the past. Another way is to use liquid watercolors. This is actually how we dyed our rice this time.

1. Place the rice in a gallon bag.
2. Squirt in some liquid water color of choice.
3. Mix the colors into the rice until it is evenly distributed.
   • Shake, squish, roll!
4. Allow to fully dry.
   • We laid some of ours out on cooking sheets and left what did not fit in the bag.
   • Ours was dry within probably 1-2 hours.
5. Enjoy!

Sensory Bin Fun

My kids chose to make potions today! Sensory play allows the creativity to flow. They stirred up the rice and filled the bins with some hearts or roses and rice. They would then share their concoction with their siblings. When dumping out the rice to share their potion, depending on what filler also came out decided their fate! For example, if they got a rose at one point it meant they would have luck for the rest of their life. The amount of filling and scooping, and feeling the rice is always incredible to me. They can truly play in a sensory bin for hours without being bored.

Some other fun sensory bins we have done: popcorn, snow, and corn.