Our two kiddos each have a best friend that goes everywhere with them… And both are caramel colored! You’ve all seen George lots of times, but you might not have met Geoffrey. So here they are – our two caramel colored friends… That we couldn’t live without!
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I’m all about quick, easy ideas that I can throw together in just a few minutes. This center was not one of those ideas. So if you are just starting with sensory activities for your kiddos, this is not the place to start. BUT – any one of these ideas on their own IS a fabulous start. You just might not be ready to put them all together on one day to create a center.
If you’ve read my blog much, you know that Becca is typically satisfied for quite a little bit the first time I intro an activity, and then beyond that, it usually only gets about 5-10 mins of play in a day, every now and again. The great thing about this center is that she has really been glued to it for quite a while, and will go and select a different activity different times… which makes me happy since I did take about an hour to put it all together. (As an aside – I’ve started this week going around and putting away old activities – storing them in labeled Ziploc bags – so that in a couple months I can pull them back out and they will be new again. Sneaky Mommy! 😉 )
The first thing you’ll need for your center is a place to put everything. Maybe you have an adorable little bookshelf that everything goes on fabulously. Or maybe you have a water table like ours
Here are the activities in my Apple Theme Center:
Word Building/Reading
Apple Sorting/Tossing
Rock Dumping/Shaking
Ten Apples Up On Top Reading/Building
Word Building/Reading
This activity has been in my brain for a while, but I hesitated to do it with her because I actually don’t have a set of magnetic letters. And then it hit me – I DO have magnet tape! So, I wrote the words I wanted on index cards, and cut out the letters. Then I stuck tiny pieces of magnet tape on the back! This little sheet tray I got at Dollar Tree in the cooking section. It’s also the perfect size for her little hands to haul out of the center and over the automan or couch for more intense play just focused on this activity. She has begun to try to read the words as sight words, and is doing really well.
Apple Sorting/Tossing
Again with Dollar Tree – I found these little green and red apples in the home decor section, and then I pulled the red and green buckets from her Farmer’s Market Set (Get Yours Here – Aff Link
Rock Dumping/Shaking
I read somewhere that you could make rocks or other hard materials scented by adding tea leaves to them (I honestly don’t remember where), so I got these green rocks, again, at Dollar Tree in the home decor section – literally right next to the apples – and I added Apple Crumble Black Tea to it – so they smell like apples! I had thoroughly cleaned and dried out a coffee creamer bottle, which is absolutely perfect for this activity. She loves to use the funnel and scoop to put the rocks into the bottle, then close the lid, shake it, and then open the lid and shake the rocks back into the bowl. It’s turned into a super fun activity that covers several of the senses. (SO IF YOU’RE JUST SELECTING ONE OF THESE ACTIVITIES TO START WITH, THIS IS A GREAT ONE!)
Ten Apples Up On Top Reading/Building
We LOVE the book Ten Apples Up On Top. So when I saw this idea from Ellen over at Cutting Tiny Bites, I just new we HAD to do it. Here’s how we extended her activity a tad. I printed up this sheet (FREE PRINTABLE HERE!) of ten apples, and let Becca paint them. (I had planned to do red, green, and yellow, and then discovered we were out of paint. So that might be an extension you’d want to add.. so that as you build, you can build a pattern!) After they had dried, I cut them out and taped them onto ten blocks. We only had nine that matched, so the tenth one is the “roof,” as Becca calls it. So here’s how you do it – as you read the book, you stack an apple block on top each time that the animals in the book add an apple. It’s super fun. Although if you pick a heavy top block like we did, you’ll end up with all ten apples up… and then dropping. But, that just adds to the fun!
Looking for the Ten Apples Up On Top Board Book? Here you go!
Looking for wooden blocks? Try this set! (aff link)
Fyi – your Apple Theme Center will not stay looking like my top picture for very long. After lots of love, it might look something like this… 
but just know that this means its being well loved, and your child is getting lots of benefit from it… and if your magnet board looks like ours, you’ll know your hubby has been playing as well. 😉
Total Mommy Prep Time: All told, it probably took about an hour to put it all together – maybe a little longer?
Total Becca Play Time: She spent about 45 minutes here the first day, and has easily spent 15 minutes every day since then on these activities. VERY beneficial and well worth my time to put it together!
Open! Grayson met me with these beautiful baby blues this morning- bright and wide open. I immediately saw my photo for today. What I didn’t foresee was this awesome shot of Becca- mouth wide open to catch the “rain” from the hose! ❤️
“Dorge is very sweepy.” Lays him down on the lower shelf of the changing table and covers him up with a washrag. “Night, night, Dorge!” She’s such a good Mommy!
She has this awesome ladybug that projects stars and the moon onto the ceiling in the dark. She loves playing with it before bed, and dances all over her room to it, often saying, “I’m dancing – with the stars!”
“I coming to get the stars! I’m jumping an get them.”
“Where’s Dorge went?” “He went to take a bath, remember?” “Oh yeah! I go watch him! He goes around and around and around and around (and around…) and get all cwean so I can pway wif him again!”
Opens a adult level chapter book and says, “Oh wow now THERE’S words!” She may have found Heaven.
“I’m gonna put more blocks an make it much, much bigger ok?”
When the block tower got too tall and fell over- “Hmm that’s interesting.”
Told her we were gonna go to Sea World- “I put on my swimmin suit so I can go swim with the fishies and the sharks.” Fearless. Totally fearless.
It poured rain while we were there. I said, “Oh man we are all soaking wet!” She replied, “Yup, we got soak and wet.”
At the mall (hadn’t been there in at least two months, but she remembered the elevators…) “We gonna park and go in and go up the alligator and eat lunch!” Teehee hee. Misunderstood word strikes again.
As a travel agent, I often look for tips to help my clients have a better experience wherever they are going. Even on road trips. Especially on road trips. Especially on road trips… with kids. Our own children are far from easy to deal with on the road. Grayson is NOT fond of his car seat. On many levels… but especially if the car isn’t moving. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot I can do for him. BUT – the other thing he’s not fond of, I do have more control over – that being Becca’s volume. When she gets tired and frustrated, she gets LOUD. Really, really LOUD. And then Brother starts crying even harder and louder. And then Mommy and Daddy really just need ear plugs because there’s nothing we can do. We have been known to pull into a Burger King parking lot way after dark and attempt to tame the savage beasts a little by reading books and feeding a bottle. But honestly, we are still on the search for what works for us in the car. (And yes, I’ve tried a million cute games and magazines and magna doodle things. But, when it’s bed time, it’s just bed time, and nothing can change that.) So, my “Traveling Tuesday” posts the next few weeks leading up to your holiday travels for Thanksgiving will have tips and tricks for traveling with your kids, but it may be a while before they include anything for on the road… B/c we are still searching for that secret.
So today’s tip is about once you get to your destination – our trip was to the Grandparent’s house. The grandparents have great toys that are different from what we have, but I also know that it’s good to bring something familiar just in case little Miss Picky decides she doesn’t like any of the toys and the “I’m BORED!” statement comes out. Thankfully, we did really well on this trip – I think because Mommy packed lots of stuff to do in addition to all the fun stuff already there.
Becca loves sensory bins. And she loves sorting. She played with this bin a little bit there, and then has played with it a lot at home. So… how do you travel with a sensory bin? Because you’re probably thinking of a large tub with a lot of messy junk in it, right? WRONG. A traveling sensory bin should be something basic and simple, and not very messy. And most importantly, it needs to go in a traveling container that has a lid. You need something like this.
So what did I put inside mine? I got paper flower petals from www.consumercrafts.com (not an affiliate link, but it seriously should be as much as I love their stuff and tell everyone in the world about their website…), threw in some little white shiny poms for a different texture, and then did what I’m starting to become famous for – took foam butterfly stickers and stuck them together to create some nice thick, cushy foam butterflies.
Here’s one way she can interact with the bin – by sorting the flower petals by color, and putting the poms in a bowl. She seems to enjoy pulling out the butterflies and flying them around the room more, though. I’m good with that. In a couple days, I plan to throw all this stuff in a big ziploc bag, and hide it in the cabinet til Spring comes around. But with a little girl who loves flowers and butterflies, it’s NEVER off-season to make a butterfly/flower petal sensory bin! 🙂 I’m already starting to contemplate what sort of non-horribly-messy fall stuff I can throw in a bin… pictures will no doubt come later.
Total Prep Time for Mommy: This one took a tad longer than it should have b/c I had the darndest time peeling the back off of some of the butterflies to stick them together! I had estimated it’d take me about three minutes to dump it all together into the box, but with my sticker issues, it took more like 10 minutes.
Total Play Time for Becca: The first time, she was highly distracted (at grandparent’s house, remember), so she played with it off and on over the course of 30-45 minutes. At home, she has played with it exclusively for up to 15 minutes.
Butterbees and Bumbleflies 