Make some scented rainbow beans for sensory, imaginative and creative play time fun!
Here’s another wonderful guest post while I am on my baby-moon! Contributed by the wonderful Rachel of Kids Activities Blog and filled with gloriously sensory fun! Thanks Rachel.
Do your tots love to play with their hands, touching and feeling everything? I know my preschoolers love sensory activities.
We recently created a bucket of rainbow scented beans to our kids play cupboard. They just love digging and exploring with their beans.
Ways to Learn and Play with Beans
Feed your Baby.
Your kids can fill cupfuls of beans for their baby to eat.
Compare amounts.
Fill two cups with beans and ask your tot which cup has more beans in it. Try using tall cups and more wide shallow cups and compare amounts again. Often kids think a more narrow (but full) cup has less. Help your kids learn about volume with this invitation to play.
Smell the Beans.
Blindfold your child and ask them to sort the beans by smell. We scented our beans with different essential oils. Our kids had fun identifying the various scents (e.g. : lavender, lemon and peppermint).
Practice Fine Motor Skills.
Ask your kids to transfer beans to the little cups using wide craft sticks or tweezers. For younger preschoolers give them a spoon. Your kids are learning balance and direction as they fill their cups with beans.
Play Pretend.
Due to the scents our kids decided that the peppermint beans were ice cream and the lemon beans were a smoothie. They had a blast scooping out cups of ice cream for each other to eat.
Craft.
Get out a piece of paper and glue your dyed beans onto your paper. You can first draw an outline, like a circle or a sun, and your kids can fill it in with the colorful beans – OR let them just play willy-nilly.
What would your kiddos do if you gave them a bucket of beans?
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Find Rachel at:
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