Objective:
Creating fun & simple sensory activities
Skill Development: Sensory
Minimum Age: Toddler
Messiness: Low
Materials
- Plastic tub or this inflatable S&S Worldwide sensory bin
- 2 cups flour
- 2 cups ground coffee
- Warm water
- Measuring cups
- Items for stirring like spoons, craft sticks, spatulas
- Dinosaurs {we love these large ones}
- Scoops, rakes, tweezers from S&S Worldwide
Books to Read
*Reading enhancing the learning environment
? Dirty Dinosaurs ?
Flour, water, and coffee grounds = this fabulous smelling “mud” to have our dinosaurs play in. Then time to clean them off ?
I’ve been creating sensory bins using food for almost 20 years. This is a fun & Simple way you can play today with your child.
Prep:
1. In a plastic tub or this inflatable and portable bin from S&S Worldwide, allow the children to measure and dump in 2 cups of flour.
2. Then let the children measure and add in 2 cups of coffee grounds. Ask them to smell this and see if they can guess what it is or what it smells like {Ours is French Vanilla}. Ours was fresh ground coffee but used grounds might work also.
When these dry ingredients had been added to our bin, the children thought it looked like a volcano, which was fun to discuss since we've been studying volcanos in our Dinosaur theme unit.
3. Add in some warm water. We started with 1/2 cup and added in more as the children mixed it up.
4. The children stirred up this mixture, which smells amazing by the way, and then we added some Dinosaurs and fun sensory items like rakes, scoops, tweezers...
How 2 Play:
Now for the Fun!
Let the children scoop the "mud", walk the dinosaurs around, even let them dig with their hands! We also hid little dinosaurs in the mud and asked the children to use these giant tweezers to see if they could find them (great for fine motor skill development)
I love incorporating literature into our sensory bins so we also read I'm a Dirty Dinosaur.
Ready to clean up your Dino? Head outside to a water table or add water to another bin inside and let the children clean off those Dirty Dinosaurs.
