Sensory Boxes for Toddlers

Every milestone is a joyous occasion with your child and turning 18 months (E is nearly there) means you can go and splurge on those activities and toys you always wanted! Best of all you can leave them involved in something for a few minutes and get those urgent jobs done. Every child develops on their own pace and being home with mine has made me know my child so much better that I would have missed this opportunity forever if I would be working full time. E now can try and stop the urge of putting things in her mouth and explore them with her hands instead, which is the right time for some sensory box play. These boxes are made by so many bloggers that I am not sure who was the first one to come up with this but whoever she was she sure was a brilliant mum or could be a dad!

These sensory boxes are E's very first ones so I didn't want to make them too complexed I just wanted her to be able to see and feel things at her comfort. They are so easy to put together if you have some ideas and basic supplies on hand. I wanted to look for some nicer looking toys to put in side but have still not had much luck finding small but cute animal toys.

Another thing that I corrected in my later boxes is that if the box is too deep (Dino box) and E has to stoop in she finds it hard to play for long so I used some trays for my other boxes.

 E tries to push the dinosaurs through the tubes. I made the trees with paper towel tubes and added some pebbles and tissue papers to give a sort of landscape feel to the box. For the under teh sea box I made a fishing game by tying a magnet to the end of a wooden stick and clipping some fish pictures with paper clips. The idea is to fish the fish clips with the magnet stick.The croc is E's favourite in this box.

Birds are E's all time attraction she loves to chase them, tries to stop them from flying away and shoos them away if she doesn't want them coming inside the house. She points to the sky, sun, moon and clouds and calls them out by name and shouts "Sky" "Moon" and so on. Such a sense of achievement for her and a little for us as parents that "she just said that"!
There are some bird printouts which I stuck on some thermocol and cut them out irregularly. Thee are some feathers for clouds and texture and a rainbow as well as some fabric birds which I bought from India.

 This box is for the nature lover E, her very own flower garden! Any flower anywhere E has to spot it and then run towards it and finally try and pluck it, she even blows on it as if she is trying to spin it around like a pinwheel.The most fascinating thing for her in this tray were the bugs, E just loved the bugs as she was able to hold them and play with them and mum didn't stop her. 

As we graduate towards more complexed sensory boxes we will keep you posted and I hope you can make some for your little ones as well. These boxes don't really look the same by the end of play though but E is very delicate even in her play.