Sensory bags are an easy way we as parents can encourage our children to learn through exploration independently, inexpensively, and easily.
Sensory bags enable our children to explore the world around them and discover using their five senses. Shaving cream sensory bags can easily be enriched for children as they grow as well! Tuck this one into your fun kid activities list! BTW-I have one of those on my Pinterest board should you want to go take a peek.
I stumbled upon a website called Growing a Jeweled Rose while teaching one year and simply love it. They have the most creative and fun activities for children of all ages. Fun things like sensory baths, themed play, mud play, ice play-it’s endless really.
Row is 22 months and loves exploring. I want her to feel comfortable in her environment. Part of that is desensitizing her to a variety of textures. A common way we do this is through sensory bags. Let’s make one! Have an older child? I’ll enrich this for you too! What does that mean? Enrich-I will show you how you can use this with older children by changing it up a bit!
Supplies-Ziploc Bag-I used the gallon size, shaving cream-dollar store!, food coloring, and duct tape DON’T FORGET THE DUCT TAPE! (Notice how in the picture there is no duct tape-um yeah.)
Shake your shaving cream and fill the bag halfway, add some food coloring drops-to start you could just do one color-we did two. Fill the remaining bag with more shaving cream and add the second color if you so desire. Zip. TAPE! Don’t forget the tape part or you will be sorry.
I like to let Row play with sensory bags somewhat supervised-meaning in the high chair with me in the kitchen. I enjoy giving her time to explore on her own casually checking and encouraging as needed. The shaving cream bags feel really cool! They only last a day or two but they’re fun and inexpensive. They feel cool to the touch and fluffy which is pretty neat!
This is also an easy rainy day activity!
Enrichment-hide objects inside and allow children to find while playing, mixing colors.
Four and Five Year Olds-Use science journals (notebook) to record what the bag looks like before being played with, have then draw a picture of what they predict will happen, and draw a picture of what did happen.
School Age-put letters inside and have children write a word that starts with the letter they found, put numbers inside-draw a picture with that many objects.
Have you used sensory bags before???
Very good article. Babies and toddlers love joking with these mess-free shaving cream sensory bags. I put together a shaving cream sensory bag for my baby to play with color. Using sensory bags helps develop excellent motor skills, as the kids create patterns in the cream. It also is a fun way to get a mess-free sensory experience!