sensory play

Silk Flowers Sensory Bins

These silk flowers sensory bins were made easily using silk flowers and flower petals. These are a very easy sensory bin filler. I find most of mine at the dollar store.

Spring is coming! After a winter that seemed longer (or maybe just colder) than most, I am very ready to welcome it. As part of my plan to welcome spring a bit early, I made two Spring themed sensory bins. The first one I made very simply with two colours of silk flower petals, soap flower petals (I knew that my sensory sensitive kids would NOT be fans of the smell of the regular rose scented ones so I bought softer grapefruit smelling ones), and little chicks. It was a very simple bin but had a good contrast of textures between the coarser soap petals and the silk petals and then the fuzzy chicks. With the presence of the little chicks, this bin could also double as an Easter sensory experience.

The other bin is one that I love because it is full of bright and cheerful colours! For me, Spring is all about colour. This bin was so pretty.

For this sensory bin, I used a purple silk flower lei, many different silk flowers in an assortment of colours, silk leaves, a large daisy hairclip, and really bright pompoms. The kids really enjoyed this bin. Granola Girl enjoyed grouping the flowers and pompoms according to colour while some of the other kids just wanted to dig their hands in and play in a more random way.

Silk flowers and flower petals are a very easy bin filler because they add colour, a nice soft texture and they hold up well to play and even do well if they get wet. You can easily float them in water.

If you have any sensory bins that you silk flowers or flower petals, please link them up so that others can find more ideas for incorporating this easy sensory bin filler into their sensory play as well.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Simple Valentines Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

This Valentines sensory bin was made at the last minute with very few items but still captured the attention and creativity of the kids! Last year for our Valentine’s Day sensory bin, I used red paper shreds as the base. I hadn’t planned anything out for this year so I used pink and purple beaded garland and shiny foil heart garland as the base. I threw in a few plastic heart shaped containers and in one of them, I put a costume jewelry ring. The container with the ring led my boys to come up to me, open the container and ask, “will you marry me?”!

We had a few friends over to make crafts and play and as always, the sensory bins were very popular with the kids. Our farm sensory bin also got played with a fair bit because I haven’t finished disassembling it.

The kids and their friends danced, ate, guessed how many conversation hearts were in the container (214), made crafts, played in the sensory bins, and played with the chocolate playdough. Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Valentine’s Chocolate and Strawberry Playdough

By Sharla Kostelyk

To create this Valentine’s sensory station, I used strawberry and chocolate playdough. I added other items to encourage imaginative play. This playdough invitation to play held the attention of my kids and I loved the creative ideas they came up with. Strawberries and chocolate are something I think of when I think about Valentine’s Day. Chocolate playdough was easy to make. I used red glitter in the dark pink playdough to make it look like strawberry.

Supplies for the invitation to play:

pipe cleaners
gold foil candy cups
heart cupcake liners
various heart shaped cookie cutters
heart treat mould
lollipop sticks
rolling pin
chocolate and strawberry scented play dough (recipes below)

I was so surprised at what the kids created with the playdough! They are much more creative than I am.

They made cake pops, heart shaped lollipops, bon bons, little creatures, desserts, and cookies. Einstein even made a cookie that looked like someone had taken a bite out of it!

Here are the recipes for the play dough. Both recipes can also be found in my Sensory Bins ebook.

Chocolate Playdough Recipe:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup cocoa
2 Tbsp. cream of tartar
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 cups water

Stovetop instructions:

Add all ingredients to a saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly until it forms a ball and your arms are ready to fall off! Scoop it onto wax paper and allow it to cool. When cool enough, knead it and it is ready to play with.

No cook instructions:

Add the flour, salt, cocoa, and cream of tartar to the KitchenAid mixer. With the dough beater (the flat one), begin mixing on low and add the oil. As it mixes, pour in 2 cups of boiling water and continue to mix on low until it resembles playdough texture.

Remove the dough from the mixer and knead it by hand for 30 seconds to a minute.

The smell of this chocolate playdough is amazing!

This dough keeps soft for months if stored in an airtight container or resealable bag.

Strawberry Playdough Recipe:

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1/4 cup salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
red food coloring or pink food paste
red glitter
optional: 3 drops of strawberry essential fragrance oil

Stovetop instructions:

Put all the ingredients except for the essential oil and glitter into a pot and stir. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it forms a ball. As soon as it goes into a ball, take it off the heat and dump it onto the counter on wax paper.

When it is cool enough, add essential oil and/or glitter and knead it until it is nice and soft. Store in an airtight container or resealable bag.

No cook instructions:

Add the flour, salt, and cream of tartar to the KitchenAid mixer. Using the dough beater, begin mixing on low and add the oil, food colouring, and essential oil. As it mixes, pour in 1 cup of boiling water and continue to mix on low until it resembles playdough texture.

Take the dough out of the mixer and knead it for 30 seconds to a minute. Add the glitter in at this point and mix through by kneading.

The scented strawberry and chocolate playdough create a sensory experience that includes olfactory, tactile, and proprioception sensory systems.

If you are looking for other sensory activities, you may want to join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

Check out some of our other play dough invitations to play:

Peppermint Essential Oil Playdough Snow Playdough

Candy Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

Earlier this year, we were reading the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I like to come up with corresponding activities to go along with our book studies in the hopes that it will cement the learning and usually come up with a sensory bin as part of that. It seemed only natural that a Candy Sensory Bin should go with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

Candy Sensory Bin - The Chaos and The Clutter

I included various sizes of pompoms, little beads that can be strung together to make a necklace that looked candy-like, gold foil bon bon cups to represent the Golden Tickets, an empty Wonka Nerds box, an ice cream scoop, a Pez candy dispenser, ice cream bowls in bright colours, a Fudgesicle bubble blower which was chocolate scented, and the little rings that you can put on keys to tell them apart (which I bought for $0.99 for a pack of 4 and thought they looked like Life Savers and they have great sensory elements to them).

At one point, I bought a pack of Wonka Gobstoppers and ate them so that we could use them in the bin (the sacrifices I make for my kids!) but the empty box likely got thrown away so I bought another box and with that one, I shared them with the kids, but that empty box also somehow got thrown away so after two failed tries, I gave up on having Gobstoppers in the candy sensory tub!

It was neat to see how differently the kids approached playing with this bin. Some got in there and smelled everything, mixed things all around, made a necklace out of the beads and wore it while they played, while others were more methodical in their approach and separated things by colour or just organized the bin in the way they felt best.

Candy Sensory Bin Play I didn’t disassemble this bin because I’m planning to pull it out again for Valentine’s Day week and will add some plastic conversation hearts to it for that. Double-duty sensory bin!

If you are looking for more sensory ideas or information, you may be interested in my book and by following my Sensory Bins board on Pinterest.

Christmas Sticky Tree

By Sharla Kostelyk

The creative vision for this activity was inspired by Angela at TeachingMama. She made a Fall Sticky Tree for her boys a few months ago and I knew that my kids would really enjoy doing one so I went out and bought the main supplies and then time got away from me and before I knew it, it was no longer fall! Snow covered the ground and an autumn activity no longer seemed like it would fit in, so I improvised!

Christmas Sticky Tree at The Chaos and The Clutter

To make this, I used poster putty to attach clear contact paper to our patio window. (For those who are not familiar with it, contact paper is sticky on one side.) I used two sheets of contact paper side by side to create the width that I wanted. I kept the backing on the contact paper until it was stuck to the window and then peeled away the backing.

I used a green Sharpie (permanent marker) to draw the outline of a Christmas tree. I then provided the kids with a pile of things they could use to decorate the tree: tinsel garland, light Christmas balls, pompoms, metallic pompoms (note: the metallic pompoms didn’t stay on very well and most fell off after the first day), felt stars, large glittered foam star, beads, foam candy canes and foam ornaments.

Christmas Sticky Tree Sensory Activity The kids really appreciated the creativity of being able to decorate this tree without any instruction or limitations. I would say that it held the attention of my girls a bit better than my boys and I’m not sure if that is because of the activity itself or just the moods on the day it took place. My boys generally enjoy craft activities as much as my girls do. It was a good holiday sensory activity for all the kids and involved both fine motor and to some extent, gross motor as well.

The activity was more of a success than I had anticipated in that now, several days later, when I pass by the tree, I see that even more has been added to it including paper ornaments that the kids have coloured on paper and cut out. It’s always nice to see an activity that expands and takes on a life of its own. Other than the metallic pompoms which did not stay on very well, everything else is still sticking to the tree and it’s been four days since we first made it.

Christmas Sticky Tree - easy set up and can be used again and again This was a hands-on and easy way to begin to decorate our homeschool classroom for the holidays!

If you would like to see other ideas for Christmas crafts and activities, you may want to follow my Christmas Crafts board on Pinterest.

Milky Slime Recipe

By Sharla Kostelyk

The other day, I saw a cute carton of chocolate milk slime at the bookstore (strange place for slime). The carton made for cute packaging but it’s been my experience that things like store bought slime and such don’t tend to be as good as homemade slime so I tucked the idea away.

Easy to make Chocolate Milk Slime from The Chaos and The Clutter

Today, Snuggle Puppy was having a hard day. A hard day. The Husband is away and that triggers all kinds of abandonment and trauma issues for Snuggle Puppy given his past history. After an awful morning and a challenging start to the afternoon, I remembered something I had heard in a podcast from Dr. Karyn Purvis about parenting a child with trauma that recommended sensory activities every two hours for kids from hard places. I know that sensory activities are usually very effective for calming kids so I decided to give it a try.

I got Snuggle Puppy to help me make our chocolate milk slime. I didn’t have borax which most of the online homemade slime recipes call for so I made this slime with items I had in the house. This fun slime uses shampoo and water!

Milky Slime Recipe

You will need:

2 1/4 cups corn starch
1/2 cup unscented shampoo*
2/3 cup chocolate milk
1 Tbsp. water

optional: brown paint or food colouring

*Note: It’s not necessary to use unscented shampoo, but if you use regular shampoo, it will smell like the shampoo and not like chocolate milk.

How To Make Milk Slime:

Add the shampoo to the corn starch in a large mixing bowl.

chocolate milk slime

2. Slowly stir in the chocolate milk a little bit at a time.

3. Then add the water and mix well.

My Slime Is Too Runny

If when you pick up the chocolate milk slime it’s too runny, you can add a bit more corn starch. Alternatively, if you find that it’s not runny enough, you can add a bit more water or wet your hands and then handle the dough.

If you want it to look more the colour of chocolate milk, you can add a bit of brown paint or brown food colouring. I didn’t have any on hand so ours was only slightly coloured by the chocolate milk itself.

Chocolate Milk Slime

This milk slime is obviously NOT EDIBLE because of the shampoo!

Fun Slime

Snuggle Puppy absolutely loved this sensory activity! It really turned his day around. The expressions on his face tell it all!

playing with chocolate milk slime

He spent about half an hour playing with the milk slime and then later went back to play with it again. He found it had hardened a bit but as soon as he added just a bit more water, it was back to the right consistency. When he was finished playing with it the second time, we put the goop into a resealable plastic bag and sealed tightly to store for another day.

Storing Your Slime

***UPDATE*** Due to a comment on The Chaos and The Clutter’s Facebook Page from a very astute reader, I realized that since this has actual chocolate milk in it, it needs to be stored in the fridge. Alternatively, you could play around with using chocolate syrup and water instead of the chocolate milk.