Yesterday I decided to throw together a quick sensory drum for Jack. I call it a drum instead of a box because I used a drum he received for Christmas. It was an instrument set. All the instruments were inside this drum. He has lots of containers that his toys go in. Even a Pirate metal bucket from Easter. I chose the drum because half of it is see through.

I used things I had in the cabinet. I raided my pantry! I used rice, split peas, kidney beans, black eyed peas, and lentils. I had the kidney beans and split peas from a Thanksgiving decoration I made and then I had the other things just from previous recipes. I used his toys inside of the bin. I didn’t have to go out and buy anything specific for this activity. That was nice. It felt like a freebie!

It took me maybe 5 minutes. Most of the time I spent on it was looking for all the bags of dried goods to put in it! What an easy activity to create. He really likes it.

At first I really buried all of the toys. Trying to get him to dig for them. He wasn’t so interested in doing that. Maybe because he is still 15 months that concept was unclear. BUT if they were poking out a bit he loved searching for them. I could ask him to find a certain object and he would dig it out.

Found a block

Score! A car!

Today he pulled objects out on his own, without any prompting. I found the lid to the drum and he also enjoyed putting the lid on and taking it off.

It gets slightly messy, beans and rice all around the drum but nothing some vacuuming couldn’t fix. I vacuumed this morning from yesterday’s session. Jack loves when I vacuum. He gets so excited every time I bring it out, which is at least once a day these days. I don’t mind the mess so for me that was no big deal. The way I see it, he is learning and learning can be messy. So is life. It is nothing a 5 minute vacuum session cannot take care of!

Next on my list is a felt car mat! He is obsessed with cars. He has started to “drive” his cars around and make car sounds. I think a car mat would be right up his alley. I also plan to make a felt board for him to play with, since he also loves magnets so much.I thought it would be nice for him to learn how other things can stick together besides magnets.

I hope to have the felt mat done before next week. I will post that project as well.