Category: diy

Cheerios Sensory Bin

For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to do something special for Theo, since he basically does the same things every day: play with cars, play with balls, play with the dogs, eat, nap, watch Songs for Littles. He seems generally happy, but things have to get a little boring for him!

This was a really easy sensory bin to do. I ground up Cheerios in the food processor. It took a shocking amount of cereal – almost a whole box! But again, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I wanted to do a food-base because Theo is still putting everything in his mouth these days.

Throw in some random kitchen utensils, and you have a sensory bin! He played with this for about 20 minutes, which was a huge win for me.

Underneath, I put his activity mat from Noa so we could attempt to easily clean this up.

Any ideas for other sensory bin or sensory play activities??

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Dollar Store DIY: holiday sensory bin

A few weeks ago, we were supposed to have a very rainy week and I started to get nervous, since Theo is old enough now to need some sort of activity every day. Most days, an afternoon walk will suffice, but not in the rain!

I decided to check out our local dollar store and see if I could grab some seasonal items to entertain Theo. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so the dollar store was definitely the place to go to fill up the basket, which I also found there.

I selected items that could tie back to the 5 senses. Theo’s favorite sense is definitely taste, since everything goes in his mouth anyway!

Taste: candy canes, but I left them wrapped

Smell: scented pinecones

Sound: Christmas bells

Touch: gift bows, pipe cleaners

Sight: red and color themed items

Hopefully this post will inspire you to make your own “rainy day” sensory basket! Also, I’m toying with the idea of selling kits to put in your own sensory basket or bin. Stay tuned for more details!

Upstairs Living Room Makeover

Ever since Theo was born, our living room has looked like a daycare center. As it turns out, babies need a lot to entertain themselves all day, every day.

My living room daycare center, and this was on a good day.

We are very lucky in that our home also has a loft / living area upstairs. On kind of a whim, we decided to relocate Theo’s main play area from our “main” living room to our loft / upstairs living area. Let me tell you, I am so much happier! Now that most of his toys are upstairs, it’s easier to delineate kid/play time from adult/relaxing time. We jokingly call this space the mountain house since it’s upstairs. We are funny.

Before
After

I am proud to say that the only thing I bought new for the upstairs playroom are the posters that I added to the walls. We repurposed an old armoire that I had acquired a while back (in here I am storing snacks, wipes, burp cloths for spills, toys that are out of the rotation), and moved the Montessori shelves from downstairs as well.

Oh, well we did get a few new things – we upgraded the TV to a 65″ (mounted) and added a sound bar as well. We have them on our other TV’s, and since we will be spending more time upstairs we decided to add a sound bar up there as well.

I’m kicking myself for not taking better before and after pictures. It’s great to have a separate and dedicated play space, and it’s also great to have my living room back! Well, until Theo’s birthday. I’m going to need a second house by the time Christmas rolls around!

Our next project is to childproof the loft area. We plan to build some room dividers that we can tuck behind the couch, creating a wall-like barrier that a child won’t be able to climb over.