Dino-mite Sensory Bin!

Along with the toy rotation we have also started sensory bins. Our first one is a Rainbow Dinosaur Pasta bin!!

We started out by buying a box of dinosaur shaped Pasta, you can use any shape or brand of pasta you like. You will also need food coloring, white vinegar and a sandwich bag for each color you plan to use.

I didn’t take photos of the dying process but it was pretty simple.

• Split uncooked pasta evenly into sandwich bags
• For 3/4 cup of pasta we use 2 tsp white Vinegar
• 10 drops of food coloring (5 of each color for orange and purple)
• Mix the bag until the pasta is colored
• Lay on parchment paper to dry

I left it out for about 3 hours because I wanted the vinegar scent to dissipate before I put it in the bin. When we bought the 16QT Sterilite containers for the toy rotation we had two extra ones so I used one of those and put some measuring cups along with an old cupcake tin so he would have something to pour into.

To avoid him trying to dump the pasta bin we played with it on the table with him standing on a chair. He jumped right in to grab the measuring cups but it took him minute to start scooping. After showing him a few times he got the hang of it, mostly just moving it around inside the bin, but he occasionally would pour it into the other cups or the cupcake tin.

A few times he dumped the cup on the floor not realizing there was still pasta in it while he was getting the hang of how to old the cup. We spent 45 mins playing with before nap time.

Overall I’m thinking this is defiantly something he can build on! Learning how to hold the measuring cups and how to pour them, and we can expand on it by adding a coloring sorting element with the cupcake tins. Once we have the color sorting down we’ll introduce patterns with the shapes.

Daily Toy Rotation; The beginning!

Hello Everyone!! I know its Tuesday and this is kind of a “Mommy Monday Post” but I wanted to jump in with something light thats also a life update.

Things have been going great with Orion! I love having him here, even if I am so tired all the time just watching him run and explore the world! Part of this exploring has been making a HUGE mess in my living room! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the mess or even the 10 minute pick up at the end of the night. However what I do mind is the fact that he pulls all of the bins down then doesn’t really play with the toys once they are on the floor

Mary Poppins is my role Model: An update on how things are going since my friend and her one year old moved in.

Oh wow where has time gone! This post is going to be a bit long but here is an update on what’s been going on at my house.

It’s been about a month since my best friend Tara and her one year old son, Orion, moved back from Texas and in with me and Sami!! This crazy month all stated with my first plane ride down to Texas to help! Then the 21 hour car ride back to PA. Overall I can say it wasn’t bad, Orion was very well behaved in the back seat, his dad made the trip back with us and sat in the back with him which helped a lot. Since Tara was the only one who could drive we ended up stopping for the night Wednesday night. We still made it here early afternoon on Thursday though, this was mostly because Orion woke us up at 2:30am and we decided since we were up we might as well just get on the road. I was also able to add five more states to my states visited which takes me up to seventeen total states, the others are from PA to FL when I went to Disney. Most of my state map is states I’ve just driven through.