Sensory Activities Archives ⋆ Page 32 of 36 ⋆ Parenting Chaos

Shaving Cream and Water Beads Sensory Bin

March 8, 2025April 27, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Shaving Cream and Water Beads Sensory Bin: Over the last month we have been exploring different ways to play with water beads and our beads are finally reaching the point where they are just about ready to head to the garbage. Wanting to squeeze one last fun activity out of them we mixed our water beads with another one of our sensory favorites — shaving cream! The sensory bin experiment turned out awesome and was a huge hit with the kids!
Shaving Cream and Water Beads Sensory Bin
While the kids did have a blast playing with this activity and it was great for adding a fine motor challenge, it did not hold their attention as long as some of our other sensory bins have. This activity though was fairly low mess, gave me enough time to clean the kitchen while they played (a good 20 minutes), and was super easy to throw together!

How to Easily Make Scented Sidewalk Chalk Paint

March 6, 2025April 25, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Scented Sidewalk Chalk Paint Recipe for Play: Need a quick outdoor activity that will keep your kiddos entertained and exploring? Then this is for you! This simple recipe only requires three ingredients, will not stain your sidewalk, and is perfect for some simple outdoors fun!
How to Easily Make Scented Sidewalk Chalk Paint
This week has been rough to say the least. Trying to get back into the swing of work, get kids started into their new programs, get hubs settled into his new job, finding a new OB…and which boxes are those toys in?! I am pretty sure Meatball thinks I am torturing him as we tear through the boxes looking for the indoor toys.

Thankfully it has been gorgeous outside and the yard at the new house is fabulous! Nothing like kicking the kids outside to play!! After digging who knows how many holes to the center of the earth we were needing a new activity. Enter this scented sidewalk chalk paint. I have seen a couple different recipes floating around that all called for food dye. While I do use food dye in some of our homemade paint recipes I did not want to use it for our sidewalk chalk paint because of the way concrete absorbs…I was worried about staining. This recipe not only did not stain our sidewalks, it kept my kids entertained for a good two hours! That’s a win if you ask me!!

Frozen Water Bead Sensory Bin

March 7, 2025March 22, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Frozen Water Bead Sensory Bin: Water beads are quickly becoming a family favorite around here. We had a blast adding in essential oils to our water beads a couple weeks ago which piqued an interest as to how else we could play with water beads!

Frozen Water Beads

Water beads are tiny hard beads that resemble pellets. They grow when left in water, and become a slippery and squishy sensory material that kids enjoy playing with. Heading into this activity I had absolutely no idea what would happen if we froze water beads, but the kiddos wanted to do something similar to our dinosaur ice excavation activity so we gave it a try…

These frozen water beads were an absolute blast and while not an activity that held my kids attention for one long session, it was one that they visited frequently throughout the day. Am thinking this would make a fun observational experiment next time!

Letter Factory Mixed Up Letters Game!

March 8, 2025March 7, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Letter Factory Mixed Up Letters Game! This simple game is a fun way to get kiddos exploring phonics and letter recognition all while having some simple sensory fun!

Letter Factory Mixed Up Letter Game!
Earlier this week we were sent the new Amazing Word Explorers by Leap Frog for review and my kiddos absolutely fell in love with the new DVD…not that it was that hard of a sell for our family as we adore all Leap Frog learning materials and have used the Letter Factory DVD series to teach all of our kiddos literacy skills.

While educational cartoons can be a great way to pique a child’s interest in certain topics {and pull them into a fun world of imaginary play exploring that topic} it is also important to reinforce that learning away from the screen. Simple games such as this Mixed-Up Letter Factory Sensory Bin are a great way to do just that!

Stress Away Water Bead Play!

March 7, 2025March 6, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Water Bead Sensory Play: Have you or your kids ever played with water beads? If not then you MUST! Water beads are such an amazing sensory experience! They’re squishy, slightly slimy, slippery, and just absolutely amazing!

Water Bead Sensory Play for Quiet Time
This activity has quickly become one of MY favorites. In one extremely simple activity kids are exposed to science, sensory and fine motor exploration! Plus it uses essential oils that were amazing for calming my kiddos down before nap time!!!