Sensory Experiments

I have been biding my time to introduce Victoria to sensory baskets. I have had so many ideas for her to play with but her tendency to put absolutely everything in her mouth has slowed my progress down in that area.
I finally decided to try a few things this week and see what happened.

The first activity was "planting" flowers, I set up a block or florist foam and covered it up with a fake moss, and gave Victoria some fake flowers to stick in the foam. It's a bit hard for her to do yet, but a few friends that are a bit older (around 2 years old) came to visit and loved the activity.

Then I made a sensory basket mixed with stones, glass beads, and colorful pompoms. I was a bit worried about this one as I thought Victoria might put a lot of the items in her mouth. Sure enough we had plenty of that kind of exploration, but everything was big enough not to be a choking hazard, so I let her go at it. And slowly we shifted to exploring with hands, and then moving items from the basket onto the floor, then to another basket, and then back to the first. We are still playing with it so I am eager to see what other kinds of play she will come up with. 

And the last one was a bucket filled with rice and pasta. I put a few little animal shapes in it for them to dig out or set in the mix, and a few measuring cups and spoons. This one was by far the one that every kid loved most I think. They dumped the rice in and out of the cups, in and out on the floor, Victoria tried to eat her share of it, but finally decided that putting it into the cups and giving it to people was more fun. 

I'm glad I took the leap and let Victoria explore all these fun things, it's easy sometimes to be weary of messes  or to worry about age appropriate activities. I am extremely lucky that Victoria has both younger and older friends around to help me fend off those preconceived ideas.