This 5 speckled frog sensory bin is perfect for babies and toddlers who still put things in his/her mouth!
This bin was such a success in sensory class las week that I have to share it with you!
Learnings:
- Color green
- vocabulary “frog” “sticky” “more”
- Counting 1-5
- Fine motor skills
- sensory exploration
Supplies needed
This 5 speckled from is made from edible-safe beads, and a mix of flavored and unflavored gelatin plus frog bath toys.
- 1 cup of pearl couscous
- 1 box of blue Jell-O
- 2 packages of unflavored gelatin
- optional – a small box of yellow gelatin
- frog bath toys
- sensory bin (we used a squared 9×9 Tupperware)
- Ice cube tray – optional
- Food coloring
How to prepare
The base of this sensory bin consists of a mix of jello and unflavored Gelatin to avoid the baby/toddler to consume a lot of sugar. By mixing the two, the baby will still have some flavor and will want to play longer but the amount of sugar will be less making the sensory bin less sticky as well.
Start by making the jello according to package, on a separate bowl add two packages of unflavored gelatin with 1 cup of cold water – whisk well. Then add ½ cup of hot water and mix.
Mix blue flavored jello mixture with unflavored gelatin mixture and pour into your sensory bin.
The bin only has 3 large frogs because my idea was to complete the bin with 2 different type of frogs I have.
For these smaller frogs, I decided to use lemon flavored jello and place the frogs inside, making gelli cubes. In order to make the cubes not fall apart when you take them out of the ice cube mold, you need to make sure you add less water than what the packages ask for. I usually do half of what the packages asks for.
If you do not want to use jello because of the sugar, you can make our recipe for gelatin cubes using only unflavored gelatin and food coloring.
Gelatin Cubes Recipe
Notes
Use different colors to make the sensory play activity more attractive!
You can replace the unflavored gelatin with regular Jell-O. Playtime will be more sticky with the Jell-O because of the sugar in Jell-O but a lot more tasty!
Ingredients
- 2 boxes (or 8 packs) of Knox unflavored gelatin
- 1 cup of boiling water
- 2 cups of cold water
- Food coloring
- Ice Cube mold or silicone molds
Instructions
- Pour 1 cup of water and heat it on the microwave for about 2.5 minutes
- While that is boiling, slowly still the unflavored gelatin powder onto the cold water – mixing it with a whisker as you slowly pour it in.
- stir until it is completely dissolved
- Slowly pour the water onto the cold gelatin mix and mix with the whisker
- Pour the gelatin mix into the ice cube container
- Pour a few drops of food coloring into each ice cube mold section and stir gently. The more food color you add, the darker the color will turn out.
- Place the ice cube tray into the refrigerator and let it harden for about 3-4 hours
- When harden, unmold the gelatin and place on a sensory bin
Place both containers in the fridge overnight.
How to make the Edible water beads
To add more color and texture I added some colored edible water beads to the bin. These are colored couscous and here is the recipe to make it. Just note that if you do not use all the beads in your bin you can freeze them to be used later!
Edible beads Recipe
Notes
This technique can be done to color any type of pasta 🍝
Ingredients
- 2 cups of pearl couscous
- Food coloring
- Water
Instructions
- Cook the couscous according to package directions (usually boil for 8 min)
- While the pearl couscous is cooking, fill up several bowls with cold water 3/4 of the way. (One bowl pee color you want)
- Add a few drops of food coloring to each bowl
- When the pearl couscous is done cooking, drain and distribute the pearl couscous among the bowls of cold water
- Let it sit for about one hour or longer. The couscous will start absorbing the color
- Drain and toss around with a little bit of oil to prevent the pearl couscous to stick to each other
- Add the pearl couscous to your sensory bin and let the fun begin!
Thats it! Don’t forget to sing the 5 speckled frog song as you play, count from 1-5 and reinforce the color green.
Have fun! Even my son who no longer put things in his mouth had a great time with the babies!
