Looking for a sensory bin for your toddler or preschooler? Make homemade kinetic sand or used store-bought and create this engaging sensory bin dinosaur-themed.
Supplies
- Kinetic sand (Available in Amazon) or Kinetic Sand DIY recipe
- Sensory bin or container
- Plastic eggs
- Dinosaur figurines
- Optional: Sand mold – dinosaur bones (Amazon)
How to set up a Sensory Bin Dinosaur
Start with your sensory bin base, the Kinetic sand. You can use any store-bought Kinetic sandbag or you can make your own.
To make the best DIY kinetic sand recipe that mimics the way store-bought sands behave follow our recipe below.
Kinetic Sand Recipe
Notes
Some recipes have used softener instead of Star-flo. I find that to be very watery so if trying that you might need a bit more sand.
Clear glue blends better with the sand while white glue will show little white streaks, but it works!
Ingredients
- 1 cup of play colored sand (I’m using género one from Dollar Tree)
- 1/4 tsp dish soap (I’m using Dawn)
- 1 Tbs clear glue (I’m using Elmer’s Glue)
- ½ tsp star-flo
Instructions
- In a large bowl mix the glue, dish soap and star-flo with a spoon until it creates a sticky slime. It’s ok that it sticks to the bowl.
- Add 1/4 of a cup of sand into the slime and mix with a spoon trying to blend all the sand to the slime.
- Continue adding a little sand at a time and blend with the spoon.
- When the spoon stops working to blend in the sand issue your hands.
- Stretch the sand slime and where glue is exposed add sand and fold in.
- Continue until all sand has been blended in.
Adding the elements of play to the Sensory Bin Dinosaur theme
After you have your sensory bin filler or base ready, place it on the sensory bin.
On the side or over it you can add the Dinosaur figurines and plastic eggs.
Invite your toddler to explore the bin by filling up the eggs with sand, hissing the dinosaurs, or making footprints.
If you have Dinosaur-shaped sand molds you can add those too. These were found at the dollar store and although they don’t work very well with sand, they are amazing for Kinetic sand.
Kinetic sand is great to have because it can be used and reused often. This Kinetic sand was purchased at Walmart and although it is soft and has lasted a while, it does stain the hands blue after a while. Next time we are getting a lighter color to avoid this issue.
If you make your own Kinetic sand with our recipe we have found that because it is based on glue, it tends to dry out and it loses its stretchiness after a day, but it still molds and does not stain the hands.
This sensory bin looks simple to set up, and it is, but it is a great activity to work on fine motor development. Pushing the sand to mold it, allows the muscles to get stronger. Adding the sand into the eggs works on eye-hand coordination and development of those little fingers and more gentle movements of the hand and fingers. All super important tasks for early writing skills.
What more ideas?
Using the same dinosaurs you can
make a pom-pom sensory bin. We made a challenge of how many sensory bins we could do with just pom poms! Are you up for it? Check our ideas out and see if you can come up with a new One!