Sea Life Sorting Sensory Bin

This post contains affiliate links

This quick sensory bin made me a very happy mama on Monday! Let me explain why- the weather has been hot lately which means my kids haven’t been interested in playing outside like usual. That also means they are cooped up in the house while the baby naps and I go a little bit crazy from their pent up energy. It hasn’t been pleasant. But on Monday we had a nice delivery that happened to be filled with this awesome crinkle paper. My kids were digging in it right away and I knew we had a hit activity in the making with this stuff!

I threw the crinkle paper and assorted animal figurines (ocean and non-ocean ones) all in a Rubbermaid tub and called it a sorting activity. I thought we’d get 10 minutes of fun from it, but it was much more than that! They returned to this simple sensory box over and over throughout the day- they couldn’t get enough of it!

They all worked together to separate the animals which didn’t belong in the ocean (and rebury the ones that did). They didn’t stop at sorting though, they were also story telling and sensory exploring with the materials! All this self-directed play really made my Monday! (and what mom doesn’t need a Monday break as we struggle to get back into routine?)

They made ocean waterfalls, gave dinosaurs baths, and played hide-and-seek with ocean animals – it was way more than I had expected when I threw everything together!

On my list of things to grab from my next Dollar Store visit is more crinkle paper in different colors! I’m thinking brown for a desert scene, green for grassy scenes, rainbow for (of course) rainbow fun, what else? Can you think of some more creative play presentations using crinkle paper? Leave me your suggestions below! And don’t forget to share your versions of this activity with me on Insgatram 🙂