Indoor sandbox

My sister is a special education teacher. When she comes to stay at my house, my kids love it. She always has the best toys, presents, activities, etc. I owe the idea for this activity to her. It's kind of an indoor sandbox.

I don't have a picture of the ones my sister uses but here's what the one I made looks like:

I filled a bowl with rice and let my daughter play in it. A large tupperware container or box might work better but I used what we had. I also gave her bowls to move the rice into. She loves the feel and sound of the rice. I added split peas to this particular one but before I have added lentils. On this occasion I added erasers to the bottom with pictures of Disney princesses that she could dig for and find. It was here that I learned she knows the word princess (I'll blame that on my husband). When she's older we will be having a long conversation about how the Disney princesses all got their education before anything we see in the movies.

My sister says that they use this technique of "sensory boxes" to get kids who don't talk to start communicating. My daughter's favorite sensory box my sister brings is full of rubber bouncy balls.

The one drawback to this is my daughter never keeps any of this in the bowls, or anywhere near the bowl. Every time I bring this out I find rice or whatever was in the bowl all over my house for weeks.

Consider yourself warned.