Sensory Activities For Toddlers - And A Fun Cornmeal Sensory Bin

Looking for easy sensory activities for toddlers? See what is sensory play, why it's important, and get tons of good ideas for sensory play for toddlers, including a quick cornmeal sensory bin you can have ready in a minute. Also, how to make it less work to clean up afterwards!

This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for your support. The cornmeal sensory bin is both easy to set up and fun! See how to arrange an easy cornmeal sensory activity play even if you've never done sensory activities with your kids before. But first, a few words to clarify what sensory activities include.

Sensory Activities For Toddlers

This post will give you a lot of ideas for how to use materials from your household to arrange simple sensory activities for your kids - the EASY way! Also, I'll show you a simple way to use corn meal in sensory activities below - easy and quick to arrange, using the household materials you already have.

What materials to use for Toddler sensory Activities?

Tons of options! A few ideas to try to start with - and links to great sensory activities for toddlers:

• sensory play with rice
• toddler sensory play with cornmeal (see below)
• kids sensory play with flour
• sensory play with playdough - 7 ideas!
• using nature hunt materials (this forest sensory bin!)
• sensory play with corn, beans, and sand - this popular farm sensory bin - easy!
• sensory play with snow

No time to do these now? Save the ideas to Pinterest for later use:

There are a lot more, of course! When choosing the materials, start with larger particles (pasta, playdough), and transition to smaller ones (eg rice, then cornmeal). Flour play might be the most fun though, but it's the messiest - take a look at these easy ideas for less mess in flour sensory play.

And here's an easy idea for cornmeal sensory play for kids so you can start right now:

Cornmeal sensory Bin For Toddlers

Cornmeal is a wonderful sensory material for kids to explore! Rewarding and extremely useful for those little brains of theirs! And - let's admit it - messy, too. But don't worry, you'll also find a few hints for you to avoid my rookie mistakes, and alternative solutions that might save the day 🙂 - including several ways to make sensory play easier to clean after.

I had a package of cornmeal stored for sensory play for ages. When I finally (with some hesitation) opened the package and set the cornmeal out on a pan for our toddler to explore, it turned into one of our favorite messy play activities. Since then, the cornmeal has been a great hit! The kid asked to play with this great material for several days in a row. And I've learned some things along 🙂

WHAT TO OFFER WITH CORN MEAL for play:

• chopsticks
• dough scrapers
• spoons and forks
• tiny bowls, play tea cups
• any open-ended materials such as rocks, seashells, sticks, etc

What you see in the photo was a 'track-making kit'. He used many additional utensils and items in playing with cornmeal. He scooped, transferred cornmeal from one tiny cup to another, over and over again. 

What he really enjoyed most was making tracks, using his fingers, chopsticks and - his favorite - a plastic bowl-and-dough scraper:

WHY Do I FIND SENSORY PLAY AMAZING

What amazes me is the fact that while toddlers are pouring and digging and concentrating on the materials, a lot of GOOD STUFF is happening in the background, in those little brains of theirs.

To avoid repeating myself, here is a link to a post that includes a list of several KEY BENEFITS OF SENSORY PLAY, just if you'd like to read more about it.

It's amazing what incredible things are learned by kids when playing with sensory materials, isn't it?

Kids will combine the 'tools' with their hands and fingers, and that's what may make it even more interesting. You may even want to offer additional small toys, or rocks, or any other open-ended materials you feel would make the handling more interesting to your kid.  

Tips for Less Mess in Sensory Play Activities

This brings us to what I promised at the beginning of the post: tips on how to contain the mess {that mom has to clean. Each. Time.} - and to make it bearable enough to let the kids enjoy sensory play again and again. Let me tell you in short how it went on in our home:

What happened to me were several (normal) rookie mistakes when I offered sensory materials to the toddler for the first few times.

How To Prevent Mess When Kids Play

At first, I put the play pan directly on the kitchen table - and everything that left it fell at first on the table, then on the clothes and then on the floor, leaving tiny particles in the air. As you can imagine, the vacuum cleaner was on heavy duty those days 🙂 But like other moms, I soon found better solutions by trial and error 🙂  I made it easier for me by moving the play area to the floor.

And when I added a bedsheet, the mess was minimized - and my sanity rescued 😉 I won't go on about how I learned each of {many} lessons, it might take too much of your time. But I did make a shortlist of tips how to survive sensory play - you can check out the post here, it's all about 4 easy tips. 

Proud to say that learning from my own mistakes, we have nearly tamed the mess with sensory materials since. Happy happy!

Related

If you want to see more ideas for preschooler activities, read on: