Making Our Macaroni Sensory Bin

04/08/2015

Sensory Bin #2

I have already shared our rice sensory bin, here is our macaroni sensory bin

Since having my second daughter in November I have been wanting to have something quick and easy to give to my 2 year old when I’m nursing my daughter or otherwise preoccupied with something else that isn’t just turning on the TV and something that will keep her attention for longer than a minute – for those of you with a two year old I’m sure you know what I mean!

So a couple weeks ago we headed to the dollar store, on a mission to find items for our very first sensor bins. We made 4, all of which I will be sharing – here is our second one – our macaroni one.

I wanted something a bit bigger than the rice we used with our first bin but still small enough that my daughter used her fine motor skills to pick them up so we decided to use macaroni. Again, we wanted to dye the macaroni to add some colour and make it more visible. This time we decided to do red. We placed the macaroni into a pan.

We poured a mixture of food colouring and rubbing alcohol over the macaroni

We used rubbing alcohol because the macaroni won’t absorb it like water. If we were to use water and dye the macaroni would absorb that water as well as the dye making the macaroni wet and soft. By using rubbing alcohol the macaroni only picked up the dye, leaving the macaroni dry and perfect for a sensory bin.

And then we let it sit for 2 hours (the longer you let it sit, the more dye it will absorb – so for a lighter colour you won’t let it sit for as long (about an hour) and for a deeper colour you would let it sit for 4+ hours.

Once the macaroni was the colour we wanted it, we drained out the rubbing alcohol and laid the macaroni out to dry

Once the rice was dry (a couple hours) we added it to the bin

We had enough macaroni so there was about 4 inches of macaroni along the bottom of the bin

We then added some different toys (construction themed) that my daughter can play with in the macaroni, along with a little shovel

My daughter loves this sensory bin. She likes to fill the dump truck up with the macaroni and drive it over to unload it. My husband works on construction equipment so she finds it extra special and “works like daddy”