milk cap container

M loves putting money into piggy banks, which is good since he has quite a collection of them.  This activity is one we've had for a while and that M has used several times without getting tired of it.  We keep it in his restaurant backpack so he can play with it whenever we're out somewhere.  We brought it on our Philadelphia trip as well.

You need a container with a plastic lid (we used Gerber crunchies but anything with a removable plastic lid would work) and milk caps.  We get our milk delivered and the caps are a little bigger than the caps from regular milk jugs.  At 2, M has a mixture of both in his collection and does great with them but the big ones might be better for smaller hands.

There's a rectangle cut in the lid, big enough to fit the largest caps.  I went around our cut-out with painter's tape to soften the edges.  M's job is to fill his container with the tops.  He's pretty independent with it now because he's learning to remove the cover to get them out again when he's done.

rice bin

I don't know if it was this particular activity or the fact that M is getting older and more attentive but the rice bin was a huge hit.  I always leave the length of our activities up to M.  When he gets tired of something or decides to do something else we stop.  This was one of the first activities I had to drag him away from (literally).

Our rice bin was made up of a plastic bin, a 5 pound bag of rice, and miscellaneous plastic toys and containers.  We played on a trash bag cut so it would lay flat.

We had a little spill over onto the floor but it was easily cleaned up.  One of the things M liked doing the most was filling up a small tupperware cup and dumping it back into the bin.

The container I used has a snap on lid so I'm hoping we can reuse the rice bin multiple times.  In the future I might add something to it, like lentil beans or small pieces of pasta, to change the textures.  If our little plastic pool had still been out I think I would have put the rice bin in the pool, which would have made for super fast and easy clean up.  I'll also add different toys since M really enjoyed "digging them up."

Some things we used were plastic building blocks, plastic toy figures, small plastic cups, magnetic letters, and some old baby links that we haven't used in quite a while.  Other things that might be good- measuring cups, measuring spoons, little trucks to drive through the rice (M would love that), buttons, rocks, Easter eggs, cooking utensils, etc.  You can also use food coloring to change the color of the rice (be sure to let it dry) and I think you might even be able to buy colored rice at some places.  This was similar to our cornmeal beach and jello bowl activities that we tried months ago.  I love these types of hands on sensory activities because M loves exploring so much.  You can do this type of "sensory bin" with a variety of things - jello, cornmeal, rice, beans, shaving cream, soapy water, confetti, macaroni, ice (great for a hot day), etc.  It's fun and easy and toddlers love it!