Welcome to this week’s Monday Morning Mess Mat for Sensory Play! I “structure” our Sensory Playtime at 10:00am on Mondays at our Mess Mat. I use flying quotations there because the point of Sensory Play is actually that it isn’t highly structured play time. The essence is that kids get to explore freely and stimulate their senses. For Sensory Play time I structure when it happens and how. I use Sensory Bins, Sensory Bags and Discovery Boxes. Although Sensory Play includes any activity that stimulates your child’s senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Sensory activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate and explore. Spending time stimulating their senses helps children develop cognitively, linguistically, socially and emotionally, physically and creatively. [Source]

You can catch all of our Sensory Activities on the Main Sensory Play Page HERE.

Today’s Sensory Bin is called Pantry Power and uses a mixture of pasta and grains from, guess where? My pantry! This is a great Bin to use when you’re short on ideas or {even forgot to hit up your Dollar Store on Friday} Chances are you have plenty of quality Sensory Play ingredients right inside you cupboards.

Pantry Power Sensory Bin

For this Monday Morning Mess Mat I gathered up what I could find for a combination of:

Then we finally start making connections and discovering some possibilities. Cash uses the long spaghetti noodles to try and “thread” the marshmallows. He does pretty well too!

Wyatt prefers to run his fingers through the small grains and toss them, as well as “splash” in them. He giggles at the sounds they make when they hit the floor. We’re on the Mess Mat so it’s totally cool to make a mess right now, so long as it stays on the mat.