Avery's First Sensory Bag!

I'm an advocate for offering kids different experiences that help them to figure out this big 'ol world they're living in - even if that means letting them get a little messy. Thanks to my favorite website obsession, Pinterest, I have found some amazing ideas for all kinds of fun play that engages kids by allowing them to experiment with different things. 

My ultimate favorite is Growing a Jeweled Rose. If you're looking for fun activities to do with your kids that are sensory, educational, and cheap (most of them are made out of things around the house), this is a great site to browse around! I seriously want to repin EVERYTHING she posts and I'm so excited to try out all the neat things she has that I'm almost excited for Avery to get a little older to enjoy them. Avery is getting to the point where he's old enough to experiment with Sensory Bags, so I whipped one up for him the other day to try it out. He did love it, mainly because it looked like something fun to put in his mouth. Like everything else within arm's reach. :)

He especially loved watching the little characters move around when he hit the bag. It worked great on his tummy too because that's where he had the best angle to latch onto the surface :)  

I used a gallon-size freezer bag filled with water (I did buy some hair gel to use as 'goo' inside, but I thought I'd start with water just in case it leaked. I'll be using the goo in another bag down the road) and just filled it with stuff I had around the house - some yarn (which looks really neat flowing around in the water!) and some little foam critter stickers. I used duct tape to seal around the edges (for extra reinforcement). I wanted to keep the contents pretty simple for my first one, but there are SO many other cool things that I've been thinking of to put in future bags!

Here's a link to Sensory Bags if you want to try one out for yourself. (they're a GREAT way to keep toddlers busy, too!) and here's where you can find  50+ play activities for babies. Seriously, people, there aren't enough hours in the day to try out all these amazing things, but I'm going to give it my best shot!  (I see colored spaghetti noodles in a baby pool in our future!)