construction bin

Posted on June 15, 2012 by happyhooligans

A small world construction bin provides hours of play for little ones…

We’ve been having a field day with our bins lately, which you can check out here, here and here. Yesterday I set up this construction bin in a foil roasting pan that has held many sensory bins and small worlds in its time. It kept the hooligans busy, off and on, all morning.

Look for interesting items to add to your construction bin:

It was fun and easy to put together. I just looked through the toy bins and around the yard, and put together a few items that seemed perfect for a construction site: a few blocks, some rocks and sticks, several coloured glass beads, a couple of construction figures and some vehicles.

We had this out again today, and it was just as popular as it was yesterday. I have a feeling we’ll be playing with this one for a while.

deep blue sea bin

Posted on June 8, 2012 by happyhooligans

We’re on a roll with our water play bin this week! Today was the third time that I switched up the contents and turned it into yet another cool activity to entertain the Hooligans.

Earlier this week we had an Ocean Bin and a Dinosaur Water Bin, but I think today’s may have been the most popular yet.

I left the pebbles and rocks in from the previous two days and added several large flat rocks from the garden. I had to dismantle a small Inukshuk to get the stones but it’s ok. The garden has sprouted up so much, we couldn’t see the Inukshuk anymore anyway.

I scooped all the pebbles and rocks over to one side of the basin to make a “shoreline”, and stacked the larger flat rocks along the opposite side to form a “rocky cliff and caves”.

Five or six drops of blue food colouring, some boats, a deep sea diver , a couple of sea-shells and a few plastic marine animals and we were good to go.

This little guy spent most of his day here, staging boat wrecks, dives and rescues. He loved the tiny lobster. And he claimed that the octopus was the lobster’s mama.

After nap-time he was the first one out the door, literally running to the back of the yard where to where we had the bin set up under trees, and he was still there when his Mom and Dad showed up to take him home.

Making a simple water play bin is such an easy and inexpensive way to provide hours of open-ended imaginary play for your child. There’s no need to purchase anything special. Here’s our fancy-dancy DIY water table: a stool and a storage container:

I collected most of the rocks at the beach one day last summer, including a bucketful of the tiny pebbles. Just wash them up first so they don’t muddy up your water. Then look around your home and garden for interesting items to fill your bin with. If you’re like me, you’ll have as much fun putting it together as your child will have playing with it.

Will you make a water play bin? Have you made one? I’d love to see your photos! Feel free to link them up on my Happy Hooligans facebook page!

And if you’re looking for sensory bins ideas (they don’t all involve water), you can check out this category on my blog.

dinosaur activity bin

Posted on June 7, 2012 by happyhooligans

The Hooligans are just loving the small world play these days, so today I set up this dinosaur activity bin. It’s a combination of small world, sensory and water play all wrapped up into one bin, so what’s not to love?

Did you see the Ocean Sensory Bin that we were playing with last week? It was a huge hit, and when we’d finished playing with it, I drained the water, but left the pebbles and beads in the bin. That’s what I used to start the dinosaur bin today.

I added a few large rocks, some plants from the garden and a couple of chunky sticks that have been in the sandbox for the past year or so.

I scooped most of the rocks to one end of the bin to form a “beach” and I poured in a jug of water that I coloured with a few drops each of blue and green food colouring.

Then I added all the dinosaurs and reptiles I could find. The Hooligans loved it.

Who wouldn’t? This is such a great way to keep cool on a hot day. And it’s so easy to pull an activity like this together. Just a few items and a basin of water.

Inexpensive and simple but it encourages such imaginative play.

If your Hooligans are very young, and stones and beads are a choking concern for you, leave them out. They’ll be happy to just have the animals in the water. The baby was trying to mess around with things when I was setting up the bin, so I tossed a couple of fish and some corks into the bowl of water that the Hooligans wash their hands in when we’re outside, and she was more than happy splashing around in that while I did what I had to do.

little worlds and fine motor activities

Posted on February 23, 2012 by happyhooligans

I didn’t have a craft planned for today, so early this morning, I went down to the playroom and dug out an assortment of nifty things, and set this “little world” up for the Hooligans to explore and play with.

I picked the green felt up at a thrift shop a couple of months ago . It’s one of those things that you roll a jigsaw puzzle up in, but I thought it would be great for making a felt board. It turns out felt boards work better if you cover them with flannel (which I plan to do one of these days), so I just stuck the green thing in a drawer and kind of forgot about it, until this morning, when I was looking for something to place this little set up on.

I got out a few of our Easter decorations – the Easter tree and some wooden bunnies, gathered up some tea-lights, and laid down a piece of blue felt with some corks, seashells, artificial flowers and small animals to make a small pond area.

I put a few fine motor activities out on a tray: the Easter tree decorations, some tiny coloured clothespins, and pom-poms and tongs for filling ice cube trays.

A few badminton birdies and coloured balls to make ice cream cones,

and a big jug of corks with a smaller jug for filling kept “the baby” entertained for a good, long time. She worked away at this, filling the jug twice with the corks.

I had a great time getting creative, setting it all up, and the Hooligans had fun playing with it until it was time to head outside.

It was gorgeous out there today, so we took some of our inside toys out to the deck and spent the rest of the morning in the yard.

The boys were in their glory. They found a little patch of mud in the garden that was soft enough to fill their dump trucks with.

It feels like Spring is just around he corner, but I’ve heard we’re supposed to get 10 to 15 cms of snow tonight so we might not be out of the woods yet!