Fly Me to the Moon!

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Lunar Sensory Bin for Preschoolers

Want your pumpkins occupied for the morning or afternoon? Send them straight to the moon. This lunar themed sensory bin is the ticket for space exploration! Your roasting pan will be home to a load of silky “moon sand”, space toys and small containers for sand molding. Here’s the step by step.

SUPPLIES:

Flour (10 cups)

Baby Oil (1.5 cups)

Space Toob

Earth (squeeze ball from local toy store)

Containers, lids and small beach toys that are great for molding our “moon sand”

DIRECTIONS:

STEP ONE: Have your munchkin measure 10 cups of flour. And one and half cups of baby oil.

STEP TWO: (PARENT ONLY) Put flour in your mixer (or mixing bowl) and turn on low speed (wire wisk attachment) and pour in baby oil. Turn to a high speed until “moon sand” is completely mixed.

STEP THREE: Pour “moon sand” (which is known on the Mommy Blogs as cloud dough) into aluminum pan or similar container. Add toys and containers for making moon castles and let them play.

WARNING FOR FELLOW TYPE A’S – This is messy! And I mean MESSY. Here’s a strategy for coping. 1) Put your kids in clothes that can be covered with flour. 2) You too. 3) Put this bin in the backyard or front yard, preferably over grass.  4) Take off your wedding ring! That should do it!

This is the mess after only 5 minutes. Grassy lawn would have been a better location!

This is a great time to use the toys to talk about the moon landing and the recent landing on Mars. This is a great material for them to trace their letters into! You can also just back up and let them play independently. Best part is, when they are done playing, just return moon sand to an airtight container and you can use it again! The “moon sand” is silky soft and great for other sensory bin afternoons and you really can build sand castles out of it.

TODDLER TAKE-AWAYS:

  1. Hand/eye coordination
  2. Fine motor skill development
  3. Imaginative play
  4. Exploration of Science, technology and space exploration
  5. Measuring/Math
  6. Sensory exploration

Enjoy!

Anna

P.S. Our little inquisitive Baby Q was napping when we undertook this space exploration… and as it turns out, due to the mess factor, that was a really good thing!

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