Outerspace Sensory Bin

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For Space Week last week, I made Caden a simple Outerspace Sensory Bin similar to this one from Totally Tots except I used expired cake mix for the base. Cake mix is very similar to cloud dough and molds well. And it doesn’t take any mixing or preparing, just open and go! You can read more about using cake mix as a sensory material at Growing a Jeweled Rose.

I added decorative rocks and glass stones from any craft store as moon rocks. And finally placed the astronauts and space equipment from the Safari, Ltd. Space Toob. I had a lot of fun setting up this sensory, small world play bin and Caden enjoyed playing with it throughout the week.

We went through each Safari replica, reading the tiny print and named them. Caden attempted to repeat each new word, “astronaut”, “space shuttle”, “rocket”, “telescope”, etc. He really liked the space shuttle and rocket, so I showed him how they worked together to get to outer space, counting down and blast off! Caden has been saying “Nine, Six, Blast off!” ever since!

Being the car lover that he is, Caden of course really enjoyed playing with the moon rover. He drove it all over the “moon” pushing the cloud dough into little mounds.

Caden also enjoyed the feel and smell of the cake mix cloud dough. He ran it through his fingers and sprinkled it all over the table.

At one point while playing with it, Caden began to sniff the cake mix cloud dough and then decided to see what would happen if he blew into the cake mix. Of course, I knew cake mix would get all over his face!

Don’t let this grumpy face fool you, he didn’t seem to mind that his face was covered with cake mix! He had a really good time exploring this new sensory material and playing with the astronauts. He is still playing with the space toob figures, even though I have put the cake mix cloud dough away.