How to make a Sensory BOX Your Kids Can Play In

In a moment of inspiration, I came up with a fun idea for Cocoa Puff. He was crabby, having just gotten over a cold and missing several days of exploring and learning. I was playing with Froot Loop and I looked down and I saw a few storage bins with various blocks in them. I couldn’t remember the last time we had played with most of them, but Froot Loop wanted to continue playing with his cars and trains. I pulled out the storage bins and set them aside for later.

As Cocoa Puff got crabbier, I opened a bin of blocks for him and he was instantly happy again! The bin next to it was the bin of interlocking snowflake blocks, which is one of his favorite things to play with, but it just wasn’t doing it for him today. I dumped the snowflake blocks into a large empty box and set it on its side and let Cocoa Puff go for it. This lasted just a few minutes until he was crabby and fussing at me again.

He likes exploring boxes, but he wasn’t thrilled with seeing his snowflake blocks. I noticed the other storage bins and thought hey, I’ll just dump them in here too and see what happens. I put some wood blocks, wood alphabet blocks, and foam alphabet blocks in there. Suddenly, Cocoa Puff was really interested! I put him in the box with all of the different blocks and let him play. Froot Loop got the idea to add his container of Bristle Blocks to it as well and a couple of the giant Mega Bloks since he doesn’t play with those anymore. 

Well, Cocoa Puff went bonkers over this activity! He had SO MUCH FUN feeling all the different kinds of blocks in the box with him. He made good friends with a red rectangle block. (He also seems to like the red ball pit balls the best too. Maybe he already has a favorite color!)

He also really loved chewing on the bristle blocks. I imagine it felt good on his poor teething gums! He picked up all the different colors of the foam blocks and looked at the Mega Bloks and tried to figure out what those were all about too. 

This was so simple and yet it bought us HOURS of fun. Cocoa Puff didn’t want to come out for a long time, and then after eating and a quick nap, wanted to go right back in the box!

Later, I added a playsilk and he went bonkers over that too. It took him a long time to settle down for bedtime. 

Cocoa Puff craves sensory activities. He loves to feel things and look at things and get into everything. This is new for me because Froot Loop wasn’t much into the sensory things. I have bunches of ziptop bags full of items for sensory bins that were only used for like, 5 minutes because Froot Loop wouldn’t touch them or have anything to do with them! I’m excited to see what Cocoa Puff will enjoy. 

Anyway, here’s the list of different blocks that we had in the sensory box. 

What other fun things would you add to your sensory block box?