Exploring Textures through Balls; A My First Sensory Bins Post

Well this Plain Vanilla Mom is proud of herself once again.  I set up another sensory bin for the babycakes! BALLS. Yes balls. We know he loves them. You see, I got to thinking about how much he loves playing with that red ball of his and that got me thinking about the texture of it and well...the ball bin was born.

The other day while he was napping I ran around the house and collected every ball I could find, in every texture I could find, that would fit in our wonderful dollar store bin. ( oh how I love those bins! ) There were tennis balls, plastic balls, baseballs, footballs, spongey balls, bumpy balls, and even a couple of big brother's pokemon balls (shhh...don't tell, we put them back before he got home from school).

I couldn't wait until C got up from his nap. I was SURE he was going to love this sensory bin!! The very first thing he reached for when I set him down in front of it was......

My water bottle lol! 

Ok, so things don't always go off as planned and I let him play with that for awhile. Can you tell this kid likes his sensory bottles? But then....

Once he had that out of his system he dug into the ball bin and did play with it for quite awhile. It was actually very interesting to watch because at any point in time he always had two balls in his hands. I could only imagine he was comparing them in his mind because he would keeping looking at one and then the other. He would put one in his mouth and then the other. Once I realized he was likely comparing them I put the camera down and started narrating for him. "This one is smooth, this one is bumpy". "You have the red ball."  "That's the blue ball".  He would look at me, and then the balls. So endearing. It actually looked like some of what I was saying was sinking in. (Mommas..talk to your babies while they play...they love it!)  I'm sure his little brain was working overtime on this one. All those different textures, sizes and weights had to make for a great sensory experience.  I'm loving this stage where he's starting to interact with his environment more. He's growing more inquisitive by the day.

Lots of exploring and learning to be done just through a simple basket of balls.

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