All children, young and old, love the idea of hunting for treasure.  This week’s sensory bin plays on that fascination using colorful fake coins and necklaces.  The inspiration for this bin comes from a pirate party game by The Fickle Pickle, and the original post can be found here.

Buried Treasure Sensory Bin

Supplies needed:

Rice (uncooked, of course)

Play necklaces

Colorful pirate coins

Suction cup hooks (optional)

Tongs (optional)

Plastic bin

Tub for sorting

Fill the bin about halfway with rice, then add in your necklaces and coins.  That is, if you can get your thrilled-to-death daughter off of the bag of rice.

I chose to have the girls use tongs instead of their hands to dig around for treasure, as a way to work on their fine motor skills.  Using their hands works just as well. 🙂

You can give them an additional bin or box at this point to put their found treasures in, or you can take it a step further and use the suction cup hooks for hanging necklaces.  I just stuck them to our sliding glass door at about eye level.

I gave them simple directions to follow.  Use the tongs to get the treasure out of the box.  Then put the coins in the blue bin and hang the necklaces on the hooks.

They had a blast!

As any parent of preschoolers will tell you, finding an activity that will keep them occupied for more than mere seconds can be a challenge.  Eva and Chooby actively played with their buried treasure bin for well over an hour, which gave me time to get some work done around my house and online.  This one is definitely a winner!

Almost all of the supplies for the buried treasure bin came from the Dollar Tree.  I had tongs at home already, but plastic ones can be found in the party/wedding supplies section of your local store, and obviously rice is pretty easy to get anywhere.  I spent a total of $7 on this bin, which was well worth it for the hours of play time it will provide in the future!

Do you have a sensory bin that your little ones really love?  Please share your ideas in the comment box below!

(Disclaimer: Be prepared for some rice on the floor.  I made it a point to remind them that if they spilled all of the rice, then their game would be over, so they tried really hard to keep it all in the bin.)