Dinosaur Sensory Tub

For those who are new to sensory tub, it's simply a large container/tray filled with various stuffs for the children to explore with all their senses. There is usually a base material which fills the tub. Things like rice, pasta, pebbles, sand, shredded paper, beans, mud, water, oat flakes, cooked spaghetti (?!) or just anything so that the kid can do some form of digging with. Whatever that goes into the tub is totally up to your creativity, resourcefulness and on a more practical note, your tolerance for potential mess. Imagine the kid emptying the entire tray of sand in your living room. For most of us who don't have an outdoor garden, there are some materials that are really not suitable for our apartments unless you have an incredible tolerance for mess.

I was positive I would love sensory tubs to bits when I was a kid. Haha now that I'm a parent, and you know how once we turned parents, all standards will change, I'm not too sure about making one for Xue. The potential mess is unimaginable!! But so is the potential fun and learning and I just cannot pass up such a good activity for Xue. During our dinosaur week, I made our first sensory tub from the stuffs I found at home. It's filled with dried dinosaur pasta (how apt!) as the base, dinosaur figurines, a volcano figurine, a palm tree figurine, a dinosaur picture card and some flat marbles. These marbles are supposed to be the 'fossils' for Xue to dig out from beneath the pastas. And they were really the highlight of this sensory tub! Haha my son didn't really care about the dinosaurs but he was so interested in picking these flat marbles out.

Anyway before the activity, I imagined that he would go oooh and aaaah at the figurines and maybe spend some time to admire my set up. What actually happened was that he inched forward to take a closer look and he rested his hand on the edge of the tray. The tray flipped up and half the content were scattered over the floor. All these happened within THREE SECONDS. I didn't even have time to tell him 'that's a dinosaur' or 'oh look, a volcano'.

I must say using dried pasta was a wise choice because after that he emptied everything on the floor and these stuffs are really easy to clean up. It just gets a little powdery and a wipe is all that's needed. Not too bad (read: messy) for a first experience with sensory tub, I'm definitely encouraged to make another one!