Number Hunt and Match

I have come across a lot of 'sensory' activities that are set up for babies and toddlers to develop their motor skills and enhance their exploratory instinct. The sense of touch provides a beautiful and different perspective of learning to little ones that I understand helps their little minds develop well. I had personally not given it a try yet but have been wanting to. 

So a few days back I ordered a 5 kilo bag of toor dal by mistake instead of a 2 kilo bag! Just seeing so much of toor dal at home, made me realise it was time to set a sensory activity for the Mini! :D I did not dare to venture out using flour or rice or anything else that I felt will be a problem to clean after. Toor dal seemed doable to start with.

I was apprehensive of how my boy will take to this game and if he is not going to really understand the game and would instead just make a mess! Well, I took a chance and I am so so glad I did. He loved it and spent a good 1.5 hours!

This little game that I set up for him involved hunting the appropriate numbers hidden in a bin full of toor dal and matching them onto a sheet of paper. So by playing with this sensory game, his hand eye coordination, concentration and sense of touch is improving.

First he did the hunting and matching game about 4-5 times on repeat! And then he went onto doing some transfer activity using a spoon and another bowl. It was such a treat watching him pick little bits of dal and dunking them back into the tub! Nope, he did not create any mess, he was very very careful about it. So proud! :)

Oh, the next day he introduced his little dump truck to the bin of toor dal! :D 

Read on to know how to set up this game and how else you can make use of this little sensory bin set up.

Things Needed:

A Plastic Container
Toor Dal
Wooden Numbers
White Sheet or Paper
Pencil
Writing Board

Procedure:

• Pour the toor dal into the plastic container and set aside.
• First, secure the white sheet of paper onto a writing board. Now, randomly place the numbers on a white sheet of paper. Make sure to spread them out well across the paper.
• Trace the outline of the numbers on the white paper.

• Now, dunk these numbers into tub of toor dal and mix well so that they are well hidden into the pile of toor dal.

• Set up the tub of toor dal with buried numbers and the writing board beside each other and ask your mini to come over. Demonstrate how to search through the dal to find the hidden numbers.

• Once a number is found, ask them to place it onto the traced outline of that particular number.

• Repeat the rummaging, finding and matching of the number till all numbers are found and placed onto their respective traced outlines.

So after your mini is done with this matching game, you can move onto a transferring activity. Toddlers love transferring stuff from one container to another! So since you have anyway set up a sensory bin to play, go all the way and allow them to have a little more fun.

• Firstly, set a tray below the plastic tub. 
• Provide a little bowl and a spoon, or a little ladle or a play shovel anything at all that they can use to scoop up some toor dal from tub onto another container.

• If your little one is vehicle crazy like mine is, provide a miniature dump truck and you can sit back and relax while the mini gets engulfed in his little world of toor dal transferring! :D
• Of course keep an eye for mouthing and scattering. My little boy was very careful about spilling. He would pick up every little dal that fell out and dump it back into the tub :)