Play Eat Grow: Play: St. Patty's Day inspired Play Scene

Remember those sensory boxes I talked about awhile back? For those who don't, sensory boxes are boxes filled with some sort of materials with which kids can play with- mostly in the way of scooping, spilling, digging, transferring, etc. The base material can be cotton balls, rocks, beads, seeds, beans, rice-- anything you can dream up! Then, you add a few, or lots, of other things to make it more interesting and fun to play with. For some examples, check out my pinterest sensory box board.

When thinking about what fun thing we could do for St. Patrick's Day, I initially thought of creating another sensory box. But then I was shopping at Michaels and saw some of these wooden pegs-- it was then that everything came together in my head!

May I present to you our St. Patrick's Day Sensory Play Scene:

I like to think of it as a cross between a sensory box and a play scene.

First, I painted some wooden jars (4 for $1 at Michaels) and a cardboard treasure chest ($1 at Joanns).

The peg people were a little more intimidating for me (because remember, I'm not the artistic one :)). I decided to go for no arms on the dolls...I couldn't muster up the confidence to try it out and then mess it up. But I think the simplicity looks nice and the kids didn't mention it.

I filled the bottom of a cake pan with split green peas and added the chest, the jars, and 2 red shovels (which are actually sample spoons from one of our favorite gelato places) to the corner of the pan.

Then, I made a little walkway lined with translucent colored rocks ($1 at Dollar Store). I filled the treasure chest with golden plastic coins with three leaf clovers on them ($1 at Dollar Store). I realized at this point I hadn't done anything rainbow-y, so I rolled some playdoh out into a snake-like shape and stuck mini-colored popsicle sticks into it to be a fence.

It was so fun for the kids to play with! The only thing that went wrong was when Ada grabbed the side of the pan (how did her arms reach up that high?) and pulled it down. We're still finding split green peas when we sweep... :).