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A Bean Box is a great way to work on fine motor development and wrist turning skills. This helps children when learning to feed themselves and prepares them for eventually writing. Yes, we all need to be working on this now. Hand and wrist strength is an important milestone.
How to Make A Bean Box
I made this Fireman box with a plastic bin with lid for easy storing. I added beans. Other ideas for fillers could be lima beans, corn, shredded paper, kinetic sand. I included plastic firemen, red and yellow pompoms for the “fire”, firetruck🚒 and safety cones, and a scoop for pouring. And that’s it!
Little “I” loves getting crazy with scooping and pouring. He is still learning the rules of keep the beans in the box, but the amount of joy he has playing with it and the fact that he is working his fine motor skills makes it a great activity for him.
More Ideas for Fillers
A Few of My Boxes
Here are some theme ideas for Bean Boxes
- Construction Site Bean Box. backhoes 🏗and dump trucks, kinetic sand and scoops.
- Bugs, Bugs, & More Bugs. beans, plastic bugs🦗🕷, magnifying glass🔎 and scoops.
- Farm Bean Box with corn as my filler, farm animals🐖🐄🐑 tractors🚜, and a scoop.
- Flower Garden. Potting soil, small flower pots, plastic flowers, scoops.
- Cooking Bean Box. Rice filler, kid cooking pans and spoons, plastic food.
- Ice cream Bean Box. Cotton balls for filler, sequence “sprinkles”, spoons and small cups to serve ice cream.
- Dinosaur & Fossil Bean Box. Kinetic sand, plastic dinosaurs, magnifying glass, scoop, rocks, plastic trees.
The examples above are what I would consider “clean” play. 😉
Messy Bean Box Ideas
- Clean Mud Worm Sensory Bin. Use clean mud, plastic worms from the fishing dept. and kid tweezers to dig them suckers out, magnifying glass.
- Pond Box. Water beads, plastic frogs, turtle, fish, etc.
- Artic Animal Box. Ice cubes, plastic penguins and polar bears.
- Rainbow Box. Colored Spaghetti noodles. let them dig in a mix the colors of the rainbow.
- Aquarium Box. Water, aquarium rocks, plastic greenery, fish, fish net.
There are so many fun things to do. And these are inexpensive to make. 👍 For more fine motor fun, see my post on Toys that Promote Fine Motor Development. And How to Make an Animal Habitat. Also, Mud Kitchen Ideas. ~Susie Peas
