Treasure Basket - Sensory Tubes

 This month's treasure basket is full of test tubes.

I found these wonderful test tubes at our local parent/educator store called Planet Kids.

I've had them for almost a year before deciding that they work perfect for this idea.

Each tube is filled with items I had around the house.

Items that may or may not make noise when the tube is shaken.

As she took her tube out of the basket, for the first time, she tried to unscrew the lid.

That is one of her favourite activities.  She is fascinated with taking lids off and putting them back on.

I knew that so I made sure these were screwed on really tight.

Also items that I believe she would be interested in, like these tiny babies.

They were left over from her mom's baby shower.

As she played with the tubes she began to look at them longer and noticing more about the items inside, like the babies with bottles.

Or the colour of the buttons in the tube with pipe cleaners.

Or pompoms of different shades of blue.

Bells from my Christmas decorations. I filled the tube too full and had to remove some so they would make a nice jingle sound.

Plastic straws make a very slight sound.

There is a tube with rice and foil and another with purple sand.

And the last tube has coloured bow tie pasta.

With these tubes we worked on the concept of loud vs quiet, upside down and turn over, identifying objects and sounds, body movements, and putting things in and out of the basket.