At about six months I started to try to put together little things here and there for Lainey to play with that would engage her different senses. The first thing I made for her was this fabric box:
After torturing the poor walmart fabric lady by asking her to cut a million little teeny pieces of fabric, I made a great deal! All of this for just a few bucks!
I started on the clearance wall and then went up and down the regular aisles and simply went by feel. I tried to not pick any two fabrics that felt the same to me. I got such small pieces, making the project very inexpensive. Now, I am not a sewer. I have made many of our curtains in our home…..with fabric glue. Serious. My plans were to hand sew each little square together. After the third square….on the second day….Adam whipped out his sewing machine and finished it in a minute flat. Also, serious. Anyway, Lainey loves this little fabric box. She pulls them out feeling them as they go! As a side note…for anyone that lives in the area, I have all of this fabric left so if you’d like it to make your own fabric sensory box, it’s yours! Just give me a holla!
I then moved on to the bottles. I got almost everything for these at the dollar store….a few things came from walmart and some I already had. I initially got shampoo containers from the dollar store to use but the flip-tops pop off and I believe could be a choking hazard. I decided to go with a different type from Amazon that were also very inexpensive. Adam super glued the lids shut when I was done making them.
Interestingly, she definitely has her favorites…These only come out sometimes. They aren’t in her toy basket for her to play with at all times.
I also made five treasure baskets. These have been life-saving for Adam during the day. Most everything is from the dollar store or things from around the house.
She loves shoe strings so on a couple of them we have bows tied for her to untie. These also aren’t out all of the time. She gets them at different times during the day and literally takes each item out, checking it out, shaking it, feeling it, etc.
The last little sensory thing I will add is about shoes. I was not aware of this at all until I recently visited with our pediatric physical therapist. (Naturally), I have a shoe fetish. I wanted to make sure I don’t buy too many of the wrong kind of shoe for Lainey so I contacted her to find out what the current literature says about hard-soled versus soft-soled, etc. She was a wealth of information. Really, no shoes are necessary until they are walking and at that time it should be about 50/50 hard/soft, with the reasoning being that they feel a lot with their feet sensory-wise. If we put them in hard soled all of the time they will be missing out on that part of their development. With that said, if they are already toe-walking or severely in-toeing or out-toeing, the 50/50 may have to be adjusted because the hard-soled shoes may be necessary to help with that physical aspect. I believe she said these recommendations go at least until age two.
So, I absolutely cannot leave this post like this. With only pictures of inanimate objects. So, here you are (one of my fave’s):
