One of Sweet Pea’s favorite activities is to play with beans or beads. We’ve been playing with beads lately, so today we mixed it up and got out the beans.



Before I could finish setting up, Sweet Pea was already digging in and starting to play. I quickly grabbed various kitchen utensils and holding containers and set them out. Some are better than others for this activity (in my opinion), but I wanted to give her a wide variety and a chance to choose the best tool for whatever she was trying to accomplish.

I have a plastic shower curtain that I set out for her to play on and help contain her mess. This is something we’ve practiced over the last 14 months or so, and Sweet Pea knows that if she gets “too crazy” and making too big of a mess, we’ll need to clean up. Of course, I had to follow through with this the first few times and she quickly learned not to throw or fling beans. When we’re done playing, it’s easy to lift up the edges of the shower curtain and get all the beans (and pasta) back into the container.

Part of the reason I love this activity, besides the benefits to her, is because it’s super easy for me and takes at least a half hour for her to play. I let her play by herself and experiment and explore on her own and then when she engages me or seems to be losing interest, I ask her questions or start playing. I don’t start off playing or “showing her how” because I want her to figure it out for herself and use her imagination. This also allows me to see what part of it she seems to enjoy the most and figure out new activities or extensions of this one to further her interests and skills. For example, today she skillfully poured beans into a cup using a sand shovel that was larger than the cup, which totally surprised me because I expected her to spill a lot.  She used a basting brush to “sweep” beans.


So, you never know what your little one will do and excel at until you give them random stuff to use to play with!

What are some of the benefits to playing with beans and other small objects?

  • Develops fine motor skills that help with holding a spoon, fork, and crayons and pencils
  • Scooping and pouring
  • Hand-eye coordination
  • Selecting proper “tools” for the job
  • Problem solving
  • Experimenting
  • Feeling different textures
  • Rich in language and vocabulary opportunities
  • Builds their confidence when you trust them with something small and they’re able to help clean up
  • Fun, versatile, no technology needed, can be done anywhere, at any time, and it’s cheap.

I’m sure there are more benefits, but I haven’t researched it, and that’s all I can think of at the moment. And, it’s a long enough list for me.


What other items are good for this?

Some people don’t want to use food, so you could use bird seed and throw it out to the birds when you’re done playing with it (we reuse our materials and have used the same ones for over a year now), dog or cat food, play sand, aquarium rocks, pea gravel, pom poms, shells, cotton balls…

If you’re ok with using food (ours are expired beans, rice, and lentils that someone was going to throw away), you could also use different shapes of pasta (dyed or not), rice (dyed or not), cereal (not going to work well for more than one use)… Look around your cupboards for expired food or food you’re not going to eat, or check out the dollar store.

 

What else can I do with this type of activity?

  • Picking up small objects
  • Scooping and pouring (use different tools and sized containers, funnels, etc)
  • Practice a certain skill. For example, if your child needs to use a spoon better, give him/her different types of spoons and have your little one move the beans into containers using the spoons.
  • Finding hidden objects (using hands to dig or tools to dig)
  • Sorting
  • Experiment- ask, “What happens if you….?” Or “I wonder what will happen if I…” “How else could you___?”
  • Counting
  • Same/different- “Can you find me another ___?” “Is this the same or different than ___?” “What else is similar to ___?” “What tool/utensil works the same as this one?”

What kind fine motor sensory activities does your little one enjoy?