Love the Salt: Low-Cost Toddler Toys for Crummy Days, An Introduction to Sensory Play

By kat rutkin, March 31, 2014

I’m not a parent yet, but most of my friends are — and I have a select few whose parenting styles I follow very closely & will want to adopt when, if it’s meant to be, we start a family in the future. One of those friends is Kat Rutkin, the hilarious and full-of-heart executive director of Somerville Local First, and I’m so thrilled to announce that Kat is going to be writing a new monthly column here on Shoestring! Kat keeps it real, and always finds the humor in even the most harrowing of parenting challenges, so I couldn’t be more excited for her to be sharing DIY projects, organic/local product reviews, and from-the-trenches life lessons, starting with this awesome way to keep kids entertained in the last throes of winter.

Welcome, Kat!

If you have the misfortune of living in the Northeast (or a similarly crummy climate) like we do, chances are you’ll spend approximately 300 days inside per year* trying to entertain your toddler. This winter has been particularly brutal, so we’ve gotten sick of our indoor spaces really fast and are sorely in need some variety. But some days you just can’t physically go anywhere — then what?

*Not scientific fact. Author assumes one winter day inside is equal to three summer days with outdoor options.

Thanks to a tip from my friend Nancy, I’ve recently become a big fan of sensory play. Which is a fancy way of saying you’re going to let your kid make an almighty mess with something you’ve repurposed from your kitchen, all in the name of early childhood development. Like salt. Or rice. Or flour. Lots and lots of salt or rice or flour. The greatest part about sensory play is that almost everything you need can be purchased for a total under $20, and you can switch things up easily to use them in different ways so it’s a new experience for your kid every time — but with a very small price tag.

If you told me two years ago I’d be advocating for something like sensory play, I’d be very concerned about the mental health of Future Me. But bear with me here. The first time we tried it was about a year ago, and it didn’t last long; there was so much rice flung everywhere, we still find it in our shoes. And sometimes stuck to one or more cats. As time went on, though, and my son got a bit older, it became a favorite pastime in our house. So if it’s not right for your child right away, don’t be totally turned off — just revisit it in the future.

Here’s how to get down with sensory play:

First, start with a sturdy plastic 10-gallon storage box (aka the best toy you will ever buy), which will run you about $10. Use the bin to contain rice, some measuring cups and spoons, toy cars, etc. Kids love to dig around in the rice, fill the cups, drive cars through it, and — if they’re anything like my little dude — eventually just get in there and sit in it. I used to lay out a sheet underneath the bin in my kitchen, which turned out to be a hilarious waste of time. Just be prepared to sweep or vacuum. As a bonus, if summer ever arrives, you can take the container outside and use it as a sandbox in your urban microyard. It also works as a tiny splash pool with an inch or so of water on your porch, provided the downstairs neighbors are out of town.

After a while, you don’t even need the bin — or have to plan for sensory play. Sometimes I just scoop out some extra flour when I’m baking and let my son go to town on it, moving it from bowl to bowl, table to cat, and back again.

What we really love to play in right now is salt. Just plain old salt. I did plan ahead a bit for this one, but it wasn’t really necessary. I took one container of salt and divided it into three baggies, and put a few drops of food coloring in each one, shook it up and let it sit overnight. We put a small tray with a raised edge on the table and filled it with some of the salt in different colored piles (turned out my son didn’t give a crap about the coloring so I could’ve likely just skipped that step) and drove little construction vehicles around in it for hours. Actual hours. And the total cost was like $3.99 for the salt and the tray (we already had the food coloring). I dumped the remaining salt in a bag when we were done so we can play with it again and again, until it’s a fine mist ground into our floors.

For more sensory play ideas, my favorite site is The Imagination Tree, which has lots of tips and recipes and ideas for indoor play with stuff you probably have in the house already. My friend Nancy’s original tip came from Little Bins for Little Hands, which has even more ideas for sensory play inside your $10, 10-gallon bin.

Some parents just love to see their kids make a mess, so sensory play is a given for them. I am not one of those parents. It takes everything I’ve got to not follow my son around like one of those OCD cleaning bots from wall-E. But realizing getting messy makes my kid SO happy (and brings me hours of bliss!) so it’s worth it. If you’re horrified at first, don’t fret: once you get over the initial first few post-play cleanings, you may grow to love it over time. Just give it a try. In retrospect, the rice and salt were way easier to clean up than those @&%$! Duplos anyway, so I guess all mess really is relative.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kat Rutkin isn’t a parenting expert, but she’s made a lot of mistakes so you don’t have to. She lives in Somerville, MA with her husband, son, and two cats — neither of which have peed in the sensory bin just yet.