There's nothing better than a DIY Sensory Sea Pit filled with all kinds of sea creatures, monsters, treasure and objects all made from egg cartons to keep kids busy for hours!
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What you'll need are:
Egg Cartons
Scissors
Markers
paint
Bobble eyes
Glue & Sellotape
Large Basin
1kg or more bag of Rice
2-3 drops Blue Food Coloring (for the sensory sea)
Dried Cous Cous (for the sand)
Draw the shapes of your fish, crabs and octopus along the dimples of the egg carton with a dark marker.
Cut these out and get painting and stick on some googly little eyes to bring the sea creatures to life!
Sharks (you can just make a fin to stick out of the water)
Don't forget to make that magical beast of a Sea Monster!!!!!!
Try making some other items you'd find at the sea...
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| Rocks |
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| Shells |
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Mini Crabs and Star fish
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| A message in a bottle made from a clean mini bottle of food flavoring filled with a rolled up scroll from the page of an old book. Or make your own mini treasure map or message to insert in your bottle. |
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Treasure Chests
made from our Mini toilet paper tube box tutorial here
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& treasure made from glittery beads and confetti
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| Palm Trees - made from corks glued together & the octopus outline painted green for palm leaves |
And a pirate ship !!!
Made from a rectangular/ square piece of card painted black, with a flag made from white card with a skull and cross bones painted on it, taped together with a cocktail stick flag pole and sellotape.
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| Arrrrrrrh me Hearties!!! |
Make the Sensory Sea Rice
- Pour your 1kg bag of rice into a large strong plastic zip lock bag. Add 2-3 drops of blue food colouring and mix up in the bag so its evenly distributed.
- Leave to dry in a warm place overnight or dry out on a low heat in the oven for 10mins so the colour is set and it wont run.
Make the desert island - this is simply dry cous cous. Alternatively you could follow the instructions above for dying the rice yellow to make the sand. You could also use dried yellow & orange lentils too.
Final Instructions!
Add the rice to a large tub (at least 30cm deep as the rice will go everywhere!) and then in one corner make the island by pouring the couscous /yellow rice/lentils in.
Then just add your characters and items and let the kids loose! this kept my little girl busy for at least an hour as she felt around the rice and sand and played with her pirate ship, sea creatures and treasure. Her buddy joined in one day and had a blast feeling their way around this sensory sea pit.
The fun even lasted into some other days and evenings too.. this is a great craft you can make and take out on various rainy days changing the characters as you go to keep it interesting. Sorry about picture quality here as it was nighttime the lighting is terrible!
