I had never thought of using hair rollers within a play activity. However, today I found myself creating a Hair Roller Sensory Bin for a change of pace! And, like you will see if you keep reading, it was a huge success for my son!
Did you ever had a child who picks up non-toys to play with more often than “proper” toys? My son is like this. He can spend hours playing with some everyday items found in the kitchen, bathroom or other parts of the home, whilst his own toys lay in his playroom forgotten.
How to set up a hair roller sensory bin?
Setting up our Hair Roller Sensory Bin took seconds. I emptied four packets of hair rollers I recently purchased from the Dollar Store into our green sensory bin.
Each packet contained 12 rollers in three different sizes. I managed to find orange, yellow, pink and black rollers.
All the ways to play with hair rollers
The hair rollers make a wonderful tactile sensory activity. The velcro like bristles stick together and my son couldn’t resist picking two up together at a time, pulling them apart and pushing them together again. He spent ages pushing the smaller hair rollers through the larger ones and stroking the hair rollers to see if the texture was the same or different on each roller.
After letting my son explore the texture of the hair rollers he set about using the hair rollers as a construction toy. First he created a hair roller pyramid. He used four hair rollers as the base and created four layers to the pyramid.
My son was able to pick up the hair roller pyramid from the bottom and it stayed in place. He laid the pyramid down in the sensory bin and realised that the smaller hair rollers could be placed inside. My son managed to get three rollers to nestle inside each other. This was a great fine motor skill activity as well as developing hand-eye coordination, colour matching and size ordering.
Next my son explored creating sculptures with the hair rollers. This took a lot of patience in order to create his masterpieces. My son was determined to use every hair roller – which he successfully managed to do. He even managed to get some of the smaller rollers to stay inside the larger ones.
Isn’t it amazing what fun little ones can have with every day items found around the house?!
What to read next?
Our recommendations include:
- learn more about ways sensory play benefits child’s motor development
- pre-writing is fun with zig-zag sensory bag (super simple preparation!)
- got some corn on hand? Perfect to set up low-cost corn sensory bin!
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