We love sensory play, so I'm not quite sure how we haven't made sensory bags before!  But we've now tried our first ones, and absolutely love them.  All the squishy fun without the mess, perfect for those days when you've just cleaned the house but want a great sensory activity.

• zip seal sandwich bags
• tape
• hair gel
• shaving foam
• heart confetti
• plastic letters

We decided to make two different types of sensory bags so that Ethan and Ivy could each have one to play with, then switch and take turns.  One bag would use hair gel as a filler and the other would use shaving foam.

For the first bag we filled it about halfway with hair gel, Ethan really liked helping out with this.  It's great for his hand strength to squeeze the bottle and he loved watching all of the gel fill up the bag.

Next we sprinkled in some of the heart confetti to finish off our very simple Valentines Day sensory bag.  I sealed the top of it, but wasn't confident in the strength of the bag, so I decided to put it inside another zip bag before taping it down to a plastic place mat (you could stick it right onto the table, but I thought that this might make it easier).

Next we prepared our shaving foam bag, of course Ethan really enjoyed filling up the bag with the foam.  It was hard to convince him to stop, and we've actually overfilled our bag a bit!

Then we put four plastic letters in, to spell out the world 'love'.  Ethan found each letter that I asked him for and placed it into the bag.

I put the shaving foam bag in another bag as well, then taped it down to another place mat to get it ready to play with.

Then it was time to squish!  Oh it was fun to squeeze the gel around the bag and watch those little confetti hearts move around the bag, chasing them around with their little fingers.  I'll be honest with you though, Ivy wanted in that bag!  She just wanted to squish that gel for real, she is definitely a fan of messy play!

The shaving foam sensory bag was really fun to play with as well.  It was so full that it was like a big pillow, and it was very challenging to find the letters inside.  Ethan did start to find the letters and managed to sort them into order to spell out the word love.

The sensory bags were so much fun to play with, and because I had taped them to place mats we could easily use them again later.  The shaving foam does lose a bit of its foaminess over time, so it was easier to find the letters in there the next day, and we played with it more then.

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