Simple Taste-Safe Dirt for Kids: Spring Garden with Worms Sensory Bin
How to Create This Edible Sensory Bin
A taste-safe or edible sensory base is a great play option for mouthing babies and toddlers, allowing them to explore different textures and smells safely. For this play, in order to make taste-safe dirt, you can bake the flour at 180°C (or about 360°F) for ten minutes. Also make sure to wash any tools and loose parts that will go in the bin (as well as your tray or bin) so they’re all clean for a baby-friendly or toddler-friendly sensory bin. (Always supervise little children.)
Recipe & Instructions for this DIY Taste-Safe Dirt
You can easily make this taste-safe dirt using only three ingredients that you likely have at home. All you need to do is mix 3 cups of flour (baked at 180°C or about 360°F for ten minutes to make it taste-safe as explained above) with 1 cup of cocoa powder and add about half a cup of vegetable oil slowly. Once the oil is completely mixed, it will feel soft and squishy – a really fun texture to play with!
Background & Tips on Spring Garden Sensory Play
My kids are obsessed with worms. They want to touch the worms they see in our backyard whenever we dig up a tiny corner (or the ones on the sidewalk when we go for walks especially after rain). That’s why I decided to create a sensory bin with fake worms so they could touch and play with them as much as they wanted. I was going to order some plastic ones that are sold as fishing bait, but then I noticed something in our pantry that looked very much like real worms: udon noodles!
Udon noodles are quite affordable where we live – I had a couple small packages, which cost less than a dollar each (we live in Canada), so I decided to try one and see how it would go. I simply added them to some potting mix in our backyard and the boys loved it! I didn’t boil or cook, since they’re kind of damp and sticky, they get covered with dirt immediately and look (also feel) just like real worms!
We wanted to repeat this activity but we had lots of snow in our backyard this time, so I needed to turn it into an indoor activity. That’s why I made some edible dirt at home using the simple recipe mentioned above.
Thoughts on this Taste-Safe Sensory Bin
This edible dirt has a really soft and fun texture, it also smells amazing. It sticks together when squeezed and works well with different types of loose parts. We added some Yellow Door Education sensory stones we got from Scholar’s Choice and the boys played with this sensory bin for ages. They also ended up bringing in their construction trucks, which is something they usually do and it always leads to extra play time.
Our favourite Inspire My Play PlayTRAY (purchased from Scholar’s Choice) worked really well for this activity as it has the perfect depth and size for messy bins such as this one.
Tools are a key part of every sensory bin and Inspire My Play tongs, scoops & bowls are some of our favourites (Inspire My Play). They come in beautiful colours, and they’re soft and easy for little hands to use.
Pairing Sensory Play with Books – Wiggling Worms at Work
We usually add a book to our set ups, which makes reading and learning more fun. We read the book as we play and also create some of the scenes from the book. We discuss what we’ve learned and sometimes come up with our own stories.
For this play, I included a new book we recently got, called: Wiggling Worms at Work by Wendy Pfeffer (from Amazon)*. It is a fairly comprehensive educational book, which my 5yo loved.
Book play in a sensory setting helps kids learn in a fun way while helping them understand complex concepts using multiple senses as opposed to just listening to a book.
I hope you try this taste-safe dirt and noodles sensory bin, and enjoy it as much as we did.
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