Jello Sensory Bin

What is it about Jello that kids love?  I've never made jello in our house for the boys, and yet they see it in stores and ask for it.  (I'm guessing they've had it at Grammy and Grandpa's house.)

To go along with our rainbow fun I decided to buy Jello in several colors to put in the sensory table.

JZ (4) loved it.

J-Bug (2) played for awhile, but he tends to favor bins with rice, beans, water beads, etc.  He likes scooping and dumping more than messy hand play.

JZ enjoyed watching how the colors mixed.

Check out our new sensory table!  My husband finished it a couple of weeks ago.  He made it easy for the bin to come in and out, so I simply moved the bin that was in it (full of cloud dough) and replaced it with the Jello bin.  The Jello bin was a one time thing, so I put the cloud dough bin back in the table when we were done.

One cool thing about the Jello is how slowly the colors mix.  With water and paint colors become brown fairly quickly.  The Jello colors slowly combined, giving a marbled appearance for awhile before ending up a brownish purple.

For a treat I made the boys rainbow jello cups.

They were pretty happy. 

I don't have a photo since he was in my lap, but Peanut (8 months) joined in the jello fun for a minute.  We put the bin on the ground, and he kept reaching for it.  I rolled up his sleeves and let him get his hands in it.  He touched it and studied his hands carefully, and that was it.  He didn't reach in again, and he never tried to lick his hands.  I want to try this again with both babies when they are a bit older.

Other ways we've played with Jello:

• Autumn Jello Sensory Bin 
• Glowing JELLO Experiment

If you are a bit unsure about playing with food I understand the hesitation. Here is a post I wrote about the benefits of letting children play with food and how to minimize waste, Child's Play 101 - Fun with Food.

Follow my Fun With Food board on Pinterest for more ideas.

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