Baby Bins: Christmas {Week 2}

Round 2 of baby bin Christmas fun was a blast! I can’t wait to share all of these awesome ideas that had Aubrey busy while this mama was checking things off of the Christmas to do list.

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Here are the details for each of our second week of Christmas activities:

Eight Jolly Reindeer:

Eight Jolly Reindeer was a fun board book for a little counting practice. I only wish it counted up instead of down since Aubrey is still learning to count. Aubrey is Santa obsessed and the jolly old guy had her yelling “santa” on each page, so I’d say it was a hit regardless.

Christmas Theme Sensory Bin:

In this bin: snow fluff, star lights, little people advent calendar toys, fake trees

Christmas Play Dough:
On this tray: green play dough, dough roller, tree cookie cutter, foam shapes, buttons, sequins

Christmas Tree Light Box:

This light box was so mesmerizing, it had my girls busy all week long. First I always save any giant boxes we get for projects like this. (You know how kids always want to play with the box right?) This was a box from one of the girls’ car seats.

To make the tree, I laid the box down so the opening was on the side and drew a large triangle on the outside of the box. Then I measured and poked holes with a screwdriver for each light. If you are a little OCD like me and want things all measured out evenly, here were my measurements:

9 inches across at the base and 18 inches tall
I used a string of 60 LED lights.
I started at the base with 10 holes across 1″ apart.
I made the next row 2″ above the first and poked 9 holes, again 1″ apart.
Then I repeated with each row 2″ above the previous one and light holes 1″ apart with one less each time.

After I poked all of the holes I pushed the lights in starting at the top so any extra lights and the plug were at the bottom. Then I added mini 3M hooks for the girls to hang mini ornaments on while playing inside.

Christmas Tree Sensory Bag:

While decorating Christmas cookies I had this bright idea. Our clear decorating bags were the perfect triangles to make into trees! So I made this little tree sensory bag for Aubrey to squish and explore.

I started out with a clear decorating bag. Next, I filled it with clear hair gel and a few drops of green food coloring. Then, I added a few colored sequins and buttons. Finally I folded up the bottom a tiny bit and sealed it with clear packing tape. I added clear tape around all of the edges just to reinforce it a little more, but the bag is pretty thick so that probably wasn’t even needed. Last I used a dot of super glue to attach a foam star at the top.

Aubrey squished the green food coloring all into the hair gel to even out the color while she was playing, then we played I spy and she tried to find and name the different colors she saw inside.

Cookie Cutter Stamping:

Our last activity of the week was easy cookie cutter stamping. Mix up a batch of your favorite taste safe paint (or use tempera paint if your little one has learned not to put paint in their mouth.) Pour red, green, and brown paint onto paper plates then use cookie cutters to stamp lots of Christmas-y shapes.

If you are looking for all of the plans and printables for this week’s theme I will be posting them soon! If you’d like to be notified as soon as they are available please subscribe to my newsletter (in the sidebar to the right) and/or join our Tot School and Preschool Facebook group here: