Sensory bags are the perfect way to introduce babies to sensory play and keep them entertained during tummy time!

When I started this blog, my youngest was only 3 months old. She spent most of her time sleeping, eating, and swinging, so I didn’t feel the need to involve her in our activities.

Now she’s 7 months old and more curious about big sis’s activities, particularly our sensory play activities.

I get that you need to keep your kids busy because you feel stressed about all the stuff you need to get done today. That’s why my mission is to…
1. Find fun, quality kids’ activities and show you step by step how to do them.
2. Save you time and energy by using supplies from around the house or show you where to easily get them.
3. Inspire you to be creative and play with your kids in new and exciting ways.

Babies (and a lot of toddlers!) put EVERYTHING in their mouths, so how do you keep them safe while still engaging them in sensory play?

The answer is a sensory bag!

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WHAT’S A SENSORY BAG?

Sensory bags (sometimes called squish bags) are bags filled with items that engage children’s senses, mostly the senses of touch and sight, and occasionally smell and sound.

You might prefer a sensory bag over a sensory bin if you’ve got little ones who mouth everything, want to keep messes completely contained, or have kids who don’t like getting messy.

Sensory bags are also super portable!

I love using sensory bags with my babies. My oldest hated tummy time as a baby. We had a bag of green water that we used to entice her to play on her tummy.

Now that she’s older, we’ve moved on to sensory bins. Here are a few of the bins we’ve made so far.

Sensory bins are basically the same as bags, except the filler is in a bin and will also contain interesting objects, like pinecones, and have materials to manipulate the filler, such as shovels and measuring cups and funnels.

Why Do Kids need Sensory Play?

Babies and toddlers benefit from sensory play activities through:

developing language skills,
learning to freely explore and investigate their world,
learning sensory attributes (i.e. hot, cold, wet, dry, soft, hard),
developing motor skills,
developing the skill of focus.

Sensory stimulation has been proven to calm those who are anxious and help them sleep better. This is great news for us parents!

I try to do at least one sensory play activity with my toddler every day, and now I’m trying to get the baby involved too!

Toddler and baby playing with sensory bags on the floor

17 Quick & Easy Sensory Bag FIllers

Sensory bags can be filled with whatever interesting things you don’t want your kids putting into their mouths.

I like to use a variety of squishy and hard fillers when choosing bags to tape to the floor.

Some of our favorite fillers are:

Shaving cream
Dry pasta
Pom poms
Popcorn
Dyed rice
Salt
Drinking straws
Beads
Clear hair gel or shampoo
Water beads
Buttons
Leaves
Glitter and baby oil
Cereal
Chips
Crumpled paper balls
Oil and water (see instructions below)

Put no more than 3 cups of any of these fillers in your zip-top bag.

Side note: Most of these sensory bag fillers were previously used in our sensory bins!

How to Make an Oil & Water Sensory Bag

Making a colorful, mesmerizing oil & water sensory bag like the one below is easy peasy. I love the lava lamp effect and it really piqued the curiosity of my two-year-old, Ella.

Toddler playing with a sensory bag filled with oil and water

Here’s how I did it. I put a gallon zip-top plastic bag in a large bowl and poured 2 cups of oil in.

I used canola oil, but you could also use vegetable oil or baby oil;. it really doesn’t matter.

Next, I stirred several drops of red food coloring (Ella’s favorite color) into a half cup of water.

That went into the bag with the oil.

Then I zipped up the top and taped it shut with duct tape.

If you’re going to let the little ones freely explore the oil and water bag, or any bag with wet ingredients, during sensory play time, I suggest double-bagging and making sure their nails are nice and trim!

We’ve had a couple instances where our bags have leaked from someone’s pointy nail poking a hole in the bag 🙁

How We Played with Sensory Bags

I chose four sensory bag fillers: shaving cream, dry penne, oil and water, and pom poms. These four were a nice mix of different textures: squishy, hard, soft, and wet.

Then I taped the bags to the floor in a grid using duct tape. I was hesitant to use duct tape at first, but it didn’t hurt my wood floors.

We only had them taped on for a day before I removed them. I wouldn’t recommend using duct tape on the floor for longer than that.

The girls played very nicely together!

It was great to have bags large enough for the girls to play with together. Taping the bags down also kept the bags in one spot so the older one couldn’t “steal” one away from the little one.

Toddler and baby girl playing with sensory bags on the floor

Baby was very interested in the colorful pom poms and kept trying to pick them up. She also really liked the shaving cream. I had put little googly eyes in there, but they didn’t show up quite as well as I hoped. Clear gel would’ve been better.