Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

We actually did this activities last year when I had only first heard of sensory bins (and before I'd started blogging).  I was inspired by this post from No Time For Flashcards.

I printed out pictures of us and our extended family.  My mother at the time was very concerned about Chiquita recognizing them when they came to visit since all her other grandchildren live within 20 minutes.  This turned out to actually be the first of several activities we've done to get to know family members, like a simple slot activity and a memory game.

Since I don't have any cool cut out things I just traced hearts on construction paper with a cookie cutter and traced the heart shape on the back of the photos to cut them to the same size and glue them together.  I also used crocheted hearts I'd made for some "unknown" decoration instead of silk rose petals.  Chiquita had fun searching through the box.

After we'd played with it a few times I decided to string the hearts up into a hanging garland.  It's still hanging up in Chiquita's room and through the past year we often look at the pictures and talk about who everyone is.