In honor of SpaceX’s would-be historic launch today, I set up this easy astronaut-themed sensory bin for Veronika!

All I used were two different colors of dried beans, which I poured into a shallow tray. I originally had the box half filled with dark red beans and half with white, but they very quickly were mixed together.

Then I simply added a few astronaut toys, including aliens and a little space rover for Veronika to play around with. It was an instant hit!

She loved the sound that the rover made as it drove over these bumpy “moon rocks”.

Of course we could also collect samples of rock to take back to Earth.

She moved the little figures around in the beans, enjoying the way this made the beans scatter. I also showed her how to bury the alien underneath them, and she could then go digging.

A sensory box like this would work with just about any toy of course, whatever your toddler currently likes best! Or just add scoops instead of toys, for practice pouring. But the astronaut theme felt perfect in conjunction with today’s historic event, even when we later learned the launch was a no-go for bad weather.

Towards the end of her play, she discovered that if she raked her astronauts quickly through the beans, they scattered over the edge.

So then this happened.

Which is just fine because dried beans are one of the easiest sensory items to clean up ever! You can do this activity over a towel for even faster clean-up, but I find it just as easy to sweep all the beans into a dustpan. They sweep up with zero mess, unlike other materials I could name.

We are wishing the astronauts good luck on their voyage!