the bling bin

otherwise known as where the magpies gather

A sensory bin that my students have been playing with is black and shiny.  

I am not usually a bling sort of girl, but this bin is one of my favourites.  

It started out with black gravel.  The second half of a bag left over from a space bin.  

I had some black buttons left over from a project that needed white buttons, and I could only buy packages of white and black mixed buttons.  They joined the black gravel, and the beginning of the  bling bin came into being.

I dug around in my box of interesting and sparkly things and wandered the aisles at Michaels.  Found some blue-grey translucent glass gems, a silver, grey and sparkly bead garland from Christmas time, and some gold one side, silver the other sequins that upped the bling quotient.

Everything else came from my favourite kindergarten resource centre - my local thrift shop.  A small gold plant pot, a couple of sparkly glass candlesticks, a shiny "platter" and my best score, a brass votive holder with cutout hearts.  A couple of spoons (thrift shop again), and the bin was ready for playing.

It just called out to touch the shininess, to hear the plink of rock on metal, to play with the light on the glass containers. 

Very few people who came into our room could resist letting the gravel run through their fingers, or rearranging buttons or glass gems, or putting a sequin on top of a button.