Beans and Seeds
Beans and seeds are a much-loved sensory resource. They come in a variety of sizes, colours and shapes, they are smooth and shiny with similar flowing qualities to rice. They are cheap and easy to source and can give hours of fun and tactile enjoyment to participants.. They can reinforce a theme or simply be enjoyed in an abstract context for their tactile, visual and sound qualities. Be selective in what you purchase; separate colours/sizes are useful for sorting, large quantities have a more striking effect when poured and enable all participants to explore at the same time. Use bowls and trays to make the activities accessible to wheelchair users.
Make patterns and pathways - using a black cloth on the floor helps contain the beans and shows up their different colours. Creating a floor map or geometrical shapes using different colours and sizes is fun and provides tactile and visual stimulation and sorting activities are always fun.
Explore with fingers and toes, burying, picking up individual beans or handfuls, watching them run through fingers, rolling around in bowls or cans
Dropping into, rolling around or shaking in a variety of containers, made of wood, metal or plastic, creates different sounds. Provide some large containers, such as a fire pit bowl, as many people enjoy pouring from a great height and this will help contain the beans.
Using with instruments - dropping beans onto a tongue drum will produce different sounds to when they are sprinkled over a dulcimer. Tambours make excellent receptacles for rolling beans around in to create whooshing sounds, or drop them singly for finer sounds.
Larger 'seeds', like conkers, chestnuts, acorns sound brilliant when rolled down or dropped onto wooden xylophones and tongue drums
Put them into clear plastic tubs or bottles to make see-through instruments that can be rolled or shaken. Different sized beans will create different sounds. Link to a theme to enrich the multisensory experience, for example using bird seeds with a bird theme, a variety of beans for Zulus making dinner, grains to go with grasses, harvest, planting or Spring, or orange, green, black lentils to reinforce a colour theme.
