Play with 9 Month Old Baby: Dump and Fill Play with Sensory Containers

Lately, I’ve been noticing that Louisa loves to empty containers! She’s already emptied out her toy baskets, book bins, and dresser drawers. I’m convinced that our home will never be clean again!

Wondering what to play with 9 month old baby? Try dump and fill play. According to BabySparks, the processes of dumping and filling back up help to develop various skills:

• fine motor control

• cognitive skills including cause & effect, gravity, problem solving, and spatial awareness

• hand-eye coordination

• early math concepts

• focus

The process of dumping develops before filling back up, which explains why the mess in our home never seems to get picked up!

In effort to embrace Louisa’s current developmental stage and give her opportunities to develop the aforementioned skills even further, I set up a series of stations for Lou. Each station consisted of a container filled with a unique material, ready for Louisa to dump out!

The formula for these stations is super simple: Container + Material. The potential combinations are endless! Here are the three stations I created:

1) Gift box + packing material

2) Shoe box + strips of tissue paper:

3) Jar + clothespins

What I like about these stations is that they allow Lou to explore different textures, too! Before ripping the tissue paper into strips, we had fun throwing it into the air and observing how it slowly drifted down to the ground (again, observing gravity and also air resistance). An added challenge would be closing each container before offering the stations; this would give Louisa the opportunity to practice opening different types of containers prior to dumping them out.

There are so many sensory play ideas that can be paired with books - this is one of them! You can easily make these stations align with a picture book or board book that your child loves. For example, pair a basket of toy fruits or a log full of leaves with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, one of our current faves.

These stations will come in handy as we work on the process of filling back up. Because each of the contained items is unique, they will allow Louisa to practice picking up and transferring items of different shapes and sizes.

We love indoor play ideas that are easy like this one! What is a new dump and fill play station you’d recommend adding to our lineup? Comment your idea below!