The Bean "Factory"!

I've been fascinated with the sensory table tubes at Sand and Water Tables, so I decided to try my hand at a very simple structure for the sensory table.  This has been a huge success!  I have one little guy who has spent most of center time each day working at the sensory table since this has been added.

This has lovingly been dubbed our "factory" by our friends from Bumblebee Boulevard who come to visit us in the afternoon.  It is simply a tube from a poster I ordered (I left the plastic stopper on one end so the beans don't fall out the end) and two different sized boxes taped together with duct tape.

When the tube becomes too full of beans, the whole "factory" tips towards the tube end.  According to our friend from Bumblebee Boulevard, this is when the "power goes out"!  We then tip the tube up, dump the beans back into the hole and begin the process all over again!

On the other side, we have a slide for the beans to slide down!  Originally, I had this part hanging off the side of the sensory table with a plastic tub underneath to catch the beans!  This was fascinating...and required lots of sweeping!  The children loved it and helped sweep up all the beans that missed the plastic tub.  However, we decided to make it a bit more manageable so the children would focus more on exploring the tube and slide rather than attempting to shoot them off the table!  (although, we may bring this back again some day!)

We have lots of scoops and cups to explore the beans and the "factory".  The children have experimented with what scoops and cups work the best to transfer the beans from the table to the tubes.   The little guy who loves this area keeps complaining "more, more" when he's put too many beans in the tube and hole and feels that he is losing the beans in front of him! 

Then again, when you want to be able to see the beans and not feel like you are losing them,  sometimes it is more fun to fill up baskets and empty them out again!