Before Madeline was born, Kayla and I went to a biweekly playgroup at a local elementary school. Though Kayla doesn’t remember the playgroup, I still have fond memories from our times there together. One of Kayla’s favorite activities was playing with containers of dried beans. We replicated this for her at home, but since dried beans are a choking hazards for babies and young toddlers, we put the beans away before Madeline was born.

A couple days ago I was researching ideas for keeping little ones occupied while you’re teaching older children and came across the dried bean idea. Now that our youngest is almost 2 1/2, we don’t have to worry as much about choking hazards.

We found that doing beans on the deck didn’t work so well because the beans got stuck between the planks. Our next idea was to play with the beans on the cement area outside our basement. This worked better, though a few beans got stuck in the cracks of the cement. Yesterday, when we were playing outside, this is what we discovered.

We didn’t intend to grow beans, but the girls sure think it’s fun!