Aquarium Sensory Box

We had some gravel and decorations left over from building Gumby's first fish tank, so I thought it would be fun for her to have an aquarium that she could get her hands in and play pretend. 

We had a box from a grocery store with the front already open for display, but any box could be used and cut to have the openings you want.  I originally had the contents set up in a tray, but I thought using a box with walls would really give it more of an aquarium feel.  We glued blue construction paper to the three sides of the box to look like water.  The animals are from our recent zoo trip.  They remind me a lot of the Toob kits.  The kit came with an octopus ... "Gumby the Octopus" to be exact ;)

Gumby played with this off and on all day today.  She found some containers to give some of the critters their own homes.  Gumby the Octopus was the first to get her own home.  We added in some foam sea critters.  They are stickers which we later stuck to the blue construction paper. 

Until I discovered the foam stickers, I thought we could decorate with construction paper plants, fish, etc.

I am also thinking of a way to affix a mobile over the top and hang some fish or something as well.