Treasure Tub - Chicken Theme

I have done treasure baskets (what a treasure basket is here, here and images here ) with Luath since she was about 6 months old, but have shied away from sensory bins (what a sensory bin is here, here, images here and here). I think there is quite a cross over between treasure baskets and sensory bins.   In my mind a treasure basket is a collection of (usually) natural everyday objects in a container and a sensory bin is a collection of objects in a container which is filled with a medium (rice, beans, cotton balls etc).  Both are used for exploration of the senses and can have many uses.

The main reason I have avoided sensory bins is that Luath explores the world by mouthing.  This has lessened slightly recently but I prefer not to give her something that I would constantly be needing to stop her putting in her mouth (from a safety viewpoint but also I prefer to try and give her freedom to explore without me needing to remove/redirect, so I try to make her environment a Luath safe zone). I decided this week to try out a slight combination of a sensory bin and a treasure basket.  I called this hybrid a treasure tub.

This week's theme is chicken so I stuck with that for the tub.  I ripped up some thick packing paper for straw and then added some chicken related items:

wooden eggs
wooden egg cups
duplo chicken
soft chicken (that cheeps)
wooden egg shaped shakers

So far Luath has pretty much ignored the paper - she pulled one piece out - but has removed and played/explored with all the contents.

update - Luath discovered the paper one afternoon and enjoyed taking it out of the basket.  I'll bag the paper up and keep it for a future tub