Homeschooling

Sea Turtle Life Cycle Sensory Bin

This Sea Turtle Life Cycle Sensory Bin is an easy hands-on way to study these remarkable creatures. Kids can explore science with their senses while they learn how sea turtles are born and live.

My friend Jamie who lives in Florida volunteers to check on nests and make protected trenches for the baby sea turtles in her area. It’s been so interesting to see her pictures and videos and hear about her experiences. While we may not live anywhere near the ocean, that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn about this amazing phenomenon ourselves.

A few facts to get you started:

The mother turtles dig holes in the sand or mud to create a nest which they lay their eggs in. They then bury the eggs to protect them.

Less than 1% of the eggs survive and make it to the sea. Some do not fully develop, but most fall victim to predators. Once the hatchlings emerge from their shell, they must dig their way out of the hole and make it to the ocean.

Racoons, crabs, birds, fish, fire ants, dogs, lizards, and coyotes are among the main predators of the eggs and young offspring.

Sea Turtle Life Cycle Sensory Bin:

We saw sea turtles at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on a road trip and our kids were fascinated. We also had the opportunity to see protected areas of sea turtle nests on the beach in Florida on another trip. There, we attended an information evening teaching us about conservation efforts. Education is always the first step towards conservation so the more you teach your kids, the better.

This sensory bin may spark the beginning of an interest for them in learning more.

Supplies needed:

Directions:

Fill a small container with sand or kinetic sand.
Add some rocks.
Place the figures from the Sea Turtle Life Cycle pack in the sand.
Encourage play.

This sensory bin is great for use at home or in the classroom while doing a unit study. It enables kids to reenact what they are learning. Using more of their senses and learning through play allows for better retention. What may seem like a simple activity can allow kids to cement their knowledge and make it more real.

This sensory play activity includes small parts. As with any children’s activity, adult supervision is required.

Resources for Learning about Sea Turtles:

If you want to further your study, here are some resources to delve deeper and expand your knowledge about sea turtles.

Life Cycle of a Green Sea Turtle Sea Life Green Sea Turtle Kinetic Sand Realistic Sea Turtle Plastic Figurines Sea Turtle with Babies Building Set Sea Turtle Life Cycle Guide Laminated Card The Life Cycle of a Sea Turtle From Egg to Sea Turtle The Life of a Sea Turtle

Sea Turtle Life Cycle and Nesting Locations
Sea Turtle Lifecycle Interactive Diagram
Green Sea Turtle Facts (includes an open sea cam)
A Sea Turtle’s Life Cycle Explained Video (short, but quite informative)
Sea Turtle Life Cycle Video (animated – Australia)
Make a Sea Turtle Life Cycle Craft out of WikkiSticks
Sea Turtle Life Cycle Worksheets (free)
Sea Turtle Life Cycle Printable Pack (free)

Looking for more easy sensory play ideas to inspire learning? Join for a five day email series on Sensory Activities and Solutions and get a free sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

Check out some of our other life cycle sensory bins that can be used for science unit studies:

Bee Life Cycle Sensory Bin

Human Body Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

I know this one is a bit gross at first glance, but bear with me. Kids are able to retain more information when they incorporate their senses and learn through play. That’s how I came up with the idea for this Human Body Sensory Bin.

As kids learn about the human body, they can explore through sensory play. This can lead them to asking more questions and finding new discoveries.

What I love about this sensory play activity is that there are so many ways you can use it to expand learning. Suggestions for how to use this as part of a human body unit study:

set out books on the human body, handouts, diagrams, and worksheets near the bin.
kids can match the organs and body parts in the bin to the ones in the books.
print out cards with the names of the organs and ask kids to place the cards in the sensory bin next to the corresponding organ.
invite students to talk about what each of the organs does in the body.

Human Body Sensory Bin:

Supplies needed:

Directions:

Place the water beads in a plastic tub and add water. Wait for them to expand.
Toss in the plastic human organs and stretchy body parts. (Even typing that makes me laugh because it sounds so gross!)
Set the bin out in your home or classroom for students to explore.

Body Parts Stretchy Fidgets – Ear, Hand, Foot Nose – Anatomy Human Organs TOOB Red Water Beads

Some other resources to accompany your human body unit study:

Human Body! (Knowledge Encyclopedias)The Human Body: A Pop-Up Guide to Anatomy Human Body Activity Book for Kids My First Human Body Book The Fantastic Body: What Makes You Tick & How You Get Sick Look Inside: Your Body Learning Resources Human Body Model 3D Organ Apron

Expand your study further with these free printable human body worksheets:

Setting out corresponding worksheets near the sensory bin station encourages learning.

Anatomy Notebooking Pages
Human Body Dot Marker Pages (good introduction to the unit or for younger students to get involved)
Human Body 3 Part Cards
Human Body Printables for Kids

More hands-on learning activities for the human body:

Check out some of our other sensory science ideas:

Colour Mixing Sensory Bag

Sensory Smell Bottles

Melting Ice Experiment

Cookies Bite Size Lessons Sensory and Learning Activities

By Sharla Kostelyk

Nothing can bring a family together like baking cookies. In the book Cookies, Bite Size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Resenthal, children can learn life lessons about love, kindness, and sharing all centered around their favourite food…cookies! Enjoy the book with your child, then take a look at these book based activities designed to extend the learning even further.

These activities are a great way to enjoy the themes of the story long when the book is done, and can help keep kids learning and engaged in a way that is fun and meaningful.

Cookies Bite Size Lessons Book Activities:

Activity #1: Cookie Baking Sensory Experience

In this activity, kids will experience the smells and feels associated with cooking baking in a hands on way. It engages the tactile and olfactory sensory systems.

Supplies needed:

muffin tin or muffin cups
assorted cookie toppings such as candies, cinnamon sprinkles, candy sprinkles, sugar, cloves, and other spices.

Directions:

Start by reading the book with your child. As you look at the pictures, talk about how we can use illustrations to “smell” the pictures. What types of items do you see that make you think of baking scents? Some examples include dough, sugar, candy, etc.
Take a look at the samples you have collected for children to smell. Take turns smelling each sample. Some of the samples can include candy toppings, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.
Use your adjectives to describe the scents. Do they smell sweet? Spicy? Tasty?
Let children touch and smell each sample and use their adjectives to describe what they are experiencing.

Activity #2: Comprehensive Book Walk

In this activity, children will take a book walk through the text and use this opportunity to ask questions, discuss their favourite pages, and more.

Supplies needed:

book
Post-it notes
pens/pencils

Directions:

Give each child a stack of post it notes as well as a pen or marker.
Go through the book page by page. When children find a page that they have a question about, have them write a “?” on the sticky note and stick it to the page.
When they find a page that excites them or is their favourite, have them write a “!” and stick it on the page.
When you are done walking through the book, take the time to go back and address the sticky notes. These conversations help them develop further comprehension of the text and can help guide the conversation.

Activity #3: Bake and Share

A big theme in the book is sharing with others. For this activity, you will plan, bake, and share your own batch of cookies.

Supplies needed:

book
ingredients to make cookies
construction paper, markers

Directions:

Talk about the themes of the book such as sharing, caring, and love. Talk about who you would like to share cookies with and why.
Bake a batch of cookies. Use this opportunity to practice those measuring skills. Let kids help plan, bake, and clean up.
Take the construction paper and markers and create homemade cards to go with your cookies. Deliver them to family or friends who may enjoy them.
Afterwards, sit down and talk about how sharing and caring feels.

Enjoy this book with your child, then give these fun and educational book based activities a try!

You may also enjoy these book activity ideas:

Have You Filled a Bucket Today

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake

A Bad Case of Stripes

November Emotions Printing Practise

By Sharla Kostelyk

I firmly believe that teaching emotions is even more important than teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Children need to develop a real understanding of emotions and know how to express their own. These November emotions printing practise worksheets allow kids to work on their printing while learning about emotions.

These copywork pages allow students to explore emotion words and associate the images with the corresponding feeling. This expands their emotional vocabulary.

November Emotions Printing Practise:

Download the printable pages. If you want to make them reusable, laminate the pages or slip them into a plastic page protector. Students can then use a dry erase marker to complete the tracing and writing.

If these are for a one time use, give the student a pencil, crayons, coloured pencils, or markers and the printed papers.

Instructions for the student:

Read the sentence.
Fill in the outline.
Trace the dotted words.
Write the sentence on the lines provided.
Discuss the various emotions.

These worksheets can be the jumping off point for a class discussion or one-on-one talk about different emotions.

Simply enter your email in the box below to download the November Emotions Printing Practise Worksheets. You can use it with your child at home or print it off to use with your students in the classroom.

Colour Mixing Sensory Bottle

By Sharla Kostelyk

I love when you can combine learning and fun! This colour mixing sensory bottle does just that. It brings science and the wonder of discovery to sensory play.

This activity is effective for teaching the science concepts of colour (for younger children) and density (for older children. By using different densities, the two colours are able to mix to form a new colour and then separate again.

When held up to the light or sunlight, the colours created in this colour mixing sensory bottle are beautiful.

Even I was surprised at how cool this simple science activity was. I wasn’t sure if it would work and was delighted when it did. My kids were even more delighted!

Due to the weight of the corn syrup, these sensory bottles are on the heavy side, making this a wonderful activity for proprioceptive sensory input. These also of course involve the visual sensory system as children use their eyes to explore the colours changing.

How to Make Colour Mixing Sensory Bottles:

Materials needed:

empty plastic water bottle (330 mL/11 oz. size)
clear corn syrup
mineral oil
food colouring
Wilton oil-based candy colour in primary colours*
funnels or measuring cups with a spout
plastic or glass containers of similar size
spatula

White Corn Syrup Wilton Oil Based Primary Colors Set VOSS Plastic Bottles Mineral Oil

Directions:

In a glass or clear plastic container that is similar in size to the empty water bottle, add clear corn syrup and a few drops of yellow food colouring. Mix well.
In another glass or clear plastic container that is similar in size to the empty water bottle, add mineral oil and a small bit of blue food colouring paste*. Mix well. Add a very small amount of the dye as you can always add more once you see the colour. You don’t want the blue to be too dark.
Pour the yellow corn syrup mixture into the empty water bottle to about the halfway point. You may need to use a spatula to get it all transferred.
Next, pour the blue mineral oil to nearly the top.
Top with the lid. If you want to secure the lid, you can do so using a hot glue gun.

*It is important that you use an oil based food colouring in this step. Water based dyes will not work.

The yellow and blue should stay separated when the bottle is upright. If you tilt the bottle, you will begin the see the colours combine to form green.

You can create other colour mixing sensory bottles by adding yellow and red which when combined will make orange and blue and red which will form purple when mixed.

Note: It works best to have the lighter colour be the one that is mixed with the corn syrup.

What makes the colours separate?

The difference in densities between the corn syrup and mineral oil is what keeps the colours separate. They sit on top of each other unless tipped. The colours will then mix to form a new colour, but when brought upright again, the colours will separate because of the density of the liquid they are in. For younger children, give a simple explanation on density, but focus most of the science lesson on the colour mixing.

For older children, use this science experiment as a way to introduce density. Follow up with this video that helps further explain density. You can then expand the discussion from there.

More sensory science:

This activity appears in the Colours section of The Sensory Science Book Volume 1. In it, you can find other incredible activities to help children discover the world around them.

Experiment with other colour mixing examples.

Colour Mixing Sensory Bags

Colour Mixing Jello Experiment

If you’re looking for more fun ideas for your child, get a free sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

Colour Mixing Sensory Science

By Sharla Kostelyk

Learning about colours doesn’t have to be boring. Our colour mixing sensory science made for a very fun few days! We were inspired by our Rainbow theme last week and decided to extent our learning about colors into this week. There is a song that we sang (to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”):

“When you hug blue and yellow, it makes green; when you hug blue and yellow, it makes green; when you hug these two you’ll see a new color magically; when you hug blue and yellow, it makes green.”

Of course, for the next two versus, you make orange by “hugging” red and yellow and make purple by “hugging” red and blue.

We did a few easy color mixing experiments.

Colour Mixing Sensory Bags:

Supplies needed:

resealable plastic sandwich bags
red paint
blue paint
yellow paint

Instructions:

Squirt some blue paint and red paint into one bag, ensuring that the paints are on opposite sides of the bag. Do the same in other bags with blue paint and yellow paint in one and red paint and yellow paint in another.

Seal the bags, removing as much of the excess air as you can.

Discuss primary and secondary colors.

Have the child hypothesize what colours will be created when the paint is mixed.

Have the child mix the paints together with their fingers by moving the paint around through the bag. This is a great sensory activity too. The kids are able to create other colours by squishing the primary colours into each other.

You can hang the bags on the window using clear packing tape and have the child observe how the sun shining through affects the appearance of the colours.

This experiment is one of many included in the first volume of our Sensory Science Book. It is full of engaging hands-on learning designed to help kids retain what they learn because of using their senses in the process.

Colour Mixing Mini Volcanos:

Supplies needed:

baking soda
cake pan
vinegar
food colouring
droppers

Instructions:

Place a layer of baking soda in a cake pan. Fill three cups a third of the way with vinegar and add about five drops of food colouring to each cup.

Fill the droppers with the coloured vinegar and squeeze it out onto the baking soda. By adding another colour on top, you can create little volcanos of new colour in mixing them.

They loved this activity!The kids learned:

-that the best way to form a new colour was to have a person with one dropper of one colour and another person with another colour squeeze at the same time in the same area. Once left on the baking soda, the colours did not mix as easily.

-that mini volcanos are fun.

-that when you pour the three glasses of color into each other, you end up with almost black.

Mommy learned that when you do this activity, you should put newsprint down to protect your counters!!! (note that in the early picture, there was none underneath!)

The kids especially liked the look of the bottom of the cake plate after we were done and wished we could hang it like artwork. Unfortunately, a picture of it will have to do!

Some of the books that we read that were related to colour:

The kids also completed a great colour mixing worksheet (find it here) and had fun with some Mandala coloring pages that I printed for free from here.

They also had plenty of opportunity for hands-on learning on colour mixing with paint.

Check out these other great sensory science activities:

Jello Science Experiments

Sensory Smell Bottles