Sensory Bins

Simple Valentines Sensory Bin

This Valentines sensory bin was made at the last minute with very few items but still captured the attention and creativity of the kids! Last year for our Valentine’s Day sensory bin, I used red paper shreds as the base. I hadn’t planned anything out for this year so I used pink and purple beaded garland and shiny foil heart garland as the base. I threw in a few plastic heart shaped containers and in one of them, I put a costume jewelry ring. The container with the ring led my boys to come up to me, open the container and ask, “will you marry me?”!

We had a few friends over to make crafts and play and as always, the sensory bins were very popular with the kids. Our farm sensory bin also got played with a fair bit because I haven’t finished disassembling it.

The kids and their friends danced, ate, guessed how many conversation hearts were in the container (214), made crafts, played in the sensory bins, and played with the chocolate playdough. Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Candy Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

Earlier this year, we were reading the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I like to come up with corresponding activities to go along with our book studies in the hopes that it will cement the learning and usually come up with a sensory bin as part of that. It seemed only natural that a Candy Sensory Bin should go with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

Candy Sensory Bin - The Chaos and The Clutter

I included various sizes of pompoms, little beads that can be strung together to make a necklace that looked candy-like, gold foil bon bon cups to represent the Golden Tickets, an empty Wonka Nerds box, an ice cream scoop, a Pez candy dispenser, ice cream bowls in bright colours, a Fudgesicle bubble blower which was chocolate scented, and the little rings that you can put on keys to tell them apart (which I bought for $0.99 for a pack of 4 and thought they looked like Life Savers and they have great sensory elements to them).

At one point, I bought a pack of Wonka Gobstoppers and ate them so that we could use them in the bin (the sacrifices I make for my kids!) but the empty box likely got thrown away so I bought another box and with that one, I shared them with the kids, but that empty box also somehow got thrown away so after two failed tries, I gave up on having Gobstoppers in the candy sensory tub!

It was neat to see how differently the kids approached playing with this bin. Some got in there and smelled everything, mixed things all around, made a necklace out of the beads and wore it while they played, while others were more methodical in their approach and separated things by colour or just organized the bin in the way they felt best.

Candy Sensory Bin Play I didn’t disassemble this bin because I’m planning to pull it out again for Valentine’s Day week and will add some plastic conversation hearts to it for that. Double-duty sensory bin!

If you are looking for more sensory ideas or information, you may be interested in my book and by following my Sensory Bins board on Pinterest.

Non-Food Sensory Bin Fillers

By Sharla Kostelyk

I get asked on a regular basis for ideas for sensory bin fillers that are not food. Some preschools and schools do not allow food items in the sensory bins in their classrooms and there are some parents that feel it is wasteful to use food in their bins at home. Food items such as dried rice, pasta or beans are such an easy base for a sensory bin. It can be a bit more challenging to think of creative ideas that are not edible but with a bit of imagination, there are many options.

Non-Food Sensory Bin Bases As all sensory bins go, the only limits really are your imagination, but here are some suggestions as to what you can use as a base that are not food. I’ve added links to many of them so that you can check out examples of how they can work in a sensory tub.

For instructions on how to create a sensory bin, information about why they are so beneficial for children, relevant recipes, printable idea lists and more, get your copy of my ebook Sensory Bins: the What, the How & the Why .

Farm Theme Unit Study

By Sharla Kostelyk

Last month, we did a two week Farm Unit Study. It was easy to prepare for and the kids really enjoyed it. I was able to find ways to incorporate math, science, social studies, language arts, sensory, music, and reading into this unit.

For our farm sensory bin, I used a base of popcorn seeds and also dry noodles I bought in a bulk bin (the kind you would use for chicken noodle soup) that I thought looked a lot like hay. I added some farm animals: cow, horse, rooster, chicken, lamb, pigs, geese, peacock, donkey, as well as three trees and a farmer carrying a cow. I also added a rubber hen and a squishy pig.

I filled the kids’ workboxes with lots of fun hands-on Farm activities. I included a Barnyard Friends puzzle and a Ravensburger Look & Find Farm puzzle. There were also Farm Lacing Cards, 1-2-3 Farmyard! (Moorific Math Game), Wild Horses game, as well as some printed activities. The Wild Horses game was by far the winner in terms of popularity. It got played with multiple times a day regardless of whose bin it was in that particular day. Everyone took turns playing even in the evenings.

I used worksheets that I printed from several places. My favourites were the Beginning Sounds Match (free printable from Kindergarten Stars) and the farm spelling words from the On the Farm printable pack from 2 Teaching Mommies. I put the spelling sheets with some letters and the kids matched them up.

Every day during our Farm study, the kids each did one of the Farm Creative Writing Prompt sheets from 123 Homeschool 4 Me. I really liked that the prompts were open-ended and my early writers could just write a short sentence and my more confident writers could add description and write a paragraph.

We talked about different farm animals, the different types of farms and what work is like on a farm. We talked about how farming is where most of our food comes from and we made butter by shaking cream in a container until it turned into butter.

We sang Old MacDonald and Farmer in the Dell. With our reading, I realized that two of our all-time favourite books are farm-related so we read them again and added in a new book as well. Our well worn copy of The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown was read a few times. By now, I have it memorized which is a very good thing since it is so worn that one of the last pages cannot be made out anymore!

Click, Clack Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin is still funny after all this time! It’s just such a cute book! We’ve done some activities to correspond with the book in the past including some printables but this time we just read it (well, we may have read it more than once that day since we like it so much!).

We also read Cock-a-Doodle-Doo: Barnyard Hullabaloo! which I had heard about and thought it would go really well with our unit. It is a collection of barnyard poems by Giles Andreae. My kids still enjoy rhythmic rhyming type of prose so they wanted me to read it again and again.
Of course, what Farm unit would be complete without a visit to an actual farm? We were able to go to 2 farms during our unit study. One was a Hutterite colony (more on that in a post of its own) where they grow vegetables for market and raise chickens for one of the large poultry companies and the other was a friends’ farm where they have pigs, cows and buffalo.

You can find other ideas for a farm unit study on my Farm Pinterest Board.

Check out my book on Sensory Bins!

Winter Sensory Tray

By Sharla Kostelyk

The other day I was in a department store and passed by a square mirror for $3. I knew that I could make all kinds of sensory trays and activities with it so I scooped it up!

Winter Sensory Tray on a mirror For this winter themed tray, I added white feathers, silver jingle bells, a strip of white faux fur, and a blingy “W” sticker. I left the sticker on its clear backing for the tray and told Miss Optimism that she can craft with it when we are done with the tray.

Winter Sensory Tray This is a lot less than I usually include in a sensory bin or tray, so I’ve been surprised at how much the kids have enjoyed playing with it and at the scope of their imaginations. They have made the feathers into clouds, the faux fur into a snow hill, the jingle bells into tobogganers! They have threaded the jingle bells onto the feathers, have created patterns with the feathers, have hidden the “W” beneath layers of fluff…they have not tired of this activity yet.

I’m both excited and sad that it is time to bring out the winter themes. We got our first snow of the year on Sunday and though some has already melted and it is supposed to warm up tomorrow and melt what remains, soon, there will be a snow that stays until Spring.

If you are looking for more sensory ideas or information, you may be interested in my book and by following my Sensory Bins board on Pinterest.

Coffee Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

I don’t drink coffee and we got a Keurig for Christmas last year, so the only coffee The Husband drinks is now from there. I had a large bag of coffee beans that we bought in Ethiopia over 4 years ago (yuck) and a small bag of grounds that are probably even older. I’m not sure why I bought the beans as we have never at any point had anything in the house with which to grind them!

I kept both bags with the intention of making some type of coffee sensory bin at some point. I then heard that September 29 is National Coffee Day so that gave me great motivation to make it in time to share it before then with you in case you wanted to make one of your own!

I started with a base of coffee beans and coffee grounds and then it was actually Einstein’s idea to add the K-cups which I thought was pretty brilliant! Then we added a few packs of Coffee Mate that he had picked up at a hotel at some point (that child is always “collecting” random things!).

I wanted to add something to represent sugar but I didn’t have any sugar cubes. I ended up using two of the salt blocks that we made last week for our history class. They look just like rectangular sugar cubes!

I added two little coffee cups (well they are tea cups but they work well as scoops in this bin!) and a toy spatula.

The kids are liking the bin, particularly the smell of it! It has been a wee bit of a challenge to get them not to open up the packets that are in there though!

If you are looking for more sensory ideas or information, you may be interested in my book.

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