Simple Science

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

Chicken 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

Tactile Sensory Play with Texture Balloons

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Your kids are going to love this tactile sensory play with texture balloons. They will enjoy deciphering what is inside each one and the tactile sensory input they get. You will like how simple and inexpensive this activity is to put together. These tactile sensory balloons are a great way for sensory avoiders to experience textures without touching them directly. As an example, if your child doesn’t like the feel of water beads, you can place water beads in a balloon and they can feel the shape, squishiness, and movement of them without having to feel the wetness or gooeyness.

This activity presents learning opportunities. The guessing and matching is science. Language skills are enhanced while discussing the characteristics of each filler and when reading the cards.

How to make texture balloons:

helium balloons
popcorn seeds
hair gel or hand sanitizer
sand
dry rice
flour
marbles
optional: cards to match up with the corresponding item

Fill each of the balloons with one of the fillers (popcorn seeds, gel, sand, rice, flour, marbles) and tie in a knot at the top to close.
It can be challenging to fill the balloons. The best way I have found is to blow the balloon up first and let the air out.
Insert the end of a funnel into the top of the balloon and place the filler in the funnel. For the marbles, you’ll have to slip them in the top of the balloon one at a time.
Have the child use their senses to try to determine which filler is in each balloon.

Other ideas for items to fill your texture balloons with:

cornstarch
coffee beans or coffee grounds
water beads
water
salt
slime
playdough
whatever else your imagination can come up with

You can find printable cards for the tactile balloons in The Sensory Science Book Volume 1. You’ll also find other easy to create hands-on science activities for kids.

Discussion points:

Encourage your child to also use their auditory sense in addition to their sense of touch. Discuss how the flour and the sugar sound different in the balloon and why that might be.

For older children, you could also fill one balloon with water and another with water and then freeze the balloon so that it is filled with ice and talk about states of matter.

Join me for a free 5 part email series called Sensory Solutions and Activities (just pop your email into the box below) and you’ll also get a free sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

Other sensory science activities you may enjoy:

Sensory Sound Eggs

Nature Sensory Bottle

Jello Colour Mixing Experiment

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Toilet Paper Roll Bird Feeder

By Sharla Kostelyk

I love this project. It’s simple. Kids love it. It only requires a few supplies. It provides opportunities for learning and sensory input. And who doesn’t have an empty toilet paper roll?!

In fact, I love this project so much that we make these pretty much every year. The kids enjoy all aspects of it. One thing I like about this project is how it engages the senses. The peanut butter and the bird seed both give olfactory (smell) sensory input. Rolling it in the bird seed and hanging it on a tree are excellent tactile input. And both making the bird feeder and later observing the birds who use it are visual.

If you have a child who is very sensory avoidant when it comes to touching textures or when it comes to smells, they may prefer to watch someone else make the bird feeder and then enjoy observing it in action once it is complete.

How to make a toilet paper roll bird feeder:

Supplies needed:

empty toilet paper roll
peanut butter
bird seed
knife or spoon for spreading the peanut butter
plate or paper plate
optional: string

Put a layer of bird seed onto a plate.
Spread peanut butter on the outside of a toilet paper roll using a knife or spoon.
Roll the toilet paper roll in the bird seed. Because of the peanut butter, the seeds will stick.
Loop the string through the toilet paper roll and hang it on a tree or slip the toilet paper roll directly onto a tree branch.
Observe the birds who come to feed.

How to make a toilet paper roll bird feeder without peanut butter:

With many schools being peanut and/or nut free, you may need to make this without peanut butter. You can use Sunbutter (a sunflower butter) in place of the peanut butter.

Expanding this activity:

Use a journal or notebook to write down observations of the birds, their sounds, their habits, their colour, their features or to draw pictures of the birds observed.

Using a book from the library or the internet, try to identify the different bird species that are visiting.

Make the bird feeder using a different type of bird seed and observe whether other varieties of birds visit.

Discussion Points:

What types of birds do you think will visit the feeder?

What types of birds are attracted to the seeds we are using?

This is one of the many activities included in The Sensory Science Book Volume 1. It contains ideas for the themes of Colour, The Senses, and Nature. Other Sensory Science Activities you may enjoy:

Colour Mixing Sensory Bottle

Sensory Smell Bottles

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