SPRING SENSORY BINS

This week I tried an activity with sensory bins for the first time. It was a total success! My 3 year-olds loved it.

The first bin was a “flower garden”. I used plastic flowers, painted cups as flower pots, plastic spoons, some real stones and 3 kg of black beans. The kids loved filling the cups, the sound the beans made, and “planting” the colourful flowers over and over again.

The second bin was a “frog pond”. I used 3 toy frogs, some small fish, several smooth river stones, a plastic water lily and water beads you can buy in any flower shop. To make it more exciting for the kids I hid the stones and most of the fish under the water beads so they could discover the “little treasures” by themselves.

We have 25 kids in a class so you have to plan and organize this kind of activities really well. My kids played in each bin in groups of five for 6-7 minutes. While 2 groups were playing, the rest were doing something else. In this case, I had another teacher with me through the whole class and she was making a flower mural with the rest of the kids, using plastic bottles. When they had finished playing they drew a picture of spring on a sheet of paper.

Why use sensory bins?

Kids look at,  touch, smell, and taste just about anything they come in contact with- this is how they learn. When their senses are stimulated, messages are sent to their brain which builds neural pathways that are needed for future learning. Sensory bins are a means of getting all the benefits of sensory play (language development, concentration, confidence, etc..) without having to clean up a huge mess! Because the aspects of the play are generally confined to the bin, clean up is a breeze! Sensory bins are also fantastic for fine motor practice.