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.
I love this teacher’s energy! What a great way to engage children.
I don't teach as much as I used to, but we are having a special spring school and I jumped into the classroom today to have a little fun with the students.Many of them don't know me and I had to make a few adjustments on the fly, but it sure was fun!
Posted by Eric Kane on Miércoles, 25 de marzo de 2015
In this video you can see kids in plain egg hunt process. The song is short, easy and quite catchy. Happy Easter!
Here’s a nice worksheet to work on the subject of spring, and it develops counting skills as well. Complete the flowers making the missing petals (I would use fingerpaint), colour the rest of the garden and cut it out. Cut out the bee as well and make it fly!
