How to Create a Super Simple Sensory Bin in Under 3 Minutes

How many times have you gone on Pinterest to find an activity or project to create, gather all the materials, make the said project, only to be let down by the final product? Time and time again, this happens to so many mamas! Search, “learning through play at home” and you will find loads of fun activities but when you finally gather all of the materials, create the activity, and set it in front of your child, it’s not as pretty or as cute as you were hoping. The learning project is what we call a PINTEREST FAIL! Your child is engaged for less than 5 minutes and you are FRUSTRATED!

Learning Through Play at Home Doesn’t Have to Be Difficult

Creating learning activities at home for your children doesn’t have to be hard. You can also meet the needs of ALL of your children at home, even if their ages vary greatly. Learning through play at home also doesn’t need to be expensive or require materials that you don’t already have!

Creating An Activity for Young Learners at Home

Follow these quick step by step directions and your children will be learning through play in no time!

Materials Needed:

-Clear plastic bins- We used these

-Tape

-Large bag of rice

-Rainbow printable freebie- found here 

Rainbow Freebie

-Assortment of spoons, cups, or kitchen utensils (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Gather your materials
  2. Tape rainbow printable to the bottom of the clear bin so that you can see the colors on the bottom of the bin.
  3. Pour rice into the bin so that it almost fills the entire bottom.
  4. Add in tools (if you desire)
  5. Set the bin out for your child(ren) to explore!

***Note- If you don’t have a home printer, check this out!! 

Introducing Your New Sensory Bin

If you build it, they will come! I don’t know about you, but my kids can not withhold their curiosity about something that looks NEW and FUN! I find it especially helpful to be overly enthusiastic when introducing new activities. I may try to be secretive and tell me kiddos “DON’T watch what I’m doing,” because of course then they can’t take their eyes off of me! They can hardly contain their excitement and ask 197349 questions in the 3 minutes it takes to create their bin!

 

Using the Sensory Bin as a Learning Tool

As I mentioned before, this can be a learning activity for ALL of your kiddos! In our home we have a 22 month old, almost 4 year old, and a 6.5 year old. All 3 kids are at very different levels when it comes to learning. The trick to making this an educational activity is to make it fun! When it is fun, kids won’t realize their learning. If you have a reluctant learner, you need to be extra tricky!! Here is what we did/said to make this fun (with some learning snuck in) for EVERYONE!

Toddler– rainbow printable on the bottom of the bin

  • “Oh. Feel the rice. It is soft.”
  • “Look, I see the color RED. Do you see red?”
  • Trace the letter B and said “Look, it’s a B!”

Preschooler– rainbow printable with letters on the bottom of the bin

  • “Find the letter _____.”
  • “Find the letter that starts the word MOM.”
  • “Pile all of your rice on top of the letter that your name starts with.”
  • For my reluctant learner- “Find the letter that starts the word POOP!!” (What preschool boy can resist some potty talk?!?!)
  • “Write the letter your name starts with in the rice.” 

Kindergartener– rainbow printable with numbers on the bottom of the bin

  • “Find the answer for 2+4.”
  • “Find the answer for 10-6.”
  • “Find the answer for ___+3=10.”

A few tips- Tell your older kids that you are going to give them some really tricky problems that are usually for older kids. Then, present them with the problem. In my experience (even if it isn’t completely the truth), kids will want to accomplish that hard skill that older kids can do!

Our Experience

  • Our kindergartener begged for us to ask her HARDER problems!
  • Our kindergartener was playing along and asked her preschool brother to find letters and gave him words to find the beginning sound.
  • Our preschooler was tracing letters and shapes in the sensory bin for our toddler.
  • Our toddler found random items from around the house and added them to his sensory bin. This kept him busy and occupied for quite some time!
  • When we had visitors later in the day, our older kids brought their bins outside and with a little modeling, our visitors were giving our big kids “tricky” problems to solve.
  • These bins were not overly messy though having a mini broom and dustpan nearby is helpful!

Takeaways For Learning at Home

Learning through play at home doesn’t have to be hard and kids don’t even realize that they are learning because it is so much fun! Sensory bins do not have to be messy or cost a bunch of money to be effective.

I encourage you to find ways for your children to learn at home and have fun together! If you have a fun and simple learning at home idea, submit it here to be featured in a future post!

CrateJoy is another amazing company that offers so many get and go activities! You should definitely check them out if you are a busy mama like me!

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Thanks for reading!

Stephanie

If you liked this post, my friend Alexa has some great sensory activities for TODDLERS as well! Check them out HERE and HERE!