My Garden Sensory Bin

With 2 kids aged 4 and 2 the one type of kids activity which will always be a hit are the sensory activities. We have done our fair share of messy sensory activities, sensory bins sensory activities and even a writing activity which essentially falls under the category of sensory activities. For our current spring theme, we have been reading and loving Kevin Henkes’ “My Garden” and have been having fun talking about an imaginary whimsical garden. To extend the fun further and to encourage creative story telling, we created a sensory bin. This kids activity doubles up as a book activity and a sensory activity. Instead of giving you our usual list of things we used, I’ll tell you read the fantastic book. Although the post should give you a clear picture what went inside the sensory tub for this sensory activity.

When we are engaged in sensory activities involving sensory bins I try to set up an invitation to play.This time I just had the items out and the kids created their own sensory bin based on the book.

Our dirt was coffee beans. The kids kept taking deep breaths of the beans and enjoying the aroma.. Oh boy! they got the coffee addict lover genes from the dad. Playing with the coffee beans in itself was such a tremendous sensorial experience for them..

Slowly we added the items based on the book. My 4 year old recalled the story line while adding the items one by one.. We started with the jelly bean bush and the patterned flowers.

Then we added the other elements from the book. This was such a fun experience for us since we were adding, keys, umbrellas and what not to the sensory bin. It really added a bit of whimsy to my very matter-of-fact/ logical ( blaming the dad again) 4 year old.

Few play ideas based on what I saw. 1. The kids loved filling up the seashells with coffee beans 2. Totally enjoyed pouring, scooping and cooking with the beans and sea shells

3. Pretend played with the butterflies and birds sucking nectar from the flowers

4. Reenacted the story with the props. 5. Pretended that their mini figurines ( the girl in the book) loved to skate and created circles.

5. Best of all – simply loved creating coffee beans rain and generally making a giant (contained) mess I also initiated a simple story telling kids activity – “ Blind Folded Story Telling Game. Each kid will close her eyes and pick 4 items from the bin and places them in front of her.Then she will create a simple story using those items as characters. This was fun even for my toddler whose stories are pretty simple with one or two lines. My 4 year had more complicated story with magic, good guys and villains.. All in all “Blind folded Story Game” was fun and I even caught them playing and creating “ bad butterflies” stories well after 2 days. We usually leave our sensory bin out for a few days in the kitchen where I can watch them. As you can see sensory activities need not be supremely messy. Dry sensory activities are just as fun as truly messy sensory activities and sensory activities based on a book are totally worth the mess.

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Some more spring crafts we have done in the past.

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For more spring activities take a look at our Spring category page. Thanks for stopping by our little space here. We encourage you to stick around and take a look at couple of our popular posts.