I love it when I hear my boys ask to learn about a particular topic. Last week we were in the car and my preschooler asked me if we could learn about sea turtles. Of course I said yes and got to work brainstorming ideas for activities. The first one I came up with was a sea turtle sensory bin. Here's what we used for the sensory bin: (the links below are affiliate links) water beads (I used blue, green, and clear ones from The Dollar Tree) white sand ping pong balls (for turtle … [Read more...]
Rainbow Pasta Craft
We are so ready for spring! After this long dreary winter in the Midwest, I am yearning for color!! To brighten up the day, we made a rainbow pasta craft! March is around the corner, so it is a great craft for St. Patrick's Day. To start, we gathered colored pasta from our various sensory bins. If you want to learn the easy way to color pasta, you can visit this post. Now I know that there are technically 7 colors in the rainbow, but getting the color indigo was tricky. Since indigo and blue are … [Read more...]
Toddler Tuesday: Orange Sensory Bin
Happy Toddler Tuesday! Something a toddler should learn is their colors. Some naturally learn them through daily life or books and others need time to really learn them. My oldest son learned them naturally and my youngest son called everything green until I did some color activities with him. Today I am sharing one way you could teach toddlers to learn their colors. Toddlers love sensory bins, so I thought I would create a bin all with one color. Today I am sharing our Orange Sensory Bin. … [Read more...]
Transportation Sensory Bin and Activities
I've been thinking a lot about how important play is for preschoolers. Just plain playing with no really fancy activities. I don't think kids get enough opportunities with our busy schedules to just play. To be creative, and imaginative and learn through playing. That is one of the reasons why I set up a transportation invitation to play this week....to let my kids be creative and set up a time for them to play with toys and explore. I find that if I set up an area of the room for my kids to … [Read more...]
Toddler Tuesday: Goodnight Moon Sensory Bin
Goodnight Moon is a favorite story for many toddlers. We love the book so much, that we decided to make a sensory bin to go along with it! We are going through the letter 'M' with my preschooler, and one of our activities is to read Goodnight Moon and also explore a sensory bin. As I was putting together this bin, I thought my 2 year old (who really loves the book, Goodnight Moon) would love this activity. This is why I am sharing this with you on Toddler Tuesday. Although I used this as a … [Read more...]
Apple Sensory Bin {With Free Printable}
I absolutely love fall and am excited to start doing some fall activities with my boys. Although it will be blazing hot out this week in our town (highs in the 90s and 100s!), I thought it would be fun to start doing some apple activities. To start our apple unit, we created an apple sensory bin. In this bin, I put dry oatmeal, plastic apples, and a few acorns that are buried. I bought the plastic apples at Michael's Craft Store. They come in a pack of 20 for $6.99. I know it is kind of … [Read more...]
Desert Sensory Bin
It is so hot out these days! I guess that's to be expected during the middle of the summer. As I was thinking on what topic to explore next with my kids, I thought of deserts. They really don't know anything about the desert since we live in the midwest. To begin this unit, we started out reading the book, Coyotes All Around. It's technically a math book because they count and estimate, but it shows what the desert is like and contains facts. And it's a cute story! It is a book for older … [Read more...]
Spring Sensory Bin
I know I just posted a sensory activity yesterday, but I couldn't resist showing you a sensory bin we made and played with! It's our Spring Sensory Bin! For this sensory bin I used the following: black beans (4 lbs. found at Walmart) colored Fiori noodles to look like flowers (follow this post to see how to color noodles) plastic bugs, creatures, and frogs (from Dollar Tree) There's something about the smooth black beans and noodles that is fun for kids to play with. I also … [Read more...]
Dinosaur Swamp & Sensory Play
To close our final day on dinosaurs this week, we did an activity inspired by one of my awesome readers! (By the way, you guys are really the best!) We did a sensory activity and made a swamp for our dinosaurs. To make the swamp, we just mixed cornmeal with water. We thought the swamp felt slimy, grainy, and squishy. Then we added dinosaurs to our swamp. This was great for imaginary play. In our swamp, the big dinosaur was trying to find the hidden dino eggs (marbles) and baby … [Read more...]
Dinosaur Sensory Tub
We created a fun dinosaur sensory tub! In this tub we used sand, small dinosaurs, fake plants, shells, marbles, and candy eggs. The marbles and candy represented dinosaur eggs. I shared with Troy that dinosaur eggs didn't all look the same--some were round or oval shaped. We also talked about how the dinosaur parents (mostly dads) watched the eggs and made sure predators didn't take them. They would sit on top of them to protect them. Dinosaurs laid eggs in clusters, which is why they are … [Read more...]