Sensory bins are allow children to explore, imagine, and discover while meeting all of the senses. Long story short: kids love sensory bins- and there is SO much learning we can work into them!
This post will contain affiliate links. You don’t pay any more, but if you purchase from my link I get a small commission. This allows me to try everything out that I recommend to you and keep my blog running smoothly. (so thanks for clicking my links!))
My daughter Quinn is now 14 months and it’s officially sensory bin time. (If you don’t follow me on instagram, you may not know that I left the classroom when I was pregnant with Quinn and am now home with her for the time being. I miss the classroom immensely but am loving working at home while getting to teach her too.) Since she’s almost 1.5 and meeting alot of ready signs, we are starting tot school! I’ll be incorporating one or two structured learning activities a day for her and can’t wait to watch her grow and share them with you too!
Where did you get your sensory bin?
This is a very popular sensory table on instagram is you search the hashtag #IkeaFlisat! It’s a children’s activity table from Ikea, and you hack it just a little bit to make it a sensory bin by adding trofast storage bins.
I chose two white bins for our table, but you can pick from a variety of colors. The whole thing cost around $60 dollars.
There’s about a billion ways to set up a sensory bin, but one way is deconstructed. I put the animals in a simple basket (from amazon, affiliate link at end of post) and had the bin setup with sand (kinetic sand, affiliate link at end of post) and water (blue astrobrights paper, affiliate link at end of post).
Then we talk about if the animal likes to be on land, or in the water. Some animals aren’t technically water animals (like the flamingo) but in books or at the zoo we see that they like the water, so they could go both places!
Once all the animals are in the bin, I let her play around! She loved grabbing the kinetic sand and feeling it, sticking the animals in to stand up, and saying splash in the water.
HOW TO ADAPT FOR OLDER KIDS:
You can easily use this same sensory bin in the classroom. You can read a book to introduce the bin and discuss the animals to make a connection to a current lesson.
Below are a couple of my favorite books to pair with this bin for multiple ages.
Where to find materials:
Below are the links to the materials you see in this bin and ones like them! If you use this bin idea in your classroom, please share a picture with me on instagram! Tag me in your photo so I can see it @simplyspecialed and #SimpleSensoryBins!
This post did contain affiliate links. You don’t pay any more, but if you purchase from my link I get a small commission. This allows me to try everything out that I recommend to you and keep my blog running smoothly. (so thanks for clicking my links, I truly appreciate it!))
Hope you enjoyed this sensory bin! This is the start of a sensory bin series on the blog! If you have requests for upcoming units in your classroom, please let me know in the comments or message me on instagram!
