These four sensory bins can be used if you're doing a lesson that has a baking theme or just want to add a little fun into your classroom! Sensory bins are an easy way to incorporate hands-on learning and still work on specific academic skills. These four tubs focus on sorting, CVC words, sight words and fine motor skills. Your kids will love playing in the sensory bins and won't even realize that they are learning as well as having fun!
I love incorporating the sensory table into my center rotations. This winter I went with a baking theme. The first step in deciding on your sensory tubs is what medium you are going to use. I really liked using the colored rice because it looked like cookie sprinkles! To make the rice I used Liquid Water Colors. I put two cups of rice in a baggie, and added the Liquid Water Colors until it was completely covered. Then I sprinkled it all out until it was in a single layer on wax paper. I did this with four different colors. I used the orange, purple, brown and red paint.
The first sensory bin I introduced used colored rice and the Learning Resources® Super Sorting Pie. I really liked this game for the sensory table because there are multiple ways that students can use it. My students loved sorting the fruits by fruit type. There are seven different fruits that they could sort by. The game came with its own tweezers too so that your students are working on their fine motor skills while they are sorting. Another way that they can sort is by color. The fruits come in five different colors. This game comes with three cards that you can use to sort by numbers as well. My students also just liked making pies and delivering them to me.
The next item I included in my sensory tub was the Learning Resources® ABC Cookie Tray. When I could keep this cookie tray out of our kitchen, my students loved searching for the different letters that were mixed in with the rice. They had to use the spatula to find the letter and transfer it to the corresponding letter that was in the tray.
The next center my students played at was made up of the Goodie Games ABC Cookie Game from Learning Resources® and a printable that is included here. The students drew a card out of the sensory bin, they then had to segment the sounds. When they know the beginning, middle and ending sounds of the CVC word, they have to search the bin for the letters. Once they have all three letters, they have to find the corresponding picture on the response sheet. I love having my students use the Washable Chubby Markers to write with. I like how it forces them to use correct finger grip.
I've also used the Goodie Games ABC Cookie Game in our sensory bin to work with sight words. I threw all the letters in the tub, and I included the first Dolch list of sight word cards. These are also included in the download you can find here. The students have to draw a card, identify the sight word, then spell the sight words with the cookie letters.
The last baking themed sensory tub involved having my students follow a menu that is included in the download here, and making up two types of pies. I took the rice out of the sensory bin and dumped in all the jumbo pom-poms from the 1bs of Pom-Poms. My students had to look at the menu to figure out how to make each recipe. In this bin my students had to make a pumpkin pie and a raspberry pie. They used the big tongs from the Learning Resources® Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set to find the matching colored pom-poms. In this instance they had to find the orange and pink ones. Once they found both of them, they "put them in the oven" to cook them. I used the brown Gigantic Fantastic Felt Sheets and traced the pie pan that we used to create lattice for the pie. It made a great looking top for their pies! I hope you are able to implement these ideas and more into your classroom sensory bins!
