Our Top 5 Favourite Simple Sensory Bin Setups

Sensory bins are so fun and versatile; they’re such a great way to help children practice cooperative play and allow them free reign to learn and explore. You can incorporate so many different materials and learning prompts, help children learn about the 5 senses - The list goes on!

Here are our top 5 favourite simple sensory bin setups from the last few months:

Learning About Emotions Bin

Small kids have big emotions, so its important to encourage them to talk about their feelings and understand where each emotion is coming from and why, so I created this age appropriate activity about identifying emotional expressions

💡Download our free printable and use with a clothes pin to scale down the emotions, talk about each and decide how you're all feeling today and why 💡Draw or design the emotion in the sand/rice using stones, pompoms or a popsicle stick 💡Repeat with each emotion 📝Materials📝 ✔Sand or Rice ✔Pebbles, pompoms, ripped up pieces of construction paper etc. To create the face (or just a popsicle stick to carve the faces into the sand works too!) ✔Our Free Printable ✔Clothes Pin

Frozen-Themed Bin

My kids have been on a big Frozen kick lately. Combine that with the 40 degree weather and this sensory bin was definitely well received!

📝Materials📝 ✔Disney Frozen 2 Small World Characters ✔Ice and Water ✔Cotton Wool ✔Rocks ✔Bottle Caps ✔Crystals ✔Foam Balls ✔Feathers ✔Play Doh Garden Exploration Bin

We were so excited to get our hands on this adorable Garden Sensory Box by The Little Bin - my kids couldn't wait to explore it! Once the bin was setup, some of my initial play prompts included search and find with bugs, magnifying bugs to explore different body parts, scooping the rice into pot and containers and using the tweezers to transfer nature-inspired loose parts.

💡Setup a sensory bin with natural materials of varying sizes and textures, as well as small world play toys and exploration tools such as shovels/spoons tweezers, pots, magnifying glasses 📝Materials📝 ✔2 different colours of rice (green for grass and black for soil) ✔Tweezers, a mini shovel, a mini pot ✔Stones ✔Plastic greenery and bugs of different sizes and textures ✔Squishy frog ✔Bug magnifying box ✔ Little wooden nature loose parts

Kinetic Sand Ice Cream Sundae Bin

I love to theme activities for a day (or even week!) – and what better theme than ice cream themed!

💡Set up an ice cream kinetic sand sensory bin with scoops, cups and pantry items to serve ice cream sundaes and more!

📝Materials📝 Our awesome Complete Kit is by Lootastic and includes the following items: ✔Kinetic Sand ✔Rice, Dried Beans, Dried Chickpeas

✔Foam Fruit Stickers ✔Icecream Cups, spoons, scoops and tongs

Puzzle Hunt Bin

Even though my toddler has outgrown our chunky and peg puzzles, they are too cute to pass on just yet, so this is a great way to incorporate your otherwise outgrown toddler puzzles!

💡Collect a few toddler puzzles and mix up the pieces inside a bin, covering the pieces with rice, sand, dry pasta etc. to add a bit of an extra challenge

Check out my instagram at www.instagram.com/discoverkidtivites for daily activities!