Sensory Bin ideas for Dr. Seuss and St. Patrick's Day
March is coming and with it all things Seuss, as well as St. Patrick's Day and for some, Spring Break! This is a great time to get something fun in your sensory bins! I have multiple sensory bins - our large 4 person table, as well as smaller 1 or 2 person Rubbermaid bins. This lets me add sensory fun to a variety of center activities, thus increasing engagement AND helping to develop fine motor skills and provide sensory input!
Green eggs & ham in green rice & beans anyone? I love this one because the mix can be reused for St. Patrick's Day in just a few weeks! Add some props from your Dramatic Play Center and students can have fun subitizing while matching number cards with ten frames! Adding the different size beans means lots of options for additional counting and sorting once students have finished the activity too!
I love it when I can differentiate activities in my sensory bin. In this case, the cards can be matched to produce rhyming pairs, or matched to CVC word cards. This way my high flyers can be moving on, while those that need it continue to get support with rhyming. Red rice from Valentine's Day makes a reappearance and is mixed with pompoms - students love using the pompoms to block funnel spouts or fill up a container with the pompoms and then see how much rice can still fit!
Our new favorite sensory bin filler is dyed Epsom salt. Epsom salt is inexpensive, and looks like shiny crystals when dyed. You dye it the same way as rice - a little rubbing alcohol and some food coloring! These happy little fellows have sums on their chests and match an addition sentence card, so students can have fun with sums to 10!
Want the activities? Click here to see them in my TPT store!
St. Patrick's Day is a big deal in my classroom - we love having Silly McGilly visit! Here's he's made a rainbow of rice in our sensory table! Yes, it gets messed up immediately, but the kids love it and it's often featured when they write about Silly McGilly's visit!
For this bin, I spray painted glass gems gold and then write on them with Sharpies. Some have letters and some have numbers.
Students find the "gold" and match it to the correct mat - either finding the beginning sound picture that matches the letter, or finding the number on the pot of gold - but they have to go in numerical order, to make it trickier lol!
One of our favorite morning bins in March is pots of gold with play dough - they have to make "gold pieces" to match the number on the pot! Grab these St. Patrick's Day Sensory Bin Mats for FREE in my TPT store by clicking here.
We also write our letters in green hair gel - just add it to a baggie and make sure its completely closed! In this picture, Silly McGilly made a three-way match with our St. Patrick's Day Alphabet Match-Up cards - uppercase, lowercase and beginning sound picture, then he wrote the "S" in the gel!
Next up, Spring Life Cycles - are you raising any critters in your classroom this year? Check out this post for info on my favorite life cycle products for the classroom - including FREE Life Cycle crowns!
