This week’s sensory bin was all about birds and nests to go along with our MFW Kindergarten science unit about nests and Animal Homes. I actually reinvented a flop of a sensory bin from a few weeks ago that was supposed to go with our Leaf science unit – both kids took one look at it and walked away. This time around it went over much better.
In our bin we had:
- a variety of silk leaves I bought at Michaels
- leaf felt stickers I bought at Michaels
- trees from the Tree Toob (these didn’t get played with at all)
- insects from the Insect Toob (these get played with all the time, whether they are in a sensory bin or not…Olivia’s a bug loving princess!)
- a birdhouse I picked up from Michaels
- gold pom poms
- nests, birds, and miniature eggs also from Michaels
- tongs
- small white paint tray
Here’s Olivia first feeding the birds a caterpillar, and then next she was hiding the birds in the birdhouse from the attack insects. I’m not sure how she got into the attack bugs, but I guess it did go along with one of our themes of God providing different homes for different animals for protection.
Even though I try to encourage group play with the sensory bin, they just aren’t always interested at the same time. I could not pull Isaiah away from his Montessori Cylinder Block (I purchased this at Montessori Outlet a while back and is one of his all time favorite toys. This is Part 1, and I’m getting ready to buy another part to give him more challenge as he has mastered this one).
Isaiah was most interested in transferring miniature eggs from the nest into the small paint tray and counting as he went. He did this over and over again. It was a great activity for him, and I was really surprised at how well he did the one-to-one correspondence counting. It was the first time he has done this skill.
I’ve tried having him use large tweezers to work on transferring objects and fine motor skills, but he couldn’t get it at all; so, I bought these miniature tongs, which are much easier to grasp and squeeze. He gave it a try, but after the first try he put them down and didn’t try again (notice his cylinder block right by him…this was a constant companion for him this week).
I thought maybe the eggs were too small for using the tongs, so I switched out the eggs for these gold pom poms. Again, he tried, but then he opted to use his fingers.
Sensory bins are fun and great, but have taken me a lot of time, energy, and money to put together…so, this one is going to stay out for the rest of the month and into November. I have some pumpkins to add into it next week, and then maybe I’ll pick up a few Thanksgiving items to add to it, but for the most part we are going to try to get some more use out of this one and maybe pull back out the apple bin.
For more great ideas on sensory bins visit:
1 comment:
Loving your new posts! I really appreciate your comment though about the time and money towards sensory bins. I am always tempted by this idea, but I can't bring myself to spend the money on it or store the items.
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