Sensory Bin: Nest

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+1+1=1

Totally Tots – What’s in the Tub

Counting Coconuts 

SpartanGirl Sensory Activities for Kids

Sensory Bin: Apple Pie

I love sensory bins! And if you’re not familiar with sensory bins or why they’re so great, head over here to read the Montessori Minute: Sensory Activities post. Carissa at the 1+1+1 Blog also has a lot of great ideas for sensory bins, and is great about posting links to other sites with great ideas. On her blog go to “Theme Printables” on the top, choose a theme, and then dig in…it’s a treasure trove of ideas!

This school year we’ve had a a few really great sensory bins – Creation, Space, and this week’s Apple Pie theme that I’m highlighting here. And I had one giant of a flop one a couple weeks ago for our Leaf unit (I’m going to try and reinvent this one next week for our Animal Homes unit…we’ll see how it goes). I tell myself to try, try again; and then I scour my favorite blogs and get some great ideas.

This week’s sensory bin came directly from Delightful Learning. I was so excited to find this post because we were also reading the book How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World from our MFW science unit.

Our bin contained the following:

• Wheat berries as the base.


• 2 red and 2 green apples I picked up from a fruit vase filler pack at Target.


• Apple Pie spices: cinnamon sticks, whole All Spice, Apple Pie Spice, salt shaker filled with salt (and a cotton ball stuffed in the top).


• Salt shaker filled with wheat berries.


• Dried sugar cane reads I picked up at Hobby Lobby.


• Dried wheat I picked up from Hobby Lobby.


• Contents from the Down on the Farm toob (I didn’t get this Melissa & Doug Bundle; but I think it’s pretty cool…they have a whole variety of them).


• Two Thomas & Friends trains.


• Measuring cups.


• Cloth World map.

Most of the time we just set it out and the three of us sit around and play. I follow the kids’ lead a lot to see how it sparks their imagination (our space sensory bin turned into a whole new planet called Opitizi where all the astronauts and aliens ate rice and beans for every meal and said the word “wanga” for everything). And it’s great to just run your hands through the wheat berries, pick them up, and then let them rain down on everything…it’s messy, but I love how the three of us can enjoy it together.

I also try to direct some of the learning. Here’s what I did with each child (sorry for the lack of active pictures, but I find myself a lot of times too in the moment to grab my camera).

Olivia…with Olivia’s imagination, most of the time she just wants to free play and make up stories, but I was able to get in a few other activities too:

• Math: I had her point out the different size measuring cups, and then using the wheat berries, she determined how many scoops of each size it took to fill up the 1 c. measuring scoop.


• Geography: As we read the story “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World” we laid out each ingredient on the specific country on our world map.


• Home Economics: We talked about the different ingredients that go into making apple pie and where they come from. For example, the wheat in the pie crust comes from wheat berries off of wheat stalks which then need to be ground into flour. The butter in the pie comes from milking the cow and then churning the cream. Etc…

Isaiah:

• Colors: discriminating between the red and green apples and naming the colors. He’s awesome at this!


• Counting: lining up and counting the apples. He can already count past 10, but the one to one correspondence hasn’t come yet…but he tries. Often times with our four apples he counted all the way up to 10 apples.


• Patterns: Just beginning to plant the seeds of patterns…red apple, green apple, red apple, green apple. At not even 2 years old, he’s a ways away from mastering this skill.


• Scooping and pouring: I add spoons and various containers for him to practice.


• Animal identification and animal sounds.


• Sound discrimination: we shook the salt shaker of salt, salt shaker of wheat berries, container of whole All-Spice, and the dried wheat stalks to hear the different sounds.

Together we smelled and even tasted the different spices. Olivia said, “Yech!” and Isaiah said, “Mmmm, that’s good!”

So, that was our week’s fun with the sensory bin. It was a big hit with the kids, and Olivia even asked to play with it one night before bed!

Sensory Bin: Space

I wanted to go ahead and share a little bit about our sensory bin from our Space unit a few weeks back. It was such a big hit and inspired so much creativity in Olivia that it is actually still being played with. We currently have two sensory bins out…this one and our most current one Apple Pie.

This sensory bin came directly out of our Creation unit sensory bin. I just added a few space things to it and voila…

• The base is black beans and rice…I discovered the vacuum easily picks up the rice, but leaves all the black beans behind.
• Small gold pom-poms for stars.
• A big yellow pom-pom for the sun.
• A bouncy glitter ball for the moon (I actually had 2…one for each kid).
• Glittery silver and gold star foam stickers.
• Space Toob (I didn’t get this Melissa & Doug bundle, but would have if we hadn’t already had the puzzle).
• Toy Story Lego Planet Pizza set.
• Spoons and various containers for scooping and pouring.
• Giant tweezers for Isaiah to practice fine motor skills. The idea was for him to pick up the pom-poms with the tweezers…long way to go on this skill.
• Magnetic letters s-u-n.

Olivia blasting off! This bin became her imaginary world of the Planet Opitizi.

Olivia claiming her planet…became a good lesson on sharing. 

Read more about sensory activities and the fabulous benefits of sensory bins at this Montessori Minute post.

Sensory Bin: Creation

This was our very first sensory bin this year…way back in August! I wanted to post about it though because I have benefited so much from reading posts about other sensory bins. And this one was a big success for us.

My goal for this sensory bin was to follow along with the days of creation and each day add in more stuff. We did pretty good for the first 4 days, but then I admittedly slacked off. I was still trying to get in the groove of our schedule since it was our first week of home school. But still it turned out great, and this bin morphed into our Space sensory bin a few weeks later.

• We started with a base of black beans and rice for day 1 of creation representing day and night.
• Magnetic letters C-R-E-A-T-I-O-N
• Magnetic numbers 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
• Spoons for scooping and containers for scooping into.
• I don’t have pictures, but for days 2 –4 I added a blue scarf to represent water, a brown scarf to represent land, some toy trees, gold pom-poms for stars, a big yellow pom-pom for the sun, and star stickers.

The kids really loved playing with this, and Olivia asked for it over and over again!