Preschool

Create an Ocean Creature Sensory Bin

April 9, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

I’m excited to share a wonderful ocean creature sensory bin idea. The blue water beads look so inviting, everyone will be wanting a turn in the sensory table. That’s the great thing about sensory bins – kids love them and they offer so many learning opportunities. This month our Mother Goose Time theme is Ocean Commotion so it’s time to switch things up and create an ocean creature sensory bin.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe to Share & Remember or follow me via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. This post may contain affiliate links which means I may earn a small amount of money when you purchase through the link. Full disclosure policy here.

Create an Ocean Creature Sensory Bin

It’s simple to create an ocean creature sensory bin with just a few materials you can conveniently find on Amazon.

Needed Supplies:

Just add water to the beads and watch them grow.

Add Ocean World Creatures and Shells for an instant ocean-themed sensory bin.

Children will love playing with the beads and playing with the ocean creatures.

Here are a couple tips for keeping your water beads fresh and longer lasting:

Wash hands before play.
Rinse beads with warm water and vinegar after play.
If beads are cloudy or moldy, dispose of them.
Find more water bead tips from The Walking Mombie

You can also add scoops to this sensory bin, but the water beads are a wonderful sensory experience alone.

Enjoy your ocean creature sensory bin!

More Ocean Theme Ideas

Salt Painting Easter Egg Art

April 1, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

Salt painting is such a fabulous process art activity. I love it on these fun patterned Easter eggs. Spring break was the perfect time to use the pastel liquid watercolors and my whole crew of 8 ages 2-8 years enjoyed the same project. Salt Painting Easter Egg Art creates lovely Easter themed art and incorporates some cool science and fine motor skills.

Salt Painting Easter Egg Art

For this activity you will need:

Directions:

Create an egg design with glue.
Sprinkle with salt.
Allow to dry.
Using pipettes, drip liquid watercolors on the salt. Watch the salt absorb the paint.

Each child could design their own egg but some of my group is quite young. Also, prepping the activity saved us time.

Everyone’s design turned out awesome!

The colors dried lighter since we diluted the paints but they are beautiful.

If you haven’t tried salt painting yet, you must! Kids love it.

Easter Sensory Play Ideas

April 1, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

Sensory play is necessary for children all year long. We know that children learn through hands-on play that involves their senses. Sensory play usually includes fine motor skill development, which is another reason sensory play is so important. It’s fun to switch up sensory bins and play centers for the seasons and holidays so I’m sharing some of our Easter sensory play ideas. Thankfully the dollar store offers some inexpensive materials for sensory play so it’s possible to switch things up more often.

Easter Sensory Play Ideas

Easter Eggs & Pom Pom Sensory and Fine Motor Play Bin

This clean and quiet sensory bin features crystal plastic eggs, silicone muffin cups, and various sizes and colors of pom poms. Children can sort colors and sizes of pom poms, fill eggs or create “cakes” with the pom poms and silicone muffin cups. I find that the clean and quiet bins don’t always get as much action as the messy sensory play bins, but the soft Easter colors and the draw of fillable Easter eggs encourage children to play in this center.

Some of our sensory play centers are in smaller bins like this one but usually, I use the sensory table.

Colored Rice & Carrot Easter Eggs

Children love playing in colored rice! It’s fun and inexpensive to make and it lasts quite a while. I do save mine to use at a future day but use discretion. If there’s been illness or if you feel it isn’t sanitary any longer, it can be thrown out and recreated for next time. Learn how to use liquid watercolors to dye rice for sensory play here: Rainbow Rice Sensory Bin

For this bin I made purple, yellow and orange dyed rice and simply added Fillable Carrot Easter Eggs. The egg containers serve as scoops but you could also add long-handled spoons or scoops as well.

Children are drawn to the colors and sound of rice pouring into the Fillable Carrot Easter Eggs. They are such fun carrot shaped containers!

I find that it’s best to use smaller containers and scoops in the sensory bin. The larger the container that can be filled, the more that’s likely to be dumped on the floor!

Pastels on the Light Table

Don’t forget the light table! I’m always looking for fun materials to use on the light table but it seems they are a little harder to come by. I found these small pastel shot glasses at the Dollar Tree as well as the pastel acrylic flower beads/table scatter. I don’t believe the flowers are available anymore, but if you see them, grab what you can! They’re awesome for the light table.

Use care with all ages – these beads are small and children will put things in their mouths. Other items can be used with the colored cups as well so be creative!

Demonstrate cup stacking! Kids love the challenge.

Easter Water Sensory Play

Our Easter water sensory play bin is always a hit. See details on the Easter Water Sensory Play activity here.

Happy Easter & Sensory Playing!

Our Favorite Planet Earth

March 10, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

Our theme this month is Blast Off to Space and we’re starting to learn about the rock planets. The first one is our favorite planet earth! We participated in a community challenge during circle time, made an earth collage for creative art, played a small group game to work on our numbers and gross motor skills and enjoyed a rolling activity for letter R. Since planet earth is the only planet with liquid I also created water play activity that is loosely Earth related. Read on for activities for our favorite planet Earth.

Our Favorite Planet Earth

We started our day talking about Earth and the colors we see on the planet from space, like in this picture on the daily topic poster:

Community Challenge Enough for All

Using what we learned about the colors of Earth from space, we continued on to our Community Challenge. We don’t always do the Community Challenges suggested in our Mother Goose Time lessons but if it seems like a good fit with my group and not too complicated, we give it a try!

Admittedly, this activity was a bit chaotic. That’s just normal and to be expected with six 1-4-year-olds. Still, I like the idea of taking turns, waiting for a turn, being apart of a group activity and working together to create something. In the end, it wasn’t much of anything that we created but it was about the process – sharing, tearing, following directions, gluing and learning about the colors of the earth. When we look at a picture of the Earth from space, we see blue water and green land so we used blue and green paper.

3rd Planet from the Sun

What a great game to play to learn the names of the planets and work on number recognition as well as gross motor skills. It’s fun to see the different approaches and actions of the children depending on their age and development.

After talking about each planet and identifying the number on the plate, I spread them out on the floor. We took turns standing on our color circle floor mats and tossing bean bags to specific numbers I would call out for them to identify.

The oldest one was all about trying to throw his bean bag the farthest and moved his planet plate as far away as he could and adjusted his throwing to attempt to land it on the plate. I noticed he experimented with where to put the plate and how hard to throw the beanbag. I could see he was working on different skills than just number identification and that was all right too.

The littlest ones would walk over and put their bean bags on the planet plate. I helped them stand in one spot and try to throw the bean bag to the plate. Either way, we’re learning!

Rolling R

What a fun way to learn about letter R! Using duct tape, I taped upper case letter R and lower case letter r to the table.

R is for rocket, rover, roll, red (car), race car, and rider (on the four-wheeler).

Rolling Letter R seems like such a simple activity, and it is, but it went over very well! We rolled the balls on R and drove the rover and race cars on the letter. Saying “letter R says rrrr” helps reinforce the sound letter R makes. I left the tape on the table for the rest of the day and the next and it was revisited many times.

Earth Collage

Loved this simple creative art project for our favorite planet Earth.

I helped tear the paper. I encourage my group to tear their own paper but I find they are often discouraged or not interested in it. Not sure why other than the process of tearing seems less interesting to them than the gluing. I know it can be difficult for little ones too. It seems easy but it’s not easy to tear small pieces of paper, especially cardstock like we are using here. So that’s how it went for us but that’s okay. Sometimes too many steps in an activity are overwhelming especially after a full morning of play and before lunch.

I like to play music that relates to our art during creative arts time so we listened to What a Wonderful World while working. I think my group really enjoys it too!

Earth Sensory Play

I wanted to incorporate water play on our favorite planet Earth day because Earth is the only planet with liquid water on its surface. I tend to use whatever I have and can find at the last minute so this is a bit of a random sensory bin. Guess what? They’re the best kind!

In the water table:

green and blue bingo chips (sink and float)
plastic balls (float)
rocks
blue glass gems

Some scoops and small plastic bottles:

Water play is the best!

See it in action – discovery upon discovery with water play!

Inflatable Globe and Space Shuttle and Astrounat Figures

More Space Activities & More Earth Day Activities

I received curriculum from Mother Goose Time for honest and authentic stories resulting from my daily experiences using the curriculum. After using Mother Goose Time for about 10 years, I am pleased to promote quality educational learning experiences through play with Mother Goose Time! #sponsored #MGTblogger

Mother Goose Time | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram

Rainbow Fruit Loop Rainbow Treat Tubes

March 5, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

Looking for a simple St. Patrick’s Day party activity or treat for your child care group? Rainbow Fruit Loop Rainbow Treat Tubes works for all ages and it’s fun to make and then eat. Simple supplies and no prep! You will need the Wilton Pretzel Rod Bags to pull this together.

Rainbow Fruit Loop Rainbow Treat Tubes

Have the children help sort the Fruit Loops by color into bowls. Then decided how many of each color will be dropped into the bag. Children can work on color sorting, counting, and following directions as well as fine motor skills while helping make a treat they can eat or take home. You could also pre-make them for party favors.

Needed Supplies:

Fruit Loops, sorted by color
Mini Marshmallows
Wilton Pretzel Rod Bags

Directions:

First place mini marshmallows for clouds in the bottom of the bag.
Next, layer the sorted colors of Fruit Loops in rainbow order.
Top with additional marshmallows if desired or simply tie with a yarn or twist tie.