Category Archives: Sensory Bin and Discovery Box

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                                How to make a Winter Sensory Bin

This is a very easy sensory/discovery bin to make, and you just might have everything you need already on hand. For our bin, I searched the house for items that were blue and white, and anything with a winter theme.

I came up with way more than I realized I had.

Recycled lids of different sizes, recycled snowman candy holders, lacing beads and string, craft beads, chunky letters of the alphabet, snap cubes, glass rocks, snow flakes, ceramic snowman, foam snowman, penguin, decorative boxes, dominos, cotton balls, vanilla extract (you can also use a vanilla bean pod) ……..

And various trays, tongs, scoops, and containers for sorting items onto or into.

This bin turned into a fun project. There are so many different objects to feel and explore. The cotton is fluffy and the glass rocks are cool to the touch. The glass rocks also make a fun sound when they touch other glass rocks. The glitter covered foam snowmen feel like sandpaper. The snowman candy holders have lids and are fun to open and close. They are also fun to fill with beads and shake them to make rhythm sounds. The snap cubes snap together and make a popping sound when pulled apart. The dominos are cool to the touch, and have an indention where the colored dots are located so they feel both smooth and bumpy. The smell of vanilla adds an extra sensory element to this bin.

Besides free play in the bin, the kids easily put the items to good use in practicing lots of learning skills.   They used tongs, scoops, and fingers to pickup, transfer, and sort various things. They had fun as they used gross and fine motor skills.

They used lots of different objects for counting, sorting, stacking,

putting small things inside containers, opening and closing,

making patterns with different objects, lacing,

grouping and matching, spellings simple words with letters (snow, cold, ice, snowman), and so much more.

More of our winter theme learning adventures:

Snow Sensory Bin
Snowman Craft
Christmas Day
Winter Walk
Winter Story Bin
Snow Day
Snow Science
Christmas Matchup Game

This post will be linked with
No Time For Flash Cards
ABC and 123
Play Academy
Raising Homemakers

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Kitchen Sensory Bin

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Do your kids enjoy helping you in the kitchen? Mine sure do. We love to work together making yummy foods for our family. Check out some of our Kids In The Kitchen stories and you will see some of the kitchen fun we have. But more than just having fun, we are building relationships and learning practical life skills.

My daughter, age 4, loves to help in the kitchen. But she would like to do whatever she wants in the kitchen, whether I am available to help her or not. She likes to be independent. Some things are ok, but some are not. Such as when she soaks the kitchen counter with dish water.

If only the counter was kid proof (water proof), it would be great. But it is not kid proof and is showing signs of water damage, due to her, and her little brother’s, method of getting water everywhere. I am constantly removing the chair she has pushed up to the counter, and trying to get her to understand she has to wait for help to do certain kitchen things, or wait for me to invite her to do a job in the kitchen along side me. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but for her safety and for the sake of the kitchen counter, it is necessary.

We have a play kitchen that I got for my first child over 11 years ago. It has served us well over the years. All the kids have played with it almost daily, and though there are a few broken items on it, it still functions as a play kitchen. We keep it in the bedroom with the other toys most of the time. But sometimes we bring it to the kitchen or living room, and some nice afternoons we take it outside on the porch to play.

We also have a play water sink one of the kids got for a birthday. This stays outside because of the sink’s water feature.

But is a lot of fun to make grass foods, mud foods, and sand foods and use water in the yard on nice hot days.

Kitchen Sensory Bin

Wanting something more portable, indoors, and able to use independently, for her to play “kitchen” with, I decided to create a Kitchen Sensory Bin. I was wanting her to explore, create, practice some skills, and enjoy being in her “kitchen”.

We do our school work at the kitchen table, so we are all in the kitchen nearly everyday. It can be a challenge to keep the younger kids busy with learning activities while schooling the bigger kids. Hoping to reduce the amount of times my daughter pushes the chair up to the kitchen counter to run the sink when I am not right next to her, I created a Kitchen Sensory Bin she can use at the table or on the floor, for her and her little brother to explore and use as part of their school work.

We made this fun Kitchen Sensory Bin full of lots of play food, dishes, silverware, cooking stoves, sponge for cleaning, and more. The small stoves, table ware (plates, silverware, cups), and mini-foods came from a local dollar store toys. This project cost about $6. I added in some colored pompoms and beads for pretend play and practice with practical skills such as picking up with tongs & scoops and stirring with spoons, etc.

I also added a container of playdough, a rolling pin, and cookie cutters to further the sensory experiences. You can use store bought playdough or you can make homemade vanilla playdough, chocolate playdough, cinnamon playdough, pumpkin pie playdough, and more to make this lots of fun.

My daughter added in a few pony tail holders for fun. I plan to also add a table cloth, cloth napkins, and placemats so she can set her table with and she can roll these up and tie with a ribbon when not in use. add in some spices (or spice bottles with cotton soaked in the spice or extract) to enhance the sensory experience.

I already had the plastic bin on hand and just re-used it for this project. But I soon traded it for a bigger bin (too much stuff in it).

The bin also serves as a portable sink for her to wash her other kitchen props. If you don’t want to use real water in the sink, use blue felt (or blue construction paper) to make pretend water (grey felt looks like soapy water too).

If you want to make a portable stove, turn the bin upside down, and pretend to cook your food on top of it. We made our stove by taping construction paper burners and knobs on the bottom, but you can also create this stove on the lid too.

We used the Kitchen Sensory Bin for free play and exploration, counting, making patterns, sorting colors, sorting food groups, sorting hot foods and cold foods, practicing setting the table, sweet foods vs. salty or savory foods, washing dishes (put some soapy water and a sponge or rag in the bin to wash their dishes), play restaurant, play house and feed thei
r baby dolls and teddy bears, etc.

Here my son is transferring and counting popcorn (white pompoms) he made on the stove.

Playdough Recipes

Basic Homemade Playdough

Chocolate Playdough

Chocolate Playdough Activity

Cinnamon Playdough Activity

Vanilla Playdough

Extension Activities

Dramatic / Role Play using the items in the bin. Include hot pads, an apron or jacket for a chef’s coat, chef’s hat, and an egg timer, for lots of role playing fun. Set up a table / eating area with teddy bears and dolls. Pretend you are cooking for your family, a party, or at a restaurant.

Here is a printable by PreKinders that you can print off and have the kids sort healthy and unhealthy foods.

Here is a fun color sorting activity with some dishes and foods.

Here are some fun kitchen theme printables you can use to further your child’s learning and go along with their Kitchen Sensory Bin:

Cooking potatoes on the stove.

Baking Bread in the kitchen.

Cutting Board.

Baking Cupcakes.

Spanish Kitchen Coloring Page.

Kitchen.

Here are some fun vocabulary words, some also have pictures. Use these in pocket charts, or fun memory games, spelling games, etc.

Kitchen Vocabulary Picture Cards.

Kitchen Vocabulary Flash Cards.

Word List.

Spanish Kitchen Vocabulary Words.

French Kitchen Vocabulary Words.

Kitchen Objects.

Kitchen Vocabulary Bingo.

Here are some place setting props.

Placemat.

Table Setting Placemat Craft.

Place Setting Practice Cards.

Felt Foods are a nice addition to this bin, and don’t take up much space.

Felt Food from Counting Coconuts

Here are some tutorials for turning your plastic bin into a stove for play.

Dollar Store Crafts Play Stove

Play Stove Tutorial from Delicious Ambiguity

If you have some Melissa and Doug cutting board and velcro vegetables, cake, cupcakes, etc. would add a nice experience to this bin too, but the more items you add, the bigger the bin you will need to hold it all.

After playing and exploring in your Kitchen Sensory Bin, open the real kitchen cabinets and explore some too. What can your child hold and correlate with items in her sensory bin? What about items she doesn’t have? Let her hold the whisk, or strainer, and talk about how these are helpful in the kitchen. How about opening up the spice cabinet and smelling some of the spices such as vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, coffee, etc.

Save some time to explore together, and make something fun to eat or drink to further the learning experience and your relationship.

This post will be linked up with
No Time For Flash Cards
Play Academy
ABC and 123

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Garden Bugs Unit Study

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What’s Bugging Your Garden?

Sounds kinda funny don’t you think?

This is our last post for the Homeschool Village Garden Challenge 2011, and we chose to focus on Garden Bugs. We have had so much fun with this whole garden challenge learning project this summer.

So after doing all these fun learning adventures with the garden, I thought I would put together a Garden Bug Unit Study to go along with our Garden Unit Study and share it with you too.

Garden Bug Unit Study

Books We Read
I searched our book shelves, and came up with these great stories to explain more about garden bugs:

Topsy Turvey Tracy  The Grimy Slimy Bug Safari

Bugs Life (read the book, and watched the movie).
Black Widow Spiders, Creepy Bugs, Flying Bugs, I Like Bugs, Strange And Amazing Insects, It’s Alive, Slimmy Slugs and so much more…….

We also watched a DK movie called Insects.

Lesson Plans, Unit Studies, and Lapbooks

Did you know that you might find over 40 different bugs in your garden at any given time? Here is a great website to give you an introduction in identifying some of the bugs in your garden.
http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Search-PestsDiseases

How to naturally reduce garden pests.
http://www.gardeners.com/Managing-Pests-Diseases/5064,default,pg.html

What is pollination and how do bugs help polinate the plants in the garden?
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/index.shtml
and
http://www.discoveryeducation.com/teachers/free-lesson-plans/pollination-parties.cfm

Beneficial garden insects verses pest
http://www.gardeners.com/Beneficial-Bugs/7326,default,pg.html

Non-poisonous verses poisonous bugs (we live where there are various kinds of black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders, wasps, hornets, centipedes, milipedes, fire ants, and so on that cause painful injuries from injecting poinons into their victims).

Homeschool Share: Ant Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ant_lapbook.php

Homeschool Share: Bee Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/honey_bee_lapbook.php

Homeschool Share: Butterfly Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/butterfly_lapbook.php

Homeschool Share: Dragonfly Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/dragonfly.php

Homeschool Share: Praying Mantis Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/praying_mantis.php

Homeschool Share: Snail Unit Study and Lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/snails.php

Bug Facts
http://www.earthlife.net/insects/six.html

Yucky Bug Facts and Games
http://yucky.discovery.com/roaches/

Butterfly Facts
http://butterflywebsite.com/

Adopt An Insect Unit Study
http://sciencespot.net/Pages/adinsless.html

Spider Unit Study For Kinders
http://www.kinderkorner.com/spiders.html

Garden Pest Unit For Older Students
http://www.k12.hi.us/~ckuroda/pest.htm

Printables
great for coloring, matching, skills practice, lapbooking, notebooking, and more.

Pretty Bugs
http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2011/05/pretty-bugs-creatures-preschool-pack.html

Garden Printables
http://homeschoolcreations.com/gardenpreschoolpack.html

C is for Catepillar
http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2009/10/prek-letter-c.html

Laddy Bug Math File Folder Game
I love this math game!!! You can adjust it to be simple or more complicated based on your students skill level.
http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/07/ladybug-spot-addition-file-folder-game.html

Montessori Garden Printables
http://livingmontessorinow.com/tag/gardening-unit/

Insect Coloring Pages
http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/minsectposter.html

and

http://funschool.kaboose.com/preschool/art-activity-center/printables/bug-coloring-pages.html

and

http://www.first-school.ws/theme/animals/cp_insects.htm

Activities & Crafts

Draw A Bug Game
http://www.proteacher.org/a/81847_Draw_an_Insect.html

Bug Bingo Game
http://familycrafts.about.com/od/bugcrafts/ss/Bug-Bingo-Game-Cards.htm

Paint A Bug pages from the dollar store

Bottle Top Bugs craft
http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/05/bottle-top-bugs.html

Love Bugs craft
http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-bugs.html

Foam Bug Craft Kit from the dollar store

Bug On A Stick craft kit from the dollar store.

Lots of bug crafts
http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/bugs.html

DLTK: Insect Crafts
http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/insects/crafts.htm

Family Fun: Bug Crafts
http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/crafts-by-type/animal-bug-crafts/bug-themed-crafts/

Go on a garden bug hunt and search for bugs and worms. Use hand shovels, butterfly nets, containers, tweezers, etc. to capture a few harmless bugs to observe them, and then release them back to the garden. We found worms, beetles, pill bugs, flies, ladybugs, ants, spiders, bees, wasps, butterflies, etc.

worm

fly in our butterfly net

ants

ants

pill bug

Activity Trays

Activity trays with plastic bugs for the kids to sort, count, play, and role play.

Sensory Bins

Sensory & discovery bin. This can be a small bin, or a large bin. I made both.

I used small river rocks, plastic bugs, various scoops, tongs, funnels, and containers for lots of creativity, some small flowers or plants, sticks (to use as trees or logs or just use as sticks for bugs to crawl on or hide under), use green felt or foam (for a green lawn or to make a mini garden scene), use a minnow net as a butterfly net, colored glass rocks to make a pond and larger rocks for bugs to crawl on or hide under.

Science Experiments

I can’t wait to share some of these fun bug science experiments with you. But you will have to wait until a future story. I’ll link it back here when it is finished.

I found this great science experiment book at the dollar store, and it is totally creepy and lots of fun.

This is another great science book about insects and plants and we have done several experiments from this book too.

Here are some more ideas you can do without a science book:

Grow a bee garden. Plant sunflowers and various flowering plants to attract and observe the bees.

Grow a butterfly garden. Plant different flowers that attract butterflies and observe their behavior and life cycle.

Raise various bugs from eggs or larve (you can buy these on line, or find them free in nature): lady bugs, butterflies, praying mantis, ants, etc.

Tend a worm bin or worm bed. Buy it or make it yourself. Put in a pound of worms for each bin you raise. Add newspaper, soil, kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps, and obeserve the worms life cycle and their ability to turn everything into compost. Apply the compost to your garden and continue the process again and again.

Use a magnifiying glass to look at a live and / or plastic bug up close. Have the children describe or draw the different body parts of the bug. Have older children lable the body parts.

What do bugs eat? Choose a bug and find out if it eats your garden plants, or if it eats other bugs.

Make Rubber Bugs

We made rubber bugs with a bug machine “Creepy Crawler”. I found this on clearance for $5 last year. It is just like an easy bake oven, only it bakes rubber instead of cookies. It comes with two baking trays, a tray pusher, and various colors of liquid rubber goop to make your designs. The baking trays are molds that shape the bugs. Ours contained a spider, fly, worm, dragonfly, scorpion.

The boys had so much fun taking turns designing their own “creepy crawlers”.

The process was fool proof. Add a few squirts of colored liquids into the mold/baking pan.

You can make whatever designs you like.

Place in mini oven. The mini oven sets its own timer automatically, and shuts off automatically when it is done. It was very easy to work with.

Allow the bugs to cool. Then remove from baking tray. We filled almost two whole cookie sheets, and must have made 50 of these, but I could not find all the pictures of the different colored ones.

Field Trips:

We visited several places to enhance our learning about gardens and insects.

Roper Mountain Science Center Butterfly Garden
         and Living History Farm Garden

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day. My 11 year old son used my camera to capture several lovely pictures from this trip. Here is a snap shot of a bee pollinating a purple cone flower. He is going to enter one of his many photos he took on this day in an upcoming photo contest.

Farmers Market / Tailgate Market to see what farmers grow in their gardens to sell to the public.

Carl Sandburg Gardens

Insect Recipes

Want to try eating some bugs?
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html

Other Garden Unit Stories

Be sure to read our other Garden Stories and Garden Unit Study
http://weiseracademy.com/categories/Garden.aspx

Be sure to check out other homeschool families stories about their garden challenge at Homeschool Village
http://www.thehomeschoolvillage.com/2011/06/hsv-garden-challenge-june-sponsored-by-currclick.html

This post will also be linked up with
ABC and 123
Raising Homemakers
No Time For Flash Cards
Science Sunday
The Play Academy

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Easter Sensory Bin

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We built this Easter Sensory Bin for $12 with items found at the Mighty Dollar Store, Michaels, and a few items we already had on hand. Many sensory bins I am able to build with little or no cost when we have items already on hand.

Here are some of the items that went into our Easter Sensory Bin:

Easter Erasers Three sets each of six different erasers for counting, sorting, matching, patterns)
Chickens that lay candy eggs.
Mama and baby ducks
Plastic Easter eggs of various colors (for hiding objects in, color matching, sorting, counting)
Easter Tongs (for fine motor skills in grasping and transferring, eye hand coordination)
Easter grass (to help hide items in)
Colorful Jacks ( to count, sort, match, make patterns, spin like tops, and learn to play “Jacks” good for eye hand coordination)
Wooden Eggs
Wooden letter blocks (spelling, letter recognition, stacking, building, counting, color matching)
Egg tray (pictured further down, it was great for sorting, color matching, and counting)

Yellow lacing buttons
Yellow lace
Colored Clothes Pins (matching, counting, sorting, fine motor skills in clipping them on cards and ribbons)
Orange Ribbon (measuring, lacing)
Green Ribbon
Colored Pom Poms (counting, sorting, matching colors, making patterns)
Mini Dominoes (stacking, counting, building, matching)
Stacking Sorting Sizing Cups
Chop Stick Tongs
Spring cookie cutters
Easter Container (holds smaller objects for transferring, sorting, counting)
Stone Cross Necklace (to symbolize Jesus Christ’s death on the cross)
Rock (to symbolize the stone that was rolled away and his resurrection)

My three year old daughter built the sensory bin all by herself. She is going through a phase of stubborn independence and doesn’t want help, most of the time. So this is one of those times where it was great to let her show her independence and build her own sensory bin from the items.

She knew exactly to put her grass in first. Though I did stop her at one bag. This stuff just takes over. We could have easily just used a half a bag, or even done with out it. It actually gets in the way when the children go to use the tongs to discover hidden objects. They got a handful of grass everytime with every scoop. So this is something I may leave out next Easter.

She had so much fun creating this bin. She took her time in placing each item just “so” as she went along.

As soon as she had it built, she was ready to dig in and play. She immediately started with the bunny shaped tongs, colored eggs, and the colorful egg tray. She knew just what she wanted to do with it.

She enjoyed touching and feeling everything. She wanted each egg upside down so after picking it up with her tongs from the bin, she placed it into the tray with the tongs, picked it back up with her hands to turn it the “right” way, and set it back into position.

I

She enjoyed stacking these clothespins into the sorting cups and making rainbows with them.

She made pretty patterns with jacks and erasers.

She just had so much fun, and there were many more fun things she did with the sensory bin. Here she is practicing picking up pom poms with her chop stick tongs, and placing them in the egg tray. Sometimes she would drop one and have to chase it across the table to catch it with her tongs.

Little brother is two, and he had just as much fun with the sensory bin when he woke up from his nap.

He started off with unloading the bin. First, he pulled out all the grass, and it was going everywhere until I offered him another bin to place it in. He inspected everything in the sensory bin. One of his favorites were the mini dominoes (he loves the larger dominoes to, but this time I found a mini set to include that he had not seen before), and the mini blocks. He placed everything he could cram into the easter jar container and the lid did not want to go on it was so full. But one thing he let me know for sure, he did not like Easter grass in his way.

A lacing activity with the large buttons quickly caught his eye. He started lacing several buttons together and was very proud of himself.

He worked very carefully at putting the lace into the holes on the buttons.

Here he is saying “Look Mom, I did it!”

Building sensory activity bins with children is a lot of fun. I love to set it out for them to play and find various items to experiment with. It fosters the development of so many learning skills, including their imagination.

Children of various ages enjoy the bins too. My older boys enjoy it almost as much as the younger children do. I found them building with various items, having chicken and duck races, making nests for the eggs, spelling words with the letter blocks, spinning the jacks like tops, playing jacks, bouncing balls, playing dominoes, making patterns and designs, juggling eggs, and so on.

Have you tried using sensory bins with your children? Be sure to leave us a comment and tell us about it. Thank you.

This post will be l
inked up with
ABC and 123
We Play
Play Academy
No Time For Flash Cards
High Paws

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Colored Rice

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Colored Rice Science with Kids In The Kitchen.

In The Kitchen

You can make an edible colored rice by using mashed cooked peas to color the rice green, carrots to color it orange, and red cabbage or red beets to color the rice pink.

Just cook the rice in the pureed vegetable to create the color of your choice.   Add in the amount of pureed vegetable to the water, or chicken broth, and reduce the amount of liquid required to cook the rice by the amount of puree you add. The rice will absorb the cooking water with the coloring of the pureed vegetable you added. There will also be small pieces of the vegetable left and this really enhances the overall color you will see. You can also use cooled cooked rice as a thickener in hot soups, or in cold smoothies such as with strawberries for pink, blueberries for purple, or with peaches for orange.

SCIENCE & ART

However, we are not eating today’s creation, so we made it with food coloring and rubbing alcohol. Each of the five kids participated on their skill level. The older children measured the alcohol, coloring, and rice. The younger children helped prepare the table with needed items, helped shake, and spread.

We made this colored rice for a science-art project, comparing colors, and to use in upcoming letter boxes, sensory bins, and arts and crafts.    We learned that if you add more or less drops of colors together, you get a new color. For example, if you mix six drops of red with two drops of blue, you get a dusty rose color.

I encourage everyone to give this simple experiment a try.

Cost

This is so simple and frugal to do. It costs approximately $0.50 a pound, but I am sure it could be done cheaper if you can get larger quantities of rice at a good price. I bought a two pound bag of rice for $1 at the local dollar type store. We used so little food coloring and rubbing alcohol that I didn’t even factor the cost in. But a container of mixed colors cost us under $4 and a large bottle of rubbing alcohol was $1. But we barely used both of these so the actual cost of using them was negligible. If you want to, you could add on a few pennies and say you can make this project for under $0.55 a pound, but again I did not calculate actual values of the coloring and alcohol.

Two pounds of rice can be used to make a 2 lb batch of one color, or divided into either 2-1 lb batches or 4-1/2 pound batches, or 8-1/4 lb batches, or mix and match to equal the 2lbs (this is a great math lesson extension) depending on the colors and projects you want to use it for. We made used the mix and match idea and made 1 lb of green, and 1/4 pound each of pink (dusty rose), blue, and yellow.

How To Make Colored Rice

Start with measuring the amount of rice you want to color into a plastic bag. I did not have a lot of nice new bags on hand. And in the spirit of keeping this project frugal, I just improvised. So we re-used several plastic bags including one large and one small ziploc, a reused bread bag, and the original package the rice came in.

Add a spoon of rubbing alcohol.

Add a few drops of food coloring.

Observe. We noticed the color spread to several rice grains very quickly.

Now shake. Make sure your bag is closed!

Shake some more.

Observe again.

Leave the bag closed for about an hour, and shake a few more times when you think about it. Then after about an hour, pour the contents onto a paper towel lined cookie sheet, and allow to dry for a few hours. Then place in an airtight container until you are ready to use it.

We repeated the above process three more times to make other colors. Then let them sit in the bags for an hour.


Then came the fun unveiling of our colored rice.

Remember we started with plain white rice. This is what rice looks like after the outer bran has been removed. Set out some plain rice for the children to observe again. Then have them compare it to the colored rice they made.



PLAY

Children really enjoy the sensory experience of playing in the colored rice. It is beautiful to look at, and feels cool, stimulating, and relaxing to the hands.

Tots, Preschoolers, and lower Elementary age kids really like playing “I Spy” and “Hide and Seek” games with object hidden in the colored rice.

There are so many fun possibilities with using this as a prop and learning tool in their play.

Get the broom ready!

We had so much fun making this today. Just look at what we made for about $1.

Now we will add some funnels, scoops, spoons, hide some objects, put in some cars or construction equipment, some little animals, make some crafts, and have so much fun!!!

I will post some links here to related stories playing and learning we did with this colored rice as I get them published. I have a lot of toddler and preschool learning and sensory activities in mind, and art projects with all age groups too.

Extensions

To continue the learning of rice, show the children pictures of rice plants growing in a rice paddie and show them what rice looks like when it is harvested.

You could also cook some rice in water for 20 minutes and let them compare it in the learning process and eat it too.

You can also look up where rice is grown in the USA and where it is grown in the world and mark the locations on a map.

Older children can write down their observations from coloring the rice, or make a graph of the amount of drops used for colors, or mixing different color combinations and the new colors it created.

They could also write out a recipe for making colored rice.

Make an I spy activity using the rice.

Make a letter box or spelling box using the rice to hide words or items that start with a letter.

Make crafts using rice as the medium.

Use the rice as a background for other play similar to using a sandbox.

WARNING

The children will not want you to put this away. It is way too much fun!!!

How do you use colored rice? Leave us a comment and let us know. Thank you.

This post will be linked up with

The Play Academy
We Play
Kids Get Crafty
ABC and 123
Tot Tuesdays
Sunday Science
No Time For Flash Cards

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Valentine Discovery Bin

Snow Sensory Discovery Bin

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We have been observing our winter weather and landscape here in mountains of North Carolina. Though most of our observations have been outside, our recent snow fall has provided us with some fun indoor winter sensory activities.

Just look at those faces. Can’t you just feel their anticipation?

They are so excited that we are building this winter snow bin.

It is a sensory discovery bin filled with props for a winter wonderland adventure on top, and hidden treasures to find down below.

How COOL!   (pun intended)

I was laying in bed last night thinking about how I could build the kids a winter discovery bin with cotton balls and such, and decided why don’t I just bring the snow into the house. There is so much we can study and learn from our snow “school work”.

Yeah, its a little cold on the fingers, but again, we are talking about sensory folks. Snow = cold, wet, messy, very messy. And did I mention cold? But not too cold, as my daughter enjoyed playing in this snow bin in her summer shorts!

So I searched the toys and crafts and dumped out a deep storage bin and here is what I came up with.

Into a plastic bin/box we put glass square and round beads/rocks in shades of blue, aqua, and clear. This kind of represented frozen water iceberg under the snow. Then we added some plastic snow men, penguins, bears, deer, plastic rocks, etc.   Disclaimer: The stuffed animals were not harmed during the filming of this and were not added to the bin. Hee Hee Hee Haw!!!!

On top of this we added lots of snow. Then made a winter scene with some plastic pine trees, deer, plastic rocks and real rocks, plastic bushes, snowmen, penguins, and a hunter.

Didn’t my 2nd grader do an awesome job helping set this up? He is a great assistant!

On the kitchen floor, we laid out a blanket and set the snow bin on it.   Here the kids could play in their winter wonderland with all the props, and I didn’t have to worry about the mess.

Then we created a story to enjoy our winter scene.  They imagined “the deer were looking for something to eat, when a hunter came along and found them in the woods. The deer climbed the rocks and up the mountain to safety behind a high pine tree way up on a cliff. Then the hunter went looking for more animals and came upon a great big mammoth. But he knew not to kill the mammoth, so he let him go. The hunter was bored, and made a snowman, and then sat down and ate some snow soup with his animal friends.”

After their fun on the first level they were ready to go to work hunting for buried treasures in the iceberg.   (Yeah, I know, we should have buried the mammoth in the melting iceberg for a discussion on fossils, extinction, and global warming, but he has some electronic gizmo inside and we couldn’t let him get very wet. Plus that is more of a discussion for the older kids. So the mammoth stayed dry and alive on top of the snow).

I gave them some measuring scoops, recycled plastic fruit cups, and a large bowl, and they went to work.

If you could call it work. They laughed and giggled all the way through until the last object was found.

When they were done with their sensory bin, the older boys wanted to play in it too. Some activities with them included more imaginative play, but also measuring and counting scoops of snow and talking about compaction, melting, temperature, and more.

So we put in more snow and animals and recreated the hunting scene for them. This time the deer wasn’t so lucky to escape the wise hunter who had learned from his earlier mistakes. He ate dinner that night and went to bed with a full stomache. Made jerky with the leftovers. Hee Hee Hee Haw! Snort! Ha ha ha! Ok sorry about that, but kids are just so funny!

The kids all had a really good time.

Finally, our kindergartner took advantage of the used, melting, sloshy snow bin, and built a snowman.

He packed the melting snow into snow balls, and used broken crayons for the eyes and nose. He put craft sticks in for the arms and stuck on some yellow buttons.   He used the hunters hat for the snowman’s hat. He said the hunter had forgot his hat when he took off chasing the deer.

When he was done playing with it, he stuck the snowman outside on the front porch. It stayed frozen just like the day he made it for three days.  He enjoyed checking on it to see how long it took to melt.

He did a great job!

Clean up was much easier than I thought. The blanket went into the dryer for a few minutes.  The toys in the bowl, and the bin, dried on a towel for a little bit before being put away for next time.

Easy, fun, learning adventure, and free!

How are your kids exploring the winter? Do your kids enjoy using sensory and discovery bins? Please leave us a comment below and share what you are working on with your kids.

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