Spring sensory bins are all about new life, yellows, greens, reds, bunnies and Easter things. They let your child feel different textures and explore how things move and change as you play with them. It’s ok to get messy. I’ve compiled a list of ideas for spring themed sensory bins or trays.
Which Sensory Bin Should I Use?
You can choose which ever bin, box, tub or tray that you like. It all depends on your budget and the size of your home or garden. But here are some suggestions that I have seen used to good effect.
A Tuff Tray or other play tray of a similar shape
This is what we have. We have a dark green tray with a stand and it can be used indoors or outdoors. The stand does come apart but we have a garage where I can just store it fully made so I never take it apart. When we use the tray inside, I clean it and can store it leaning against the wall out of the way. And when we play with it outside, it gets a wipe over and goes to lean against the wall in the garage. It is rather large so not for all houses but it works for us. We also use the tray with and without stand. If indoors, I’ll put a wipeable mat (bought from Dunelm Mill’s fabric rolls) underneath it to add a little more protection for our carpet.
IKEA tray table
This is the IKEA Flisat table. These are great because of the dual use. You can use it as a table but also as a sensory table with the two tubs. And you can just hide whatever is in the tubs away by putting the table tops back on.
Circle Trays
These are aesthetically pleasing and you’ll see these all over Instagram as it’s cute to see different items in each section. But, within a few seconds, a child is going to have mixed everything up as they play with it so it won’t look quite so cute then.
This one is a slightly different one that we have. I think I got it from B&M Bargains.
Plastic Storage Box
These are great for seating younger children inside them. If the sides aren’t too big, then older children could sit around the sides and lean in to access the play items. They also have a useful lid so everything can be thrown in and the lid out on for a quick tidy up.
Paddling Pool
Great for containing the mess because of the high sides. Give it a rinse outside after any messy play and leave it to air dry. It won’t take up too much space when it’s packed away.
A Sand Tray
You can use a sand tray for sand but also other sensory activities too.
Boot Tray
Meant to be used for storing wellies in after a muddy walk, these trays are great for sensory play too as they’re usually pretty big and aren’t too hard to clean.
A Casserole Dish
We use this reddy-brown one for lots of our sensory play or a see-through glass one which has a plastic lid so we can store the contents for longer.
What Are Some Spring Themes?
- Life cycles
- Easter
- Baby Animals
- Rabbits
- Bees
- Flowers
- Rainbows and Weather
- Animal Homes
- Planting Seeds
Spring Themed Sensory Bin Ideas
Gardening Sensory Bin
Provide plant pots, gardening tools such as a trowel and a fork or small rake, some seed packets, some seed label markers and a bin full of soil cloud dough. The bonus here is that it smells of chocolate and who can resist that! Please note: uncooked flour is not safe to eat due to bacteria hiding in it so if you do have a child who is likely to want to put this in their mouth, cook your flour in the oven on a tray to heat it up.
How To Heat Treat Your Flour
Measure out your flour onto a baking tray. Heat your oven to 180C or 350F. Once at temperature, place the tray of flour in the oven for 5 minutes, then take out and leave to cool. It is now ready to be used to make cloud dough.
Recipe for soil cloud dough
5 cups of flour
1 cup of vegetable oil
1/2 cup of cocoa powder
Mix with a spoon or your hands. Add extra flour if it’s too wet.
Easter Bunnies Sensory Bin
My girls loved this one! They spent nearly an hour scooping and transferring and had such amazing conversations while doing so. Here’s how to make it:
- First, dye your rice green. I used this food colouring, a 1/3 cup of white vinegar and a trayful of dry rice. Mix with a metal spoon so all the rice is coated and then lay out on a lined baking tray to dry.
- Then, get any little wooden or plastic or felt Easter bunnies you can find. My purple and green bunnies were actually cut off a ribbon found at The Range. I also found the cute daisy ribbon there too.
- Add any other little decorations: I had these Easter trail signs and the white fences so used these.
- When the rice is dry, add it to your sensory bin and dot the bunnies and flowers around.
- Add a selection of scoops, tweezers, tubs, pots and spoons. We save our recycling – yogurt pots, McDonald’s McFlurry spoons and similar for activities like this.
- If you have a Peter Rabbit busy book, you could also use the characters from this.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Sensory Bin
Create a sensory base such as green rice or chickpeas and laminate printed out food items from the book and place them in the bin.
Using a cardboard box, attach a picture of the hungry caterpillar to the front with a hole where its mouth is into the box.
Provide a copy of the book and either read it to them or let them go through by themselves and feed the caterpillar the items in the book.
Planting Tray
Get some magic sand or make your own. Make sure it looks like soil. Ours was made from ground up chocolate cereal. It did get a bit sticky after a while but was fun all the same.
Add some plant pots, some fake (or real) flowers, some gardening gloves and tools and let your little one plant the flowers.
Frogs
Add some plastic frogs to water. Have lily pads made from plastic leaves. Place some larger stones at the bottom of the tray. Provide scoops and tubs.
This activity set-up was chia seeds in water to make a frogspawn-like texture.
Add frogs to a sensory bin mix of rice and split peas. Provide tweezers, spoons, scoops and other utensils for the children to move the sensory mix around.
Bugs
Place some fake grass (I found ours in Poundland) in the bottom of your play tray. Place toy bugs on the grass and provide tweezers for the children to pick up the bugs with. Provide pots for the children to put the bugs into and magnifying glasses to get a better look.
Flower Observation and Painting
Provide examples of real flowers which are safe for the children to pick up. Add watercolour paints and pots of water and paper and invite the children to paint a picture of a flower. For these daffodils, I provided tissue paper and felt pens to see what my little ones would create.
Spring Cutting Tray
Provide scissors safe for children and observe at all times. Place real examples of flowers and grass in the tray and invite children to cut them. They get to feel and smell the flowers as well as practise their fine motor skills.
This scissor skills set has some toddler-safe scissors in. Supervise at all times.
Flower Potions
Add jugs of water, some sticks, grass, real flowers, small tubs and pots, spoons and scoops and a bowl. Invite the children to make a flower potion. You can also provide coloured water with some food colouring in and they can find out what happens when they mix different colours of water together.
Flower Playdough Prints
Invite the children to make imprints of spring flowers into playdough.
Flower prints
Invite the children to paint real flowers using poster paint and then press them onto paper and see what patterns they can make.
Planting More Flowers
Make some brown/black rice using food colouring and a splash of white vinegar. Leave to air dry on a tray.
Add some plastic flowers. We have these which have been much-loved by our girls. Add some plant pots, gardening tools and gardening gloves and invite the children to plant the flowers.
Spring Animals I-Spy
Print out some pictures of baby animals and laminate them. Hide them in your sensory base.
You could paint dried chickpeas in pastel colours. Invite the children to find the baby animals. Provide a tick sheet for them to see how many they’ve found.
Click here to download a FREE spring baby animals printable. Print it and cut it out. Hide them in a sensory bin. Print a second sheet off to be a checklist for your little one to cross off the animals as they find them.
After you’ve finished with the sensory bin, why not try a spring scavenger hunt outside? There’s a free one linked below.
Resources
Sainsbury’s Stars Pasta – ideal for painting and adding as small flowers into your sensory bins.
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