With spring comes gorgeous weather.....and rain. Lots of rain. We're on day 4 of rain here in Iowa (very thankful it's not snow!). I've been trying to come up with some new ideas for sensory bins and play this week. We've been talking and reading books about spring, growing flowers (we've even grown our own indoors and soon enough we'll be planting our veggies to enjoy later this summer hopefully), birds, rain, and how the rain makes things grow. To go along with this topic, I created a Spring Flowers Sensory Bin.
I didn't quite know what I was going to put in the bin, but after hitting up Dollar Tree's floral aisle (really half of an aisle and part of the craft section), I was able to create this bin for under $15. My finds included:
8 different types of fake flowers (only 4 are pictured)
1 baggie of rocks
I started by coloring the white rice green:
Once the rice was dry, in the bin it went, and the creating began.
While the kids enjoyed this bin, they mostly enjoyed taking the flowers out of the bin (they later played flower shop with them), running their fingers through the rice and rocks, and tweeting the bird in each other's faces. I love seeing how they can take an activity like this and create something new and exciting in their own way. Big bonus: between the flowers, rice and rocks, and the birds, this bin created an entire day of play for the kids.