Sensory Bin Ideas for Every Age

Sensory play is an important component of learning and development. It is an excellent way to build awareness of the body and senses and may help develop important balance and coordination skills. Sensory play can benefit children of virtually any age. It can even be fun and relaxing for adults. One of the easiest ways to take advantage of this is by creating a sensory bin.

Components of a Sensory Bin

At its most basic, a sensory bin is a container filled with a base material and hidden objects to explore. Children manipulate these to explore unique characteristics, such as:

• Texture (soft, hard, rough, smooth)
• Temperature (hot, cold, warm)
• Weight (heavy, light)
• Shape (pointy, round, square)

For example, children exploring a sensory bin with dinosaur toys may notice that some have feather textures while others are more smooth. Claws, wings, and the length of body parts are all qualities observable through touch and feel.

Sensory Bins by Age Group

Age-appropriate toys are necessary to ensure safety and promote learning. The same applies to sensory play. These ideas can help you build sensory bins that make learning fun for any age.

Toddler Sensory Bins

Toddlers love to touch and feel as they learn about their world. That makes this a perfect age to introduce sensory play. Since little kids may put whatever is in the bin in their mouths, it's a good idea to keep the fill material neutral. Water, salt, and coffee grinds with a few dinosaur toys all work well.

Preschooler Sensory Bins

Preschoolers are curious and can spend hours exploring new surroundings. Take advantage of this tendency with some great sensory bin games that you can put together with a few basic supplies. With a little planning, sensory bins become miniature classrooms to hone counting, sorting, and matching skills.

Kindergarten Sensory Bins

Sensory play opens a world of learning for kindergarteners. Hide letters for phonics games, like scooping words from an alphabet soup bin, or try another of these fun kindergarten sensory bin ideas to reinforce classroom learning.

Primary School Sensory Bins

Older children are ready to explore more detail and learn more complex concepts. This is a great time to encourage exploration beyond sensory bins. For example, sorting dinosaur toys into categories based on features, such as meat eaters and plant eaters (tooth size, claws, etc.) or flying and land-based (wings, legs, etc.) teaches about animal classification in a fun way.

Tips for Sensory Play

You'll want to keep a few things in mind when designing sensory games. For example, varying temperatures are fine, but you don't want to expose children to extremes. Additionally, you may need to replenish certain items over time. This is especially true of toys with feathers or fur that may wear down, natural materials such as leaves that may crumble, and everyday objects such as cotton balls that can compress and change with handling.

The toys you choose for sensory play should be age-appropriate and of high-quality materials for maximum impact.