Preschool Garden Sensory Bin

I've been trying to build thematic sensory tubs each month that coincides with our theme from Mother Goose Time, our preschool curriculum.  

This month it's all about the garden, so here's how we built ours and a few activities you can do with the bin.

You will need:

black beans, pinto beans, floral foam, fake flowers, little ceramic pots, floral cutters ($1 at Dollar Tree!) or scissors, a large tub and any other trinkets you want to add  to your garden.

Everything pictured below (except the beans and tub) was purchased at Dollar Tree, and I might have spent $10. 

Pour both colors of beans into your tub.  This allows it to look more like dirt and is great if you are wanting to do a sorting activity.

Build Bouquets.

Cut the flowers to where each is on it's own stem. Then let your preschooler stab them into the floral foam.  My girl started building it bouquets by scooping beans into her ceramic pots and then placing flowers inside.  (The ceramic pots are breakable!  Please only purchase if you feel they are safe for your child. My girl is very gentle and doesn't throw things around, so I didn't mind her playing with the ceramic pots under my supervision.)

Play a Matching Game.

Remove the flowers and now you have "soil" to plant all sorts of things in your garden.

We played a matching game with vegetable cards during our Soil Day, and when we had a match we buried them in the "soil."

Act out math problems.

We added some produce from my girl's toy kitchen to act out math problems from our Rabbit Day.

There is so much more you could do with the garden bin!  

• You could have your little "pick" the produce to sell at the make believe market.  
• They could also make bouquets to sell at the market. 
• You could act out stories you read.  This allows you to actually grasp your little's reading comprehension all while playing.  Win-win!
• Hide fishing worms in the bin and have your little find them.  What a great sensory experience!
• For older kids:  Plant sight words in the garden and have them pick the words to make a sentence.

I love having a sensory tub to go with the theme.

My girl loves to make believe play with it and I love having a bin to expand her learning.

Here are a few more tubs we have built:

Rainbow Rice Ocean Sensory Bin

Bug Sensory Bin

Valentine Rice Bin (toddlers)

Simple Garden Bin (toddlers)

Easter Bin (toddlers)

What kind of bin is your favorite and what is your favorite activity to do with it?

Preschool STEAM: Root Study

This month it's all about Growing Gardens with our Mother Goose Time preschool curriculum.

Living in Texas you have to establish your garden bed by March or April because if you wait until May, it'll be to hot.   While we planted peppers, tomatoes, and zinnias in our garden, my neighbors planted all sorts of herbs, and root vegetables including carrots and green onions in their raised beds. They let us pick from their garden whenever needed, so after breakfast my girl and I pulled up one carrot and one green onion to observe the roots on our 

ROOT Study day.

We had a quick discussion on roots before we made our experiment.

"Avaleigh, where are the roots?"

"At the bottom in the soil."

"What do you think the roots do?"

"Grow flowers."

I tried to explain to her that the roots deliver food and water to the plants.  We sang and acted out a little song called Roots Deliver from our MGT teacher guide.  Then I told her we would do a ROOTS Experiment that would help her see what roots do.  

9:00 am 

She set up our science experiment. 

(3 clear containers, liquid watercolors or food coloring, paper towels)

I told Avaleigh it was really important for us to not bother the experiment and just observe and look at it throughout the day. 

I asked her what she thought would happen. (hypothesis)

She knew red and blue make purple, which she stated, however she could not tell me HOW the clear water would become purple.  She could not understand the purpose of the paper towels.

10:00 am

We went out to observe our experiment.

She noticed that the clear water was changing.  "It's pink."

The blue had not made it through the paper towel at this point.

11:00 am

We went outside again to observe our experiment.  At this point I knew I needed to add a little more blue liquid watercolor to the blue water to make sure that the middle container would indeed turn purple.  I added just a little more blue water to the blue container. 

1:00pm

Before leaving on our errands, we took one more look.

"It's purple!" She exclaimed.

I asked her how the middle container turned purple and she just said, "Red and blue make purple."  She still would not tell me that it happened because of the paper towels.

I think if we were to do this again, I would set up another set of 3 containers, except with no paper towels (creating a control).  Then we could observe how one changed and the other didn't and how the paper towel is the key variable in the experiment. 

I think if I had done this, Avaleigh probably could have picked up on the fact that the paper towels pulled the color into the middle container of water, like roots do for plants.

I guess it's an experiment I will have to try :) 

I'll let yall know the outcome.  Until then...

Happy Experimenting!

For more STEAM ideas click here.

And if you want more great ideas, follow us on Facebook and Pinterest.