Summer Theme Sensory Bins for Kindergarten
As summer vacation approaches, it’s important for students to review the skills they learned over the course of the school year. This allows them to sharpen their skills before the long break from school. Summer Theme Sensory Bins can be a great way to help students review literacy and math concepts while strengthening their fine motor skills. In this post, I’m sharing tips and resources to help you set up these learning activities for your students.
The Benefits of Sensory Bins in Kindergarten
There are many benefits of incorporating sensory bins into your learning routine:
- Fine Motor Practice – As students manipulate the objects in a sensory bin, they can practice and strengthen their fine motor skills.
- Sensory Input – For many students, a sensory bin can give them much-needed sensory input during the daily routine. This can give students a chance to regroup and be ready to focus when it’s time to start paper-pencil tasks.
- Cooperative Play – Sensory bins often have space and materials for more than one student to participate at a time. This gives them a chance to practice their cooperative play. As they share materials and take turns, they can strengthen the social skills that they need to use in a classroom full of peers.
- Hands-On Learning – Students are much more likely to retain information when they can review new skills in a hands-on way. Sensory bins are just one way that you can provide these engaging learning experiences for students. It’s easy to add task cards to a sensory bin to transform it into a hands-on learning activity.
The benefits of sensory bins can be especially helpful in the weeks leading up to summer break, when excitement is buzzing in the air and energy levels are high! This is especially true when you can incorporate some seasonal fun into your sensory activities. I’m going to share some tips for creating summer theme sensory bins for your kindergarten classroom.
Summer Theme Sensory Bin Filler Ideas
The first step in creating a summer theme sensory bin is to choose a filler material! Here are a few ideas of how you can bring a bit of summertime to your sensory bins with fillers:
Sunshine – Add a touch of summer sunshine to your sensory bins with yellow pom poms, dyed yellow rice, or dried beans coated in yellow paint. This filler creates a summery backdrop for the rest of your sensory bin materials.
Water and Sand – Your students might be dreaming of an upcoming beach vacation! You can add moon sand, brown lentils, or regular sand for a beachy feel in your sensory bins. You can also use blue filler to represent water, such as blue-dyed rice or painted dry beans. This filler is great for beach pails, shovels, and seashells.
Summer Treats – Sensory bins can also incorporate your students’ favorite summer treats! Black beans can be used as a nod to watermelon seeds. You can also use colorful rice or pom poms as part of an ice cream-inspired sensory bin. Then you can add plastic cones and scoops for pretend play!
Sensory Bin Learning Activities
The next step in setting up a sensory bin is deciding what type of activities to include. Sensory bins are a great option for fine motor practice through open-ended play. However, you can also incorporate learning activities into your summer-themed sensory bins. Here are some examples of the math and literacy skills that your students can practice as summer vacation approaches:
Digraphs
There are many phonics skills that students can practice with sensory bin activities. For example, they can identify the digraphs they hear at the beginning of words.
In this sensory bin activity, students will choose a card with a picture on a sunshine. After identifying the picture, students will decide which digraph they hear at the beginning of the word. They can then write the digraph on their recording sheet.
CVC Words
Students can also apply their phonics skills to building CVC words. After choosing a card with a beach pail and picture, students will identify the picture and listen for the sounds they hear in the word. They can then write the letters for each sound in the spaces provided on the recording sheet. This is a great way to practice short vowel CVC words!
Long Vowel CVCe Words
Sensory bins can also be used for long vowel practice! Similar to the CVC word activity, students will spell words that go with each picture card. The recording sheet includes a visual reminder for the Magic E to include for each word.
Make Ten
In addition to literacy practice, you can use sensory bins to practice a variety of math skills. For example, students can practice their number sense by making ten. Each card contains a partially-filled ten frame with summer objects. Students will count the number of objects they need to make ten. They can model this using an addition sentence.
Addition & Subtraction
Sensory bin activities can also help students practice addition and subtraction. For example, in this activity, students will choose an ice cream cone with an addition equation. Students can then write and solve the addition equation on the recording sheet.
Printable Sensory Bin Centers
I know how busy the end of the school year can be! I can save you some prep time as you put together some summer-themed sensory bins for your students. I have created a set of summer activities that are the perfect addition to your sensory bins!
These literacy and math activities come with recording sheets so you can use them for small groups, centers, intervention, and more! If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this resource, just click below to find it in my shop.
Summer Kindergarten Centers Write and Wipe Activities & Sensory Bins
Save These Summer Sensory Bins
Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite kindergarten board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find this post when you’re planning summer-themed learning activities for your kindergarten classroom.
