Learn and Play with a Muffin Tin

Learning at home with items you already have is easy when you think outside of the box.  In the case of today’s blog post, we’re thinking outside of the muffin tin!  Muffin tins are something that most of us have in a cupboard or closet and we use maybe once or twice a month.  Unless you make cupcakes or muffins every day, the tins probably aren’t being used very much.  While we do a lot of baking, we actually could use our muffin tins for so many more learning and play activities.  The compartments of a muffin tin are perfect for kids to put things into and sort.  It’s a great tool for math, colors, literacy, and sensory play.  Below, we’re sharing learning, play, math, science, colors, and so many more ways to learn and play with muffin tins!


Creative ways to learn and play with muffin tine, including math, sight words, science, art, sorting, colors, baby play, and more.

Ways to play and learn using muffin tins:



Explore chemical reactions in the tin compartments like Little Bins for Little Hands. (Muffin tins make great compartments for baking soda reactions!)
Discover colors of the rainbow in this build a rainbow activity from KCEdventures.
Then sort colors like Modern Preschool, using pom poms and colored paper. Learn with Play at Home used pom poms for color sorting and early math.
Count with playdough using a muffin tin like Messy Little Monster.
Encourage Baby Hand-Eye Coordination and so much more like we did with balls and babies!
You can use the compartments of a muffin tin in sensory play with rice (like Adventures of Adam) or beans, shaving cream, dried lentils…the possibilities are endless!
Toddlers love to place items into the compartments of a muffin tin.  Adventures of Adam used cotton balls for fine motor and hand-eye coordination play.
Create a book -based Math Game like Kitchen Floor Crafts did.
Make a sight word fine motor game like Growing Book By Book did for us last year.
Here are more muffin tin reading games from Growing Book By Book.
Experiment with ice like The Chaos and the Clutter did with their melting ice experiment.
Match colors like Powerful Mothering.
Create a counting game like JDaniel4’s Mom.
Freeze letters in ice using muffin tins like Sugar Aunts (that’s us!) did.


This post is part of our month-long Learning with Free Materials series, part of the 31 Days of Homeschooling Tips as we blog along with other bloggers with learning at home tips and tools.

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