indoor play

3 Rainbow Sensory Bins

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rainbow sensory bins

Kids LOVE rainbow sensory bins! These rainbow sensory bin ideas are some of our absolute favorite sensory bins, and they are the perfect addition to our rainbow activities, rainbow crafts, and a rainbow theme in therapy. Be sure to use our rainbow breathing exercise, too. Let’s talk rainbow sensory play!

Rainbow sensory bins

A sensory bin is a container filled with materials that are designed to engage children’s senses and encourage exploration and play. They can be as easy or as complicated as you like, but the concept is the same- sensory based, tactile play with a theme or play idea with items to manipulate and explore as the user explores their tactile sensory system.

These materials can include a wide range of sensory inputs such as sand, rice, beans, water, or small objects like toys, beads, and stones. Here are many sensory bin base ideas to get you started.

The goal of a sensory bin is to provide children with an opportunity to explore their senses through play. As they play with the materials, they can feel the different textures, see the different colors, and hear the different sounds they make. This can help to promote their sensory development and stimulate their curiosity and creativity.

Sensory bins are often used in early childhood education and therapy settings as a tool for sensory integration therapy, which aims to help children develop and organize their sensory systems. They can also be used at home as a fun and engaging activity for children to play and explore.

We’ve been playing with a rainbow theme alllll week around here.  These are three rainbow sensory bins that we have been exploring.

 
 
 
 

Any time that I pull out the corn bin, everyone gets very excited.  I added ribbons in different colors and some “gold coins” (aka yellow Connect Four game pieces!)

 
 
Another little sensory bin that we’ve been playing with is a simple bowl of these Fuse ‘M Beads.

 

 
I added a couple of pairs of tweezers and an ice cube tray and let them go at it!
This was a fun fine motor activity, but mostly they just loved running their hands through the beads.
 
 
 
Baby Girl loved exploring these little beads.
((These are really little, so if you play with these…or any little parts…keep an eye on your little ones if they tend to put things in their mouths.  Baby Girl does pretty well and won’t put things like this in her mouth.))
 

 

 
This last sensory bin used the Fuse ‘M Beads again.  The next day, I put the beads and some cotton balls (clouds) into a big ol’ bowl and added a melon baller and kitchen tongs. 
 
 
More fine motor skills and sensory play combined into one colorful activity!
 
 

 

We hope you get some good ideas from these sensory bins.  have you done any fun sensory bins recently?
 
 
If you are setting up a rainbow sensory bin, be sure to grab a copy of our colors handwriting kit. There are many items in the printable kit that can be used in a sensory bin to challenge letter writing. It’s a great colorful addition to rainbow play!
Colors Handwriting Kit

Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:

  • Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
  • Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
  • Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
  • Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
  • Colors Roll & Write Page
  • Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
  • Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
  • Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
  • This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.

Click here to get your copy of the Colors Handwriting Kit.

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

Rainbow Play: Foam sheets on the window

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This foam sheet activity builds fine motor skills while playing on a vertical surface, to create a fine motor rainbow. This foam sheet activity is a fun and engaging rainbow activity for kids.

Foam sheet activity

This activity is one we did on a window, but you could use on a bathroom shower wall or a dry erase board to engage an extended wrist.
 
It’s also a great activity for core strength, upper body strength, and eye-hand coordination. 
 
 
We have had a fun little activity going on here alllll week. 
We cut foam sheets into strips and gold coins.
 
But didn’t have a black foam sheet for the pot of gold. 
What could be used…oh, a take out container would work!
 
 
This was on the little table and I put it by the door:
Foam strips, foam gold coins, foam black pot, and a little bowl of water.
 
 
Everyone had so much fun with this!  They played for a looong time.
And ever since, when a piece falls down, they will go into the bathroom and wet the piece under the sink and put it back up. 

 

 Baby Girl loved this activity!  It took a whole 15 minutes before she drank the water in the bowl.  I was surprised it took that long. 🙂
 
 
We have been doing so many fun Rainbow play activities this week.  Little Guy has a new line when we say the colors of the rainbow:  “Don’t forget the indigo and violet, Mom”.
 

 

Pipe Cleaner Fine Motor Activity With a Cardboard Box

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Pipe cleaner fine motor activity

This pipe cleaner fine motor activity is a fun one that we used for many years to target fine motor skills like dexterity, pincer grasp, hand strength, and more. Plus, this pipe cleaner activity is great for toddlers. But, kids of all ages love this activity! Let’s break it down…

Pipe Cleaner Fine Motor Activity

This fine motor pipe cleaner activity is very simple to set up. You need just two items:

  1. Pipe cleaners cut into half or one thirds
  2. A cardboard box

To set up the activity, first cut the pipe cleaners into smaller sections. For younger children use longer lengths of pipe cleaners and for older kids, target more precise fine motor skills but cutting smaller sections.

Then, use a screwdriver and poke holes all over the cardboard box.

You’ll want to poke holes on the top of the box, but also on the sides of the box. A larger box is best for this activity, because the holes on the sides of the box encourages a wider range of motion, including wrist extension.

You’ll also see more diverse movements when a larger cardboard box is used: bilateral coordination, visual scanning, crossing midline, and more.

Another pipe cleaner fine motor activity to try is dropping pipe cleaners into a bottle. Toddlers love that activity, too!

 

This was the invitation to play that I had set up for the kids.  A cardboard box with holes poked all over, and pipe cleaners. 
 

 

This was the end result 🙂
 
 
They all had so much fun creating a work of art with pope cleaners, all while working on their fine motor dexterity, tripod grasp, and eye-hand coordination.
 
(These two were pushing each other to get in there.  They are WAY more like siblings than cousins…)
 
 
 
 

 

 

Have you seen our recent post Pipe Cleaner Fun where we shared how to explore colors with pipe cleaners?  There are so many fun ways to use them for fine motor development with kids!
 
 
 

Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:

Letters Fine Motor Kit
Kit de motricidad fina de verano
Summer Fine Motor Kit
Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
Space Fine Motor Kit
Spring fine motor kit
Valentines Day fine motor kit
winter fine motor kit
Winter Fine Motor Kit

Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:

Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

Color Matching With Play Dough

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This was an easy and fun way to spend an afternoon.  And when Baby Girl woke up from her nap, she loved it too.
I put out six colors of play dough and a little bin of colored beads, paper clips, and other little things.

               Fine Motor Strengthening for kids

They had so much fun matching up the colors.  Baby Girl just loved pushing the little beads and things into the Play Dough. 
I love her little knuckle dimples 🙂
Pushing the little objects into the dough is resistive and an excellent fine motor strengthening exercise for little hands.  They are also working on their tripod grasp when they push the beads into the Dough. 
  Big Sister said we needed to wash all of the little objects after we were done.  We put all of them into a bin of water and everyone had fun swishing them around.   
 Drain them into a colander and you are good to go 🙂

Snowball Experiments

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We had so much fun one day last week…with our

Great Snowball Experiment

We gathered up a tray of snowballs and brought them inside.  I asked the kids what they thought would happen if we put snowballs in different places (I gave them examples of places that we could try putting the snowballs, so I wouldn’t find a wet-melted snowball couch cushion later that day.)
We thought it would be fun to try putting the snowballs in different places and seeing which would melt faster.
Big Sister guessed that the snowball we put outside would melt first, because it was a sunny day that afternoon, and she thought the sun would melt the snowball.
We put some snowballs on plates and put a plate outside, in the freezer, in the refrigerator, in the oven (turned on), and left one plate on the counter.

It was fun to watch the snowballs as they melted and the kids got SO excited seeing them get smaller and smaller.

 

When the oven snowball melted, there were cheers in our house 🙂
 We didn’t have a melted fridge snowball until the next morning.
Big Sister ranked them on her sheet in order of melting.
And of course had to eat the ice that the outside-melted snowball turned into after a really cold night.
Our freezer snowball is still in there.  Hanging out by the frozen red grapes 🙂

Multi-age Letter Learning Bin

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This was an easy little activity that worked for all of the ages. 
My Pre-K kiddo copied the words,
My Pre-Schooler liked telling me all of the things that started with “D” and exploring the bin,
and my Toddler loved checking out all of the fun things in the bin.
(Especially the ducks…Baby Girl looooooves ducks!)

I’ve seen the letter sensory bin idea over at Life With Moore Babies.  
She’s linked up at our Share It Saturday link up party and I knew my kids would love to do something like that!

We went on a scavenger hunt to search for toys that started with D and everyone had so much fun!
We found Dog puppets, ducks, a doll, and a Dad (ok, this was another doll and a small stretch to get a “D” word, but they got it :).   We also had dinosaurs, a D magnet, a few foam letter “D”‘s, a plastic “Diamond” bracelet, a plastic dime, and Dora.
I wrote all of the words on the writing sheet for Big Sister.  She’s so into copying words right now.  And learning lower case letters.  She loved pulling the object out of the box, asking me which word matched up, and then copying.

 My silly Baby Girl. I have 6 shots of this.  She was hil-arious.
 And she knew it!
Colleen

Pipe Cleaner Fun

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Try this fine motor activity that uses a simple item you probably already have in the house right now: a plastic water bottle. Add a few pipe cleaners for a fun activity that boosts skills like fine motor skills, visual motor skills, bilateral coordination, and more. 


Fine Motor Skills and Learning Colors with Pipe Cleaners

Baby Girl has been LOVING this library book.
Her favorite word right now is “apple” so she turns to this page and points to the picture and says apple again and again 🙂
So cute! 


The babies had fun doing a little fine motor activity to go along with the Red page in the book.
 I cut some red pipe cleaners in half and put out an empty water bottle. 

This is great for a Toddler’s Fine Motor Skills, Eye-Hand Coordination, and Cause-Effect. 

They love to put little toys into openings to see what happens.  Putting the brightly colored pipe cleaners into the bottle is so much fun for them!

m
We started with a bunch of colored pipe cleaners, but I put them away and just pulled out the red ones to go along with the page in the book.  We will definitely be coming back to this activity again, adding different colors…They loved it!

 Such Concentration!

Colleen

Letter Bin

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This was a great bin to pull out on a cold wintery day.
This bin of letters has been at our house since Big Sister was around 18 months.  I found the letter sets on sale and got 3 or 4 of them for a really inexpensive learning toy.
Big Sister would play with this bin constantly.
I pulled it out again since Baby Girl is almost that age.

Baby Girl and my niece and nephew swarmed right in on this as soon as I put it down on the table.  They played with this off and on allll day!  They would come over, scoop around in the bin, pull letters out, dump it out, put them back in (sort of)…and do it all over again.

They loved the colors, the feel of the letters, the little sound when you swish all the letters together…

Toddler Sensory Bin!

Little Guy is at that stage where he is just beginning to identify letters.  He knows the ones in his name and some others…so this was a perfect learning toy for him, too.  He found the letters in his name and traced them.
Big Sister sorted out some letters and spelled a few words she knows.
We have used these letters so often over the last few years…If you see them on sale, scoop up a few sets.  It’s fun for all ages 🙂

Body Parts Activities for Toddlers

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This body parts activities for toddlers is a fun activity to teach young kids about body part names using a baby doll. We love this body parts activities for babies, too because babies AND toddlers can relate to using a baby doll and adding band aides to different body parts!

body parts activities for toddlers

This body awareness activity is perfect for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Kids LOVE to peel bandages and stick them onto a baby doll. They can stick the bandages (or paper or felt bandages for a pretend version) to use a baby doll to teach body parts.

 
I got this idea after Baby Girl had her most recent well child doctor’s visit, and she had a couple of vaccinations.  The next day, she was sooooo interested in her new band aides that the had nurse put on her leg. 
 
Baby Girl is getting pretty good at pointing to her body parts when we say “where is your head, where are your toes…” and you better act fast if you ask her “where are your eyes”.  The girl will come at ya with a pokey finger ready to show YOU where YOUR eyes are!
 
When a baby and toddler begins to show finger isolation to poke or point, this is finger isolation. This progression of fine motor skills is a progression from pincer grasp.
 
Our resource on fine motor milestones further breaks down this progression.
 
To further develop these fine motor skills with babies and toddlers, try fingerplay songs.
 
So, I used some of our felt sheets and cut up a few colored band aides.  I wanted them to be felt so they would sort-of stick to Baby Girl’s clothing if we laid them on her pant leg or sleeve…and I thought it would be fun for her to stick them to her favorite felt-y feeling baby doll.
 
body parts activities for toddlers
 
 
 
I set the felt band aides out along with some real band aides and some pieces from a play doctor’s set.
 
 
Playing with band aides is a really great fine motor task for preschoolers.  Peeling them open, and pulling the backs off of the sticky part…Sticking them down…All so perfect for fine motor dexterity, bilateral coordination, & tip-to-tip pincer grasp. 
 
If you find some band aides on sale or at the dollar store, pick them up.  You can use those buggers in all kinds of fun pretend play and craft activities.
 
 
 
See, she will poke eyes!! You gotta watch this girl, people! She pokes while she says in the cutest possible little voice, “Eyyyyyyyeeessssssss”.  At least while your eye is being poked out, you can hear that cute little word haha!  (You may not have vision from that eye for  a few minutes…but still.)
 

 

Big Sister and Little Guy had so much fun playing doctor and giving the baby shots, applying band aides, checking her temperature/ears/heartbeat…
 
Older kids can also use our bone names activity for learning bone names.

 

 

 
And Baby Girl was busy doing what she does best…
 
Being Her.
 
“hmmm. Yup, I think I better spill these last drops of milk on the table.  Yes. That was a great idea.”
 
 
 

 

She did do a pretty great job with the body part thing!  She showed me the baby’s chin and leg.

 

 
We stuck the felt band aides to Baby Girl’s elbow and belly.  They stuck pretty well on her fleece top.  And then stuck them in the same places on her baby doll. 
 

 

 
I have no idea why (or how) there suddenly was a sticker on the back of Baby Girl’s head.  I’m thinking Little Guy had something to do with this one.
 
Brothers.
 
 
This baby had a rough day.

 

 

 
Big Sister finished up by giving baby a little bath time. 
 
 
 
And then of course, baby needs swaddled.
 
and chest compressions, apparently.
 

 

 

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.