We play a lot with water beads. These blue water beads were part of a 3 pack I found at Walmart. I wanted to try a calming sensory bin for a while, and the blue water bead pack was perfect!
…with three crazy kids, mom needs a little calming activity every now and then :)…
Calming Colors.
Blue is peaceful and relaxing, and produces calming chemicals in the body. Purple is a color that promotes imagination and is associated with relaxing and calm colors. It’s said that lighter shades of purple are calming, while deeper shades are stimulating as they pull in more red tones.
There is a lot of research out there telling us about how color affects mood and behavior. Blue and Greens release neurotransmitters that relax and calm the body. They lower body temperature, decrease perspiration, and suppress appetite. Reds and Yellows encourage creativity. (So, pull out those bright and stimulating color strips when you’re getting ready to paint the dramatic play/art/block area!)
Calming Scents.
The sense of smell sends information directly to the brain. Certain scents can increase our ability to learn, create, think and attend. Peppermint, basil, lemon, and cinnamon are linked to mental alertness. Lavender, chamomile, orange, and rose are linked to relaxation and calmness.
Calming Sensory Bin.
I used our blue water beads and added purple food coloring to the water. Just a few drops were needed, and the water turned a nice calming shade of purple. I added a few drops of lavender extract for a nice relaxing scent.
This really was a calming activity for the kids. They played with the water beads and let them fall between their fingers. They did go into the kitchen and grab my spatula and whisk.
((They do this every time we pull out the water beads!))
Baby Girl played for a long time with this. She loved it!
This purple sensory bin is a fun way to explore the color purple using one of our favorite sensory play materials: a water bead sensory bin! While this is a very old post on our blog (circa 2013), we still love the mesmerizing impact of a color themed sensory play activity. Plus, if you are looking for more fun ways to extend the play, check out our water bead activities!
Purple Sensory Bin
A purple themed sensory bin has many benefits beyond exploring the color purple. Of course, you could make a color themed sensory bin based around any color and gain so many benefits:
Tactile sensory experience- Targeting tactile discrimination and tactile exploration is one of the main skills that are address with a sensory bin. You can address various aspects of tactile defensiveness through engaging and motivating play.
Social Emotional Skills- Playing in a sensory bin like our purple sensory activity is an engaging activity that fosters group play (parallel play) and encouraging peer interaction by borrowing tools, working together. Engaging in a new situation is an excellent way to foster communication, cooperation, and other social emotional skills. Here are more social skills activities kids love.
How to set up a purple sensory bin
In our colorful sensory bin, we gathered just a few items from around the home:
Add a few spoons, cups, and manipulative items, and you are ready to go!
This was a fun and easy little sensory bin to put together. Someone (cough, Big Sister, cough) threw some bath water colors into the bin of blue water beads we had out. They absorbed the color reeeeally fast. And are VERY vivid in their new purple hue.
I found a few purple bracelets and cookie cutters, and a few other purple things, and voila!
Purple Sensory Bin fun!
I’m not sure why, but every time we do water bead or corn bin sensory play, Little Guy goes into the kitchen and grabs my whisk and whatever other utensils look right. So, now Baby Girl does the same thing. I guess it’s just fun to mix and stir when you’re playing with a sensory bin!
Brown and Blue Play Dough, sand, rocks, palm tree food picks, and a bowl of beachy manipulatives were put on a tray for Big Sister and Little Guy. They played with this in our basement in a baby pool we have going on down there right now.
I love how Little Guy put the dolphin in the blue play dough like it was leaping into the water 🙂
What are we learning through play?
Imagination Play
Pretend Play
Fine Motor Dexterity
Tripod Grasp to pinch and sprinkle the sand
Index Isolation and Tripod Grasp to press the little items into the play dough
This Spring sensory activity doubles as a fine motor activity and visual perceptual skills activity too. We used some materials we had around the house to create an “I Spy” sensory bag that kids can use to work on essential skills for reading and learning.
To make a Spring seek and find sensory bag, you need just a few materials:
gallon sized baggie
gel
food coloring
Paper
Stickers- we used Spring stickers
This is a really simple sensory bag to make:
Today we used some spring flowers that we had and stuck them inside a plastic bag.
We filled it with aloe gel and some food coloring.
There were matching stickers on a piece of paper so the kids had to seek and find the match.
Looking back and forth to find the matches is great for visual scanning and visual memory.
Pushing the gel around to find the sticker below helps with fine motor strength, including index finger isolation.
This was Baby Girl’s version of fun:
…we did not tape the bag to seal it closed, but you may want to. It would also be fun to tape the bag to a window like we did in the linked activity. The gel bag is fun for practicing letter and number formation too.
Why make a Spring Seek and Find Sensory Bag?
Spring is a great time to get outside and explore the natural world with your senses. You can create your own spring sensory bags by filling them with different materials that will stimulate your senses, such as flower petals, leaves, or even some freshly cut grass.
These sensory bags can be a great way to encourage children to explore their surroundings and discover new things. You could also create a seek and find spring activity, where children have to search for certain items using their senses.
If you have a child who is a sensory seeker, creating a spring sensory bag could be a great way to provide them with the tactile and visual sensory input they crave.
The different textures of the materials inside the bag can help to regulate their sensory system and provide a calming effect. Pressing the bag through the fingers offers calming proprioceptive input through the joints of the hands.
Additionally, creating a spring look and find activity could be a fun way to engage them and provide them with an opportunity to explore their surroundings in a meaningful way.
Spring Sensory Bags
For an I spy sensory bag activity, you could fill a bag with various small objects, such as buttons or beads, and have children search for specific items using their senses.
This activity can be a fun way to develop children’s sensory skills and provide them with a fun and engaging learning experience.
Whether you’re looking to engage your senses or seek out new spring adventures, there are plenty of creative ways to make the most of this vibrant season. So why not grab a seek bag and get started today?
Spring Fine Motor Kit
Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!
Developing hand strength, dexterity, dexterity, precision skills, and eye-hand coordination skills that kids need for holding and writing with a pencil, coloring, and manipulating small objects in every day task doesn’t need to be difficult. The Spring Fine Motor Kit includes 100 pages of fine motor activities, worksheets, crafts, and more:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 🙂
We made a quick Valentine’s Day sensory bin using shredded paper one year and it was a big hit. This shredded paper sensory bin used paper from our paper shredded and some other materials found around the home as we worked on fine motor skills and tactile exploration. Here is another Valentine’s Day sensory bin to try as well. Both of these are great additions to your occupational therapy Valentine activities.
Shredded paper sensory bin
This sensory bin was a Valentine’s day activity for us, but the shredded paper sensory bin can be used with any theme. You could use any sensory bin base material but for this one, we’re using shredded paper.
You’ll need just shredded paper, some cardboard tubes, and pipe cleaners. Then add other scoops, stirrers, and other materials if you like: recycled bottle caps, cookie cutters, craft pom poms, etc.
To make this sensory bin, you’ll start by making colored paper.
You can also add Valentine’s Day sensory bin materials like the ones found in our new Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit. The Kit contains 25 pages of hands-on materials designed to develop and refine fine motor skills in kids, but some of those items are perfect for adding to sensory bins like this one. Simply cut (or have the child cut out) the images of hearts and other Valentine items. Then, you can scatter the sensory bin items into the sensory material. Hide them and have the child find them.
How to dye paper
To dye the paper, all you need are these items:
shredded paper from the paper shredder
a plastic bag
food coloring
water
First, place the shredded paper into the plastic bag. We used just regular junk mail, printer paper, and recycled newspapers and placed it into a plastic store bag.
Add a few drops of food coloring
I added about 10 drops of food coloring, and some water and tied the top up. Just a few drops of water is needed. If you add too much, it will be a goopy mess, so start by adding a few drops at a time.
You could also use a gallon sized plastic zip top baggie and seal the top up tightly.
Next, ask the kids to shake the bag. This is a good way to incorporate movement and vestibular sensory input.
We shook the bag until all of the paper in the bag was coated in red color, and then poured the damp paper into a cardboard box to let it dry for a few days.
Shredded paper sensory bin
Once the shredded paper is dry, it is time to play.
The folded toilet paper tube hearts are a fun addition for wrapping with pipe cleaners for a fine motor workout.
Use a toilet paper tube or cardboard tube from a paper towel roll and fold it in half to create a heart shape. Kids can pinch along the length of the paper tube to crease the cardboard roll into a heart. Then, use scissors to cut the toilet paper tube into small heart strips.
What a fine motor workout!
Dyeing Paper with Food Coloring!
Little Guy and Baby Girl had a little spatula battle. Oh, this girl LOOOOVES to play with her big brother and sister. She loves the action and chaos the big kids bring to Every. Thing!
VALENTINES FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES
If you need more hand eye coordination activities for Valentine’s Day fine motor fun, try the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit.
The Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit is here! This printable kit is 25 pages of hands-on activity sheets designed to build skills in pinch and grasp strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, precision, dexterity, pencil control, handwriting, scissor skills, coloring, and more.
When you grab the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit now, you’ll get a free BONUS activity: 1-10 clip cards so you can challenge hand strength and endurance with a counting eye-hand coordination activity.
If eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, and handwriting are tasks that you are working on with children, you’ll love both of these free therapy slide decks. Use them to outline occupational therapy interventions or to use in teletherapy sessions this time of year.
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.
I have seen these Discovery Bottles all over the place. Do a search on Google images and you will find a ton of ideas and ways to make these. I knew the babies would love this and we had to try them…it was a success!
I super glued the lids shut for little ones who like to use their teeth to open bottles…
I know a few who do that in our house 🙂
Baby Girl was super excited when she saw these. She had a blast checking them all out.
So easy and lots of fun! Definitely try this one if you have toddlers/babies in your house. They will love it!
Are you looking for more information on Sensory Processing or any of the body’s sensory systems and how they affect functional skills and behavior? This book, Sensory Lifestyle Handbook, will explain it all. Activities and Resources are included. Get it today and never struggle to understand or explain Sensory processing and sensory diets again.
Grasp Strengthening and Learning Colors With SNOW???
Some days, it is just HARD to get the kids dressed up in snowsuits/gloves/hats/boots/scarves…only to bring them back in 10 minutes later because the baby wants to follow the big kids, but can’t pick up her boots to walk through the snow that is up to her mid-calf…so she stands still in the yard until I pick her up…
Today was one of those days.
We needed an activity for after baby-nap-time and before dinner-making-time and this was just the one!
I had this idea in mind since right after Christmas when we got some snow, and I wanted to dye it using eye droppers. After looking everywhere around the house, I just can. not. find the eye droppers! So, on to another idea…
Turkey Baster
Spray Bottle
Scoops and Spoons.
These kids were so beyond excited to see me setting this up. They helped stir the food coloring into the bowls of water. (Get Dollar Store food coloring for projects like this! So cheap, and it will last you many, many projects…) But they could not guess what we were doing with it. Once I brought the snow in, there were cheers!
We did some mixing of colors on the snow…What does red and blue make? We had green in the spray bottle and it was fun to change the stream to get more color on the snow. They were pretty excited to get brown, of course 🙂
Squeezing the turkey baster bulb and the spray bottle nozzle is wonderful for grasp strengthening in hands.
The strength of the whole had is needed for so many fine motor work in play and school based activities.
This was the extent of the mess…not too bad! They kept the tray on the right pretty clean of color mostly since that was Baby Girl’s side and she was busy eating the snow 🙂
