Playing and Learning with Bead Sensory Bins
We are taking part in the 40 Sensory Bin Fillers Collaborative Series hosted by Little Bins for Little Hands – an awesome resource for finding fun sensory bin filler ideas to play and learn with. We chose to use beads as our filler.
The kids loved our bead sensory bins and played for weeks with them! It was enjoyed by my 3 and 6 year old as well as their friends who are 7 and 8. We used our water table for ours but a large container or empty box would also work.
We made 2 separate bins using all different kinds of beads: star-shaped, tri-beads, wooden, alphabet, crystal, pony, and ones from a jewelry kit. Huge thanks to CraftProjectIdeas.com for supplying us with many of the beads we used for this activity. Their beads can be found in the craft section at Walmart.
We also added jewel gems and charms to the 1st bin and sequins to the alphabet one, but they are hard to see in the photos. They were mainly just for making them look pretty by adding shine/sparkle.
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Little Sister had a blast lacing the beads onto pipe cleaners by color – great fine motor skills activity! The best part is that she came up with all of these activities by herself and I did not suggest anything. I just set out a bunch of items and she got busy playing! She also sorted things by color into the purse-shaped tray you see in the photo above as well as by shape.
The adorable tray pictured is from a Melissa & Doug Rainbow Crystals Bead Set
(Amazon affiliate link) that includes over 500 beads. My daughter loves playing with it!
Things we added for scooping and playing:
- Toy cups, bowls, spoons, and a pink tray from their play kitchen set.
- Empty sprinkle containers and another small plastic bottle with a lid.
- Scoopers – ours is from my hubby’s empty protein shake container; measuring cups would also be fun.
- Fuzzy Sticks (pipe cleaners)
- Ice cube tray
- Plastic craft lacing cord
- Elastic cord
Big Brother loved making as much noise as he could… Lol! He had fun scooping and pouring as well as putting them inside the plastic jars and shaking them.
Little Sister is always pretended to make food so the very 1st thing she did was ask me what I wanted to eat. She made pretend food in her toy bowls and cups for everyone. She even made pretend sprinkles using an empty, clean sprinkle shaker we finished recently. While her brother enjoyed pouring in the water table to make noise, Little Sister enjoyed pouring into the ice cube tray.
Big Brother practiced spelling his kindergarten sight words using the alphabet beads and fuzzy sticks. He also made a beaded heart shape with the word ‘Loving’ which he said was for me – such a sweetheart! My daughter pretending to spell words and excitedly showed her creations to me…. tee, hee.
I couldn’t resist making a few necklaces and bracelets too. Beads are fun! We did color patterning on several and also made ones without a pattern.
In the smaller area of the water table, I placed all of our beaded creations and Mardi Gras style necklaces. I hid 7 mini erasers for Little Sister to find which she absolutely loved. She screamed with joy everytime she found one – too cute!
Bead Sensory Bin Fillers
*We received products for review purposes. Please read our disclosure policy for more info.
Also See: Mini Erasers
, Bead Necklaces, and Kids Water Tables
Stop by the 40 Sensory Bin Fillers on Pinterest to see what others have been adding to this fun series.
We would love to connect with you on Pinterest and our handprint art blog!
What a fun idea! My daughter would have loved making noise with the beads too!
Thanks Emma! Kids sure do love noisy things…. LOL!