We get to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Easter this month! Which means, there will be lots of fun playing, creating, and learning during the month of March!
One of the activities I have in my therapy bag this month is a sensory bin! I love to incorporate sensory bins with many thematic and therapeutic activities, especially holidays!
Sensory bins are great for every child I get to work with. It is a great activity to have children explore their senses as they feel, see, and sometimes smell what is in the bin. It is great for fine motor development as children can scoop, pour, dump, shake, dig, grab, etc within the contents of the bin. It is also a wonderful activity for the children who need a sense of calming and regulation as learning can be tough and uncomfortable to them.
This month, I have two sensory bins I get to explore with the children in speech therapy.
For St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to use Kinetic Sand! In the picture below, I placed Kinetic Sand in a plastic bin and buried some GOLD COINS! The children get to dig with the little shovel or their hands to find all the Leprechaun’s GOLD! For language targets, we can use descriptive language vocabulary. “The sand feels smooth. The sand is blue. The coins are round.” We can also use quantitative vocabulary. “I found one coin! We found ten coins. I have more!” Action vocabulary is another target (i.e. scoop, dig, find, etc). For speech production targets, we can use the words/phrases such as, dig, coin, gold, more, look, find, it, I, I dig it, more coins, I find it. These targets are great for targeting individual sound practice or for motor speech sequencing.
Items used: plastic bin, Kinetic Sand, gold coins from Dollar Tree, small shovel I had
For Easter, I decided to make a bin with Easter grass and fill it with a variety of different Easter themed items with different textures. We have a ton of language targets with this bin!
Descriptive Vocabulary: smooth, rough, poky, crinkly.
Sentence Expansion: I see it, I see bunny, I see blue bunny
Noun-Modification Identification: Where is the blue egg?
Quantitative Vocabulary: How many eggs, bunnies, carrots? Which has more?
Expression of Feelings: I like the crinkle of the bunny. I don’t like the rough carrot. The grass is fun!
Speech production targets are filled with this activity too!
Target words/phrases for individual sound or motor speech sequencing:
Bunny, Hop, Carrot, Eat, Egg, All the colors, Grass, hide, take out, put in, more, no, yes, numbers (when counting), feel it, like it?, I do, you do.
What I love most about this bin…..it's versatile! I can use all of these filler contents for one child and then take them out and put something else Easter themed in it!
Items used: plastic bin, Easter grass from Dollar Tree, decorative Easter eggs, bunnies, and carrots from Dollar Tree
I hope this activity inspires some fun sensory exploring and speech and language learning in your home or therapy room!
*Helpful tip- If you do not want a huge mess on your table or floor, use a sheet, thin blanket/towel, or a tablecloth to catch all the mess. When you’re done, dump it back in the bin or trash!
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