Brrrrr, it’s that time of year! Time for winter and all the snowy wonder that comes with it! This winter sensory bin is perfect for hands-on exploring while staying nice and warm inside. After you explore, check out the rest of the wintery goodness we have for you in our compilation of the best winter activities for kids.
Winter Sensory Exploration
This sensory bin is multi-faceted with loads of math opportunities! Children often organically uncover the math component in sensory bins as they naturally begin counting, sorting, measuring, and comparing.
Most of the items I used I already had in my Christmas storage bin, so it was the perfect way stay inside on this freezing cold day! I love being able to reuse materials I already have on hand, and going through my inventory gave me lots of winter sensory play ideas.
Sensory activities are always a hit! As soon as this winter sensory bin hit the table, my little ones came running and couldn’t wait to start experimenting with its contents. I try to include them in all my lesson plans!
Frequently Asked Questions About Sensory Bins
What do you put in a winter sensory bin?
Winter sensory bin ideas are endless! You can use any materials that relate to a winter theme. Stickers, pipe cleaners, pom-poms, cotton balls, white, clear, or blue gems, little foam beads, large winter-themed beads, or even shaving cream (that one is the messy option!) Incorporate arctic animals for a habitat-based theme or put together a snowman sensory bin!
What are some sensory bin fillers for a winter theme?
Grab some simple household items such as rice, white beans, dry noodles or chickpeas (great opportunity to paint them silver or icy blue), or even coconut flakes. If choosing food or small items, use extra caution to monitor your little ones as they play.
Snow is a popular winter sensory table filler! Whether it’s pretend snow or real snow, a snow sensory bin provides a ton of fun and learning.
What are some art activities I can add to my winter preschool lesson plans?
Winter is full of seasonal activities that are specific to winter weather. Make a sparkly winter painting with your littles or fine motor winter process art, perfect for a cold day when you are stuck inside! Or for a little color, try this rainbow fine motor snowmen activity.
More Winter Activities
Sensory play is only one way to learn this winter! Don’t miss these related activities.
- Winter Small Pack – 6 Printables
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- Yetis Small Pack – 6 Activities
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The Amazing Benefits of Sensory Play
Sensory play is a fairly new ‘term’ in the early childhood world, but it is a well-known and well-loved component of any toddler or preschool program! It is so essential that young children experience textures and experiment with different materials freely. While they play, they are building a host of different skills.
There are three top benefits of sensory play:
- Language – Sensory play improves language skills, vocabulary, and social skills with other children or adults.
- Fine motor – These are naturally woven into sensory play opportunities as children grab, pinch, squeeze, pour, scoop, and roll. Just playing with play dough is an amazing fine motor skills workout!
- Reduce anxiety – There is an amazing calming effect to playing with sensory materials. Playdough and homemade stress balls work wonders on distracting the body from anxiety. Calm down jars or winter sensory bottles make for a fun project and a break from a long hard day.
Icy Winter Sensory Bin for Preschoolers
This winter sensory bin for preschoolers is the perfect opportunity to practice counting, sorting, and free play! Plus, we’ve included free number formation cards (at the bottom of this post) to help those little fingers practice tracing and identifying the numerals as they play.
Materials
- Blue, silver, and white foam balls (also known as vase filler)
- Mini ornaments
- Large snowflake stickers
- Irridescent white pipe cleaners
- Bowls, small scoops, and/or jumbo tweezers/tongs
- Acrylic snowflake table scatter
- Blue pom-poms
- Plastic snowflake gems or stickers
- Number formation cards (free printable included in this post)
The Set Up
To set up, gather all of the sensory materials that you have available and add them to a bin. Include things for scooping and pouring like spoons, measuring cups, jumbo tweezers, tongs, and/or sand shovels. Add enough bowls so that each child playing in the bin has their own bowl.
Print the number formation cards and laminate (optional for durability) and cut them out. Place them inside the bin for children to use as they begin exploring.
Invite the children to dive in! This is where the magic happens… every child does something different from the start. This little one gravitated right to the number formation cards and began searching and scooping up sparkly pom-poms to count out. She did this for four different numbers before she moved on to a different task.
My boys were all about playing for the first five minutes. Feeling, squishing, stirring it all up, and scooping entertained and excited for quite some time.
This sensory exploration was the perfect time for me to ask them questions about what the objects felt like. They described the pom-poms as “spiky” and the ornaments as “smooth and shiny, but some have bumpy triangles”!
They also noticed that the glitter from the ornaments and the vase fillers balls was getting all over their hands and the table.
Then, they entered the sorting phase. Each boy picked a different item and began picking out that single item to collect in their bowl. Icicles and spiky pom-poms were the items of choice and they began working as a team, helping each other find their special sorting item.
After collecting all the icicles (silver pipe cleaners) in the bin, my son started to thread ornaments on them. He soon discovered that some icicles were longer than others and that he could fit more on the longer pipe cleaners. He laid out all the pipe cleaners to measure them, as his goal was to find the longest icicle. It soon became an “all hands-on deck” situation as everyone wanted to help find the longest icicle.
I know you’re wondering… they did, indeed, find the longest icicle and they were able to just fit 6 small ornaments on it. They all celebrated as though they had just discovered an important scientific discovery!
It’s always amazing how a bin full of interesting materials can provoke so much learning, thinking, and creativity. Sensory play at its best!
Later, they chose to scoop out snowflake gems and pour them on the number formation card. Then they would line them up over the number and make a trail of snowflakes. Sometimes, they would just scoop and pour them out with no math intent at all! And that’s ok, of course!
Whether your little ones are seeing how many sensory items they can fit into their bowl, sorting by color, size, or object, or counting, playing, or scooping, this bin is full of wonder and learning. Don’t miss including sensory bins in your winter sensory activities!
Winter Picture Books
High quality literature is so important for kids, and is a perfect addition to every preschool theme! We’ve hand-picked some of our favorite winter books for you. There are books about snow, snowmen, and all things winter!
- 12 Fine Motor Task Boxes
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Rated 5.00 out of 5 based on 3 customer ratings
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- SaleProduct on sale12 Number Identification and Counting Activities
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- Daily Lessons in Sorting Preschool Math Unit
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Grab Your FREE Number Formation Cards Here
Adding these number formation cards to any sensory bin adds a nice math component. You’ll be surprised at how much your preschoolers will naturally add them into their sensory play.
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Winter Sensory Bin
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Difficulty: easy
This winter sensory bin for preschoolers is the perfect opportunity to practice free play, counting, and sorting from the warmth of your home or classroom this winter.
Materials
- Blue, silver, and white foam balls (also known as vase filler)
- Mini ornaments
- Large snowflake stickers
- Irridescent white pipe cleaners
- Bowls, small scoops, and/or jumbo tweezers/tongs
- Acrylic snowflake table scatter
- Blue pom-poms
- Plastic snowflake gems or stickers
- Number formation cards (free printable included in this post)
Tools
- Laminator (optional)
Instructions
- To set up, gather all of the sensory materials that you have available and add them to a bin. Include things for scooping and pouring like spoons, measuring cups, jumbo tweezers, tongs, and/or sand shovels. Add enough bowls so that each child playing in the bin has their own bowl.
- Print the number formation cards and laminate (optional for durability) and cut them out. Place them inside the bin.
- Invite the children to dive in!
- Some might be interested in just playing at first. Feeling, squishing, stirring it all up, and scooping entertained and excited for quite some time. Feel free to ask questions about what the objects feel like.
- Then they may enter the sorting phase. Some may choose to sort by color, size, or type of object. Some may sort in totally different ways or sort to make patterns.
- Invite them to use the silvery iridescent pipe cleaners to thread the ornaments on. Challenge them to discover how many icicles will fit and encourage children to measure them.
- Another way to play with these materials is to scoop out snowflake gems and pour them on the number formation card. Then line them up over the number and make a trail of snowflakes. Or scoop with no math intent at all!
Recommended Products
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Check out these other winter themed activity ideas!
Marshmallow Snowballs Winter Counting Activities
5+ Icicles and Snowballs Winter Math Activities
Christmas Sensory Painting With Pine Boughs
Sarah Punkoney, MAT
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
stayathomeeducator.com/
