Happy Fall Y’all! (I can never resist saying that.) I don’t know what it is about fall, but I always get inspired around this time of year. Maybe it’s the changing weather and colorful leaves. All I know is that from September to November, I try to incorporate a fall theme wherever I can. Sensory bins are amazing for toddler learning! There are tons of benefits to sensory play. Sensory play encourages cognitive development by building neural connections in the brain. It also enhances memory by activating multiple learning modalities at once (tactile, auditory, and visual). It’s tons of fun, and there’s lots of learning going on at the same time. We love to see it! For this apple pie sensory bin, I incorporated every sense except for taste (although it is taste-safe).
- Sight – The materials and recipe cards were the perfect invitation to play.
- Touch – Atlas was really able to get hands-on with the ingredients for his apple pie.
- Smell – The cinnamon sticks had a lovely scent and Atlas enjoyed exploring and sniffing them.
- Hearing – I added a jar of sprinkles (sealed) so that he could pretend to shake them onto his apple pie and hear them rattle around in the container.
- Atlas ended up tasting a cinnamon stick, but it doesn’t really taste like anything if you don’t bite into it (I tasted one too lol).
This bin was really easy to create. Just pour in your base (I used oatmeal), and add your “ingredients” and cookware. Here is a list of everything that I used:
Oatmeal, Mini apples, Cinnamon sticks, Fall sprinkles, Measuring cups, Mini baking pan
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I added some “recipe” cards to incorporate a counting activity as well. While Atlas played, we counted, talked about the red apples , how the cinnamon smelled, how the sprinkles sounded, and pretended to make and eat our apple pies!
Click here for free printable “recipe” cards to add to your bin!
Atlas loves this apple pie sensory bin. We have used it for three days in a row! I made another set of recipe cards without numbers on them so that you can write in whatever you want and keep changing it up. If you have a laminator, you could even use dry erase markers for endless recipe combinations! Older kids can even write in their own numbers to create their own recipes.
Let me know if you try out this apple pie sensory bin. Tag me @ iamtaylorreign on Instagram to share your photos. I would love to see how they turn out!
