Fall Rice Sensory Bin

 

 

We were overdue for a simple themed sensory bin, and what better theme right now than fall? Fall here in Texas is nothing like how it was back in Germany, we don’t even get any colored leaves until after it’s too late for fall activities. So I grabbed some artificial items that represent fall, added them to some orange and red rice I still had from last year {colored rice lasts a really long time}, and used them for a simple Fall Rice Sensory Bin.

 

(E was 3 years and 10 months old.)

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

 

 

 

For our Fall Rice Sensory Bin, we used:

• Red and orange colored rice. {Read my Blue Rice Sensory Tub post to find out how to make your own colored rice.}
• Spoon, cookie scoop.
• Plastic apple.
• Assorted artificial leaves. {The fabric ones are similar to these.}
• Acrylic leaves, acorns and pumpkins.
• Fall cookie cutters. {The set is called Halloween Cookie Cutters but has several fall designs as well.}
• Glass bowl.
• Assorted plastic bowls and a plastic cup.
• Ice cube tray.
• Sensory bin.

 

 

 

Here’s how I set up the sensory bin for E:

 

 

I thought the acrylic table scatter inside the cookie cutters looked particularly nice.

I put the sensory bin on the table for her before I picked her up from preschool, and when she saw it, she was fascinated immediately. Her first question was “Can I eat the apple?” – it’s plastic, so I had to say no 😉

After she’d gotten a good look, the first thing she did was move the cookie cutters – I guess she didn’t like that particular feature as much as I did 😉 Next, she sorted the felt leaves by color.

 

 

Playing with rice has always meant lots of scooping and pouring for E, and now that she’s older, she still really enjoys doing that. What’s different from when she was younger is the pretend play element she adds.

Here, she was scooping rice and table scatter into the plastic cup

 

 

while telling me all about how the red rice was strawberry ice cream, and the orange rice was mango ice cream. She then presented me with a delicious ice cream cone.

 

 

The felt leaves were only getting in the way while she was trying to fill the cup all the way, so she moved them to the side. The rice was definitely her favorite part of this activity, and she could’ve done without any of the other items.

 

 

She kept dumping out the rice and filling the cup again, using different methods.

 

 

How much rice can I cram into the cup?

 

 

And once she was satisfied with the amount, she dumped  it all out again.

 

 

There wasn’t much clean-up required after this activity, the biggest “mess” were a few grains of rice that had fallen on the table and on the floor. E still wasn’t in the mood for clean-up but her arguments didn’t win, and she finally decided to go ahead and do it. It did take a while because she insisted on picking up each individual grain with her fingers but luckily, there was so little that she still got done reasonably quickly 😉

 

 

Afterwards, we just left the items in the box – everything was reusable and ready to go for another activity {or three}. We’re not putting the fall items away until Thanksgiving is over 🙂 Check out our All-in-One Fall Sensory Bin we did a week later where we recycled several of these items!

 

 

 

Have you played with a fall themed sensory bin? Do your kids enjoy playing with rice? Write a comment to let me know!

 

 

 

If you like this post, click here to subscribe to my newsletter and receive an email once a week when new posts are published, or to my RSS feed.

Also make sure to follow me on Pinterest to stay up to date with all we do, and for lots of great ideas from others!

If you prefer Facebook, I’d love to connect with you there: Like and drop me a line on my Facebook page, where I share my own posts and those of others every day!