Today we are continuing our A-Z Sensory Play with the letter L. As we are focusing on the alphabet throughout the series we couldn’t resist creating a L is for Letters Sensory Bin.
This vibrant and colourful sensory bin was simple to create and can be used time and time again. We used the same method as in our Apple Scented Sensory Bin to create five lots of coloured rice – blue, green, orange, purple and red. I poured economy rice into a zip-loc bag, squirted in the paint, closed the zip-loc securely and then let my girls squash the rice and paint around the bag until the rice was completely covered. I repeated this method for each colour. We then poured the rice out onto baking trays covered in greaseproof paper and left it overnight for the rice to dry.
The next day I placed the rice in stripes in our green sensory bin. I then raided my sons puzzle drawer. I chose a wooden alphabet peg puzzle to add to the sensory bin. The pegs add an additional fine motor skill element to the activity.
Each of the 26 wooden letters was hidden underneath the coloured rice. With hindsight, I should have placed the letters in the green bin before adding the rice on top. Unfortunately, I attempted to hide the letters within the rice which resulted in the colours mixing before play.
I placed the wooden alphabet board onto the table alongside the coloured rice sensory bin. My son had to search around the coloured rice in order to find the alphabet pieces and then place them on the board.
Some of the letters were easy to find however, others took much longer to discover. My son had to get his hands deep into the rice and move them around the bin in order to find the pieces.
Once the alphabet puzzle had been completed I had expected to tidy away the activity. However, my son had other plans. We took turns hiding the letters back in the coloured rice for the other to find. Letter recognition, developing fine motor skills and sensory play all in one activity!