Feature Friday: Halloween Sensory Tub

I absolutely LOVE sensory materials. They are good for children and should be included in our classroom practices. Why??

1. Children are wired to receive and utilize sensory input from day one.  This is why children will dive in hands first, exploring a new substance.  The senses are their most familiar, most basic way to explore, process, and come to understand new information.
2. Children need to use their senses and be engaged in meaningful experiences.  As we talk with them about what they are observing and sensing, we give them new language tools to connect with these more familiar sensory tools, building language as well as supporting cognitive concepts specific to the experience.
3. As children are better able to use their senses, they are then better able to learn through their senses. Just as children learn through their senses, they also are developing the ability to use those senses and are building the neurological pathways associated with each one.  With added sensory experiences, combined with the scaffolding of adults and peers, children become more perceptive.  Their sensory intake and processing becomes more acute.
4.  Sensory play is really part of the scientific process.  Whether out loud or within the internal dialogue of the mind, children have developed a question, leading them to investigate- by grabbing, smelling, listening, rubbing, staring, licking , what have you!  They are using their senses to collect data and from that, attempt to answer their own questions.
 

Here is your first of many sensory activities to use in your classroom!!

Halloween Sensory Tub
Black beans or black pom poms
Plastic skeletons (3) (Dollar store)
Foam shapes/letters (Dollar store)
Plastic pumpkins (Dollar store)
Scoops or tongs
Plastic suction cup spiders or spider rings (Dollar store)
Plastic mini light covers
Plastic candy corn
Trick or Treat bags

Activities:

1. Simply play with the materials.
2. Use with counting cards.
3. Add letters on pumpkin/ghost shapes and invite the student to find letters.
4. Add Halloween words and invite students to find them and read them.
5. Add a sheet with pictures of the itmes in the tub. Students can match objects to the pictures, 
6. Add containers or small tubs and invite students to sort the objects (by color, size, shape, etc.)


The possibilities are endless and children LOVE it!! Plus they are learning!!