Summer is right around the corner and we are loving our current sensory bins! Most of these items were purchased at the Dollar Tree so these May bins are inexpensive, fun, and a great learning experience for toddlers. Here are five sensory bins for the month of May.

Gardening Sensory Bin

For the base we are using black beans but you can also use sand, lentil beans, or other types of beans too. I just like how the flowers pop with the black beans. Secondly, the flowers are from the Dollar Tree.

Insect Sensory Bin

The base for this sensory bin is dried oats. I like to provide different bases each month so that the variety of sensory bins provided feel, smell, and look different. I do this to provide different learning opportunities. We bought a back of insects from Amazon and put a variety of bugs in the oats. We discussed what makes an insect and insect, we identify each bug by name, we compare size and color too. These are great learning opportunities to expand vocabulary and learn about bugs.

Taste Safe Mud Bin

This bin is so fun! It is perfect for one-year-olds and even babies too. It’s completely taste safe and simple to construct. Also, this bin smells so good but the taste isn’t the best. I found the recipe here. We used animals in our bin but you can use trucks for digging, insects, or anything else that can play in the dirt. This kept my little learner busy for hours. After the animals played in the dirt she gave them all a bath too. Which is a great sensory addition to this bin. The bathing part also kept her busy which was great for our snowy day! Click here for the editable mud recipe!

Rubber Ducks

We live near a lake and ducks are everywhere! My little one absolutely loves ducks, which inspired us for this bin! We used a bag of mini marshmallows, rubber duck bath toys, and other toys of animals found in lakes like turtles! She played in this bin for a while and definitely snacked too.  

Try these out this month and let me know how it goes!