If you’re a regular reader of Fun-A-Day, you know how much I love sensory activities for kids. Since I have a very limited budget for sensory materials, I’m a bit meticulous about storing old bins. I also tend to reuse materials for multiple activities. In that vein, here are two super easy Halloween sensory bins to put together, both of which have the same base of “tiny pumpkins”.
Sensory Activities for Kids – Pumpkin Patch Fun
Related: Halloween Activities for Preschoolers
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Additional Materials
Acrylic pumpkin table scatter
Farm Animals TOOB
Baby Farm Animals TOOB
Montessori pitchers – glass and metal
Plastic bottles with caps
Small tin pails
How the Kids Played
Most of the children started out placing “tiny pumpkins” into various pitchers, bottles, and pails. Twodaloo’s apple sensory play inspired me to add the metal Montessori pitchers, and I’m glad I did. The kiddos loved the differently shaped containers, as well as the different sounds those containers created when coupled with the dyed chickpeas. They loved transferring the materials back and forth . . . filling and dumping, filling and dumping!
Some of the children decided to see how many handfuls of chickpeas it would take to fill the different containers. I’m not sure that they ever came up with a definite conclusion, though! They kept giggling and talking over each other, which always seemed to make them lose count. 🙂
Our acrylic pumpkins were over in our science area, but the children knew they wanted a “real pumpkin patch”. So off they went to add more elements to the bin. They then had the farm animals plant and harvest the pumpkins many, many times. From there, the animals sorted and counted the pumpkins (and there were a few arguments over who had which pumpkins).
I loved seeing where the students took this simple sensory bin. They ended up turning this into a farmer’s pumpkin patch bin, and they integrated so much pretend play!
Sensory Activities for Kids – Spooky Halloween Bin
Related: Everything You Need to Know About Mini Erasers
Additional Materials
Plastic eyeballs
Halloween erasers
Plastic Halloween cauldrons
Kid tweezers
How the Kids Played
First of all, I can’t really claim any credit for this particular bin. The children have been in love with our “tiny pumpkins”, so they’ve starred in many sensory bins this month. I was cleaning up the previous activity when multiple children said they wanted to keep the “tiny pumpkins that smell so good ’cause of that spice stuff.” So I asked them what kind of sensory fun they wanted to have out next. The response was “a super spooky Halloween one!”
Apparently, they’d spied some of my sensory bin storage under the sink on the messy room. One of the storage containers is devoted to Halloween materials that I’ve used in the past – for sensory play, math, fine motor, etc. They’d seen it the other week when I was putting some materials away and remembered the “funny eyeballs and things in there.” So the children gleefully grabbed plastic eyeballs, little cauldrons, and erasers to add to the orange chickpeas.
This bin was even more amusing to me than the last one! They pretended to trick-or-treat. They were witches creating “stew, or wait . . . is it brew?” They pretended to be ghosts with big eyeballs that loved saying, “oooooooooooh” all night long. The pretend play scenarios were almost never-ending, and I could barely keep up with the conversations!
Needless to say, these two Halloween sensory bins were a huge hit! So much learning took place, too – did you see it?! Fine motor skills, counting, estimating, exploration of the senses of touch and smell, tons of language skills, etc. All with some colored chickpeas, pumpkin pie scent, and toys I’ve had for some time!
Do you have any Halloween sensory activities for kids that you’d like to share? Would your children/students enjoy these two? I’d love to hear more in the comments below!
Done-for-You Preschool Resources
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How much dried chickpeas did you use?
Hi Kerri! I used about 4 bags of chickpeas for the bin, but you can use as much or as little as you’d like to.