Earth Day Math Sensory Bin That’s Quick and Easy to Set Up

An engaging and easy Earth Day math sensory bin for kids. They can explore sensory play while working on their number skills.

Earth Day is a great time to talk with children about a variety of topics. For preschoolers, I tend to focus on using materials again in new ways, taking care of our homes and neighborhoods, and other concrete concepts they’re able to grasp.

It’s also a great time to plan for a space theme, especially if the kiddos are enamored with outer space and the planets. This simple Earth math sensory bin would work well around Earth Day, during a planned space theme, or just because.

Are you following Fun-A-Day’s SPACE THEME Pinterest board?

Preschool Math for an Earth Theme

Materials
Rice
Liquid watercolors (or food coloring)
Leftover plastic Easter eggs (green and blue)
Marbles (green and blue)
Plastic condiment cups

Prepping the Earth Day math sensory bin

I already had blue rice from previous sensory play, like this weather bin. I didn’t have green, though, and I wanted the base of the sensory bin to be Earth colors. So I put some rice in a bag, added a few squirts of green liquid watercolor, shook it all up, and voila . . . green rice! I set it in a pan to dry for a little while before using it.

While the green rice was drying, I grabbed some leftover plastic Easter eggs. I tend to have a stash of these both at school and in my craft closet at home. Using a black permanent marker, I wrote the numbers 1 through 10 on individual eggs, both on the top half and the bottom half.

I used the same marker to write numbers 1 through 20 on some condiment cups that I have. I love how this Earth-themed bin includes some recyables!

Setting Everything Up

I placed the blue and green rice as a base in a sensory basket. I have to admit that I attempted to make it look like water and land at first. But then I knocked into the basket and messed it up! 🙂 No biggie!

Next, the Easter eggs were added to the basket. I broke the pieces apart and placed them randomly in the bins.

I added marbles to the bin. In my mind, the marbles were indicative of little Earths since they’re spherical and blue/green!

The condiment cups were placed to the side of the bin.

How to Use the Earth Day Math Sensory Bin

Once everything’s set up, invite the kiddos over to explore the sensory bin and delve into some preschool math!

The children can use the eggs and condiment cups for scooping and pouring, along with their hands. The cups are great for filling and stacking, too!

The numbers on the eggs can be matched up and assembled. Take that a step further and have the children add the correct number of marbles inside each assembled egg. Illustrate addition by placing marbles into each side of the egg and combining them. Once all of the eggs are assembled, the kiddos can order them from 1 to 10.

Use the condiment cups to extend the counting and one-to-one correspondence up to 20 (or beyond)! Remove the odd number cups and just focus on the even numbers. Then have the children work on skip-counting by 2s up to 20.

What are the Kids Learning with this Math Sensory Bin?

Here are some early math concepts touched on with this Earth Day math bin:

• Counting (and skip counting)
• Number identification
• One-to-one correspondence
• Measuring
• Addition

What would your kiddos think of this math sensory play?

Preschool Earth Day Lesson Plans

Save time and get right to the teaching with done-for-you Earth Day lesson plans for preschool. It comes with printable lesson plans, hands-on preschool activities (for whole group, small group, and center time), book suggestions, and related printables.

Grab your Earth Day lesson plans

Also available on Teachers Pay Teachers

ABCs and 123s eBook

I absolutely adore this eBook. Yes, I’m a little biased since I worked together with other parents and teachers to create it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t amazing in its own right, of course! ABCs and 123s is full of 40+ kids’ hands-on activities for learning the alphabet and numbers. Each activity is kid-approved and geared towards children ages 2 to 8. Read more about the eBook now.