Christmas Tree Sensory Bin

Do you sing Christmas carols with your kids? Somehow, it turned out that I gave birth to two dancing and singing little girls! And it’s awesome! I can hear them humming songs all day long! 🙂 One starts and then the other takes over. It’s fun! And Christmas season is a dream come true for them. So many amazing Christmas songs and carols to sing as we do our Christmas activities and countdown days up to Christmas eve!

For today, I prepared them a simple rice based Christmas tree sensory bin to play along as we sing one of our favorite carols O Christmas Tree.

I like to keep things simple and I added into sensory bin white rice on the bottom (to pretend to be snow) and Christmas tree shaped box was laid on the rice (similar Christmas trinket box).

In a deeper part of the tree-shaped box, I placed tiny red ball ornaments, small jingle bells and little fabric stars I found in Dollar Tree Shop few years back (we used same stars last year for our Blank Christmas Cards Advent Calendar).

Then I spread green rice over them to cover them completely! On a shallower part of the tree-shaped box, I placed a variety of buttons in different shapes and textures. I also decided to add few pipe cleaners inside for threading!

Always a good thing to have something to work on fine motor skills!

You can see on the picture above the before and after how our Christmas tree sensory bin was set up. It was ready and waiting for kids to come back from kindergarten and school. The moment they came home, they noticed the bin waiting for them on the table.

My younger dipped in the green rice and felt something underneath. It was fun watching them search through rice and finding little ornaments, stars and jingle bells. Both were so engaged into a quest to get it all out!

The hardest to find were little fabric stars because they were flat and on the bottom. Still, they kept searching and getting them out until they were sure there was nothing left inside the tree box except the rice.

At this point, older daughter decided she had enough and went on working on her homework. Little one took the pipe cleaner and began threading jingle bells and ornaments on pipe cleaner. She brought them to me and I shaped a little bracelet for her. She continued to thread bells and ornaments on other pipe cleaners while bells were ringing on her wrist as she moved her hand. She even danced a little with them! 🙂

As usual, I didn’t get the best quality picture of her threading the bells and ornaments. It’s so hard to get them to keep still! 🙂 Especially if they are having fun with something.

Little one continued to play with the sensory bin for another hour – sorting ornaments, making shapes with buttons on the floor, putting everything back into the deeper box and covering with rice. I added wooden thongs for her to use to pick them back out of the box and to work on her fine motor skills a bit more. Overall, this was a completely successful day and girls enjoyed it a lot!

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If you’re looking for other fun Christmas activities to play with kids as you sing Christmas carols, take a look at these fabulous Christmas themed sensory bins and small world plays brought to you by a group of family friendly bloggers! Have fun and Merry Christmas!