My son, as many toddlers his age, is currently into all things animals! For this reason, we decided to create an F is for Farm sensory bin. As you will see, we added some sorting and more fun learning activities to spice things up. And, all the fillings we used inside our ‘farm’ are edible! Yum!
The base we used for farm sensory bin are mostly cereals we had at home. We listed what we used but you can simply use whichever type you have at home.
Materials for farm sensory bin
Here is what we used to set up our farm sensory bin:
- several different types of cereals
- Kit-Kat chocolate
- plastic farm animal mini figurines
How to set us farm sensory bin?
I looked in our breakfast cereal cupboard to see what items I could use. I filled our usual green sensory bin with Multi Grain Hoop cereal, Alpha-Bits and Malt Wheat cereal. To separate the fields, I used Kit-Kat chocolate biscuits which I obviously had to eat pieces off to get them to fit!
I then raided my sons toy basket to find any sheep, cows, pigs, horses and farm workers. We had a selection of plastic and wooden toys from different play sets. These were placed on the table along with a farm house and the sensory bin.
Our suggestion if you don’t have a farm house is to pick one of these:
- Fisher Price Little People Farm (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom), or
- Battat Big Red Barn (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom).
Let’s play and farm!
The object of the activity was to see if my son could sort the farm animals and place them into the correct field. He placed each of the animals into a field and then spent time placing each animal where it belonged. The farm workers were placed into the farm house.
I am surprised that the poor animals had any field left. My son kept nibbling on the different cereals throughout their play. Each animal placed into the sensory bin obviously had to be celebrated with a handful of cereal!
The activity created lots of discussion about where animals live, how farmers take care of animals and what animals eat. My son wanted to make each animal noise and created a mini role play scenario where the animals were talking to each other.
Once the animals were in their correct field my son decided to remove the farm animals and repeat the activity again. He wanted to see if he could complete the activity quicker – which he did.
Extend the play with a book
Read all about the animals found on a farm, such as cows and chicks, and other fascinating objects like tractors and wheat! Not too big and not too small, this sturdy, padded sensory book is just the right size for little hands to hold. Baby Touch and Feel: Farm is an interactive and fun way to help your child learn not only words but shapes and textures too. Bold, bright pictures and colorful animal-inspired illustrations will be more than enough to keep your baby’s attention. Find Baby Touch and Feel: Farm by DK here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
Little farmers will love putting on their overalls and heading to work alongside rumbling tractors, giant plows, speedy cornhuskers, and more! Full of colorful vehicles and friendly faces, farm life has never been so much fun! So many things to look at on each page. Art work (as is always the case with Richard Scary’s books) is wonderful. Find Busy Busy Farm by Richard Scary here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
Other sensory play ideas you can try!
So far our A-Z Sensory Play series has seen us play with Apple Scented Rice, Bird Seed, Corn, Dinosaur Chocolate Mud and Eye Icy Monsters. I wonder where the rest of the series will take us!
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