I love the beautiful colors of autumn and its a perfect concept for building a theme based sensory tub.  Themed based sensory experiences have endless options.

 

Creating themed sensory tubs is fun and inspiring. These tubs can represent seasons, holidays, colors, and special events. In addition, themed sensory tubs are a wonderful way to enhance your early childhood curriculum. This enhancement is designed by creating a sensory experience which correlates with the book you are reading, a science unit, math concepts, and even writing activities.

 

Creating seasonal tubs is a wonderful way to enhance the learning of what each season is about. Elements of the products, feel, and even smell of the season can be incorporated. These are educational and will only come about during that special season and help children learn, understand, and fully experience the meaning of each season.

 

Seasonal sensory tubs are fun and easy. Simply create a base with the seasonal color in mind and add a variety of pieces from the season. These pieces can be from your own yard, the seasonal collections kept in your closet, or newly purchased items. You can find seasonal pieces very inexpensively packaged together in bags at discount stores. These packages are usually in the seasonal isle but may also be found with party favors and party supplies. Finding treasures and creating the sensory tub is a lot of fun!

 

Use sensory tubs to enhance literacy, spark creativity and imagination, and enhance children’s appreciation of books and reading. Choose the book that you are reading for the day, or even a set of books on the same subject for extending your sensory tub over a period of time. An example would be a week-long study on farm animals which would include creating a farm animal sensory bin to be available and experienced while you are reading books on this topic. Take animals, concepts, and even details from individual stories to build the pieces for your sensory experience. Do you need a play barn? Include a bucket that was in one of the stories for gathering milk from the cow. Add animal replicas, an apple tree and pretend apples for picking on the farm?

 

 

You can even include the children in creating the sensory tub. Provide a base tub with foundation material and a few items, and ask what might go into it based on the book that you are reading. Then slowly build the tub with each book. Children could even bring items from home or their own backyard to build the tub’s contents. Now you have incorporated even more learning by including reading with meaning, facts from the story, thinking, analysis, and creativity that is brought when the children are allowed to play.

 

The examples provided in this book are for getting started and sparking your own ideas; your only limitation is your imagination. Just as with each sensory tub experience, select an appropriate base, readily available items, and build your tub. Add in tools or supplies which allow children to more fully delve into the experience. An example would be to include a basket to pick up leaves, tweezers, and a small plastic magnifying glass to observe realistic insect figures.

 

You can find many more activities in the book which is available at Amazon.com. Direct links to all of the books are on the page labeled “Dr. Andrea’s Books.”