Simple St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Sensory Bin

Rainbows and pots of gold – oh my! My 2 1/2 year old loves this Simple St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Sensory Bin just as much as he did last year, and it’s easy to make + easy clean up. Use it alongside a fun St. Patrick’s Day book to add a literary element to this holiday. Or plan an easy leprechaun scavenger hunt to go along with this sensory bin.

How to Make a Rainbow Sensory Bin

Gather your materials. I found almost all of these at the dollar store or on Amazon, so they’re easy to locate.

What’s in it:
– cotton balls
– colored dinosaur counters (Learning Resources)
– gold coins (Dollar Tree)
– rainbow cups (Lovevery – but you can find similar anywhere)
– jumbo rainbow tongs (Skoolzy on Amazon)
– cauldron/pot for old coins (Dollar Tree)

Fill a bin with cotton balls (clouds). Sprinkle colored dino/bear counters over the top and hide the gold coins throughout the bin. If your little is closer to 2, I recommend leaving coins sticking out a bit so they can see them. If they’re closer to 3+, hide the coins completely so they have to go digging for them.

SET up the rainbow cups – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple to match the counters – and put a set of rainbow tongs in each cup. You can also just have one or two sets of tongs out.

FIRST I recommend letting your child just play and explore. No rules, no suggestions. Just tongs, cups and the cloud bin with coins and counters.

LATER show them how you can use the tongs to put the colored dinos into their matching cups and the coins into the pot of gold. Challenge them to see if they can rescue all the dinosaurs and put them into their colored cups and collect all the gold coins too.

3 Ways to Use the Rainbow Sensory Bin (Aside From Free Play)

Color Identification

As your child sorts the dinosaurs into cups, have them name the colors to practice color id.

Counting

The first time, put the same number of dinosaurs of each color in the bin; let’s say 5. Then have your child find all 5 of each color and sort them.

The second time, put different numbers of each color – 1 through 5 – and then have them rescue, sort, count and put the colors in numerical order.

Race

Have two kids or kid + adult race to see who can collect the most dinosaurs in their cup in 1 minute. Then dump the dinosaurs back in and play again.

We don’t do much for St. Patrick’s Day, but this is easy and it just feels so bright and springy 🍀 Our toddler loves this, and our kindergartener loves to make leprechaun traps.

Looking For More Sensory Bins?

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