St. Patrick’s Day is just a couple weeks away! To start getting in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit, I put together this really simple St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin using just two materials: split peas and gold coins!
It turned out looking really festive, and the materials were super affordable! Plus, the kiddos loved it! Wins all around!
Keep reading to find out how to use this sensory bin in educational ways as well!
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Materials Needed:
- Split Peas (link for Amazon, but I find that Target has very affordable split peas!)
- Gold Coins
- Sensory Bin (Another Target find! it’s actually a serving platter for chips/veggies and dip, but it works so well for sensory activities!)
- Dot stickers (optional)
How to Use St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bin
Open Ended Free Play
Firstly, this sensory bin can be used as an open-ended sensory bin.
For this, I just poured the split peas into the large circular bin, and then put the gold coins into the smaller bin and gave them to my boys to play with.
Alphabet Letter Practice
Another way this sensory bin can be used is for alphabet practice. There are several ways to do this.
Alphabetical Order
One way would be to label the gold coins with a letter in the alphabet. The objective of this exercise is to find all the gold coins and then put them in alphabetical order.
Capital and Lower-Case Matching Letters
This option is similar to this activity we did for Valentine’s Day. Another option would be to choose a few letters (for example A through E) and then labeling the gold coins with both the capital and lower-case letters for those letters.
Hide the coins throughout the split peas and then get your kiddos to find the matching coins!
Letter Tracing
Another similar twist to this activity would be to label the coins with the letters of the alphabet. And placing them throughout the split peas sensory bin. Once your child finds a letter, get them to either write the letter or trace the letter using a letter worksheet, or using this awesome letter tracing board.
We got this for our 4 year old for his birthday, and I’m so impressed with the quality! Both my boys love using this board! I highly recommend it!
For a fun sensory element, instead of just tracing using the wooden stick, your child could also use the split peas to fill the grooves of the tracing board and creating letters that way.
To practice letter recognition, I plan on hiding coins with capital letters, and getting my 4 year old to trace the corresponding lower-case letter.
Number Practice
As with the alphabet letter practice ideas above, this sensory bin can also be used for number practice. Label the gold coins with numbers, hide them in the split peas, and once your child finds them, get them to place the numbers in order! Super simple, yet really great number practice!
Other Sensory Bin Ideas
For this activity, I think split peas were the easiest green material to use for this sensory bin. However, if you can’t find split peas, you could dye some rice green to use in place of the split peas. Or you could also use spaghetti noodles as well.
To dye rice all you need are:
- 1 cup rice
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- food coloring (super pigmented!)
- ziploc bag
Place rice, vinegar, and food coloring into the ziploc bag and shake it up! Once it’s thoroughly mixed, place onto a sheet of parchment paper or tray and let it dry completely (which should take about 15 minutes).
For all the details on dying rice, check out my Rainbow Rice post here. And how to color spaghetti noodles for a taste safe sensory bin, make sure to check out my Rainbow Spaghetti post here!
St. Patrick’s Day Activity Ideas
I hope you try out this super easy and simple St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin! I have another super simple and adorable St. Patrick’s Day craft that I highly recommend you check out. And here are some of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day books that I’m sure your kids will love as well!
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