Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Sensory Bins II

We have recently been reading a lot of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Benny loves this book, we read it over and over again.  I think it is a great book for toddlers because it is so colorful and fun, teaches about caterpillars and butterflies, and helps kids learn counting.  I decided to make a sensory bin based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
The purpose of this sensory bin is to help develope his sorting and categorizing skills.  The bin is full of play fruit and little caterpillars that I made with little pom poms.  At this point, I just want him to separate the caterpillars from the fruit.  Later, we will work on sorting the caterpillars by color and putting them in the bin with the matching butterfly.  (The butterflies are made by cutting a butterfly shape out of matching felt and gluing pom poms to the front.  I then glued a wooden clothes pin on the back so it could be attached to a little bowl.)  As he progresses, we can work on using tweezers or tongs to pick up the caterpillars to develope fine motor skills.

My son loves playing with the fruit and caterpillars.  Sorting is not something that he understands right away.  I believe that using sensory bins is a gradual process.  Keep it up and they will learn the skills you are trying to teach.  This is a good way to let him play with a purpose.