Putting together a frozen sensory bin activity for toddlers and preschoolers is easy and fun! There’s also some science mixed in as the children learn what happens to water when it is placed in below freezing weather and then brought back into a warm room.
For this activity, I filled the sensory table with water and placed it outside. We don’t get snow often here in the Pacific Northwest, but it can get cold enough to freeze water. This was one of those weeks. Because we do many different winter activities, I want them to be as meaningful as possible. We can talk about cold, but do we understand cold? The feeling of cold? We can talk about ice and how it melts, but have we actually experienced it? Explored it? Worked with it? So, it’s important to provide real-life experiences to accompany your ideas, to make it more meaningful for the children.
Frozen Sensory Bin Activity for Toddlers and Preschoolers
What you will need for this preschool winter idea:
- A sensory table or some sort of plastic bin
- Water
- We added arctic animals.
Setting it up:
Fill container with water and place outdoors when it’s below freezing. Once it’s frozen, bring it indoors. Place some sort of mat underneath to catch the water if it drips out of the table. Place the animals on top of the ice, if desired.
Check out our science pin board for more fun!
From our store:
This Winter Science Activities packet is filled with 10 hands-on learning activities that are sure to capture the interest of your little learner. Teach little learners about states of matter, density, chemistry and more with really fun experiments. All the activities come with detailed instructions, material lists, and some experiments include printables. For only $3.00 you can buy it now.
More activities:
Super Simple Ocean Sensory Bin
Construction Sensory Bin with Kinetic Sand
Flower Sensory Bin for Literacy Skills
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This is so cute – I love the ice skating!
I love this! I am finally bringing a sensory table into my classroom next week and I think I am going to start with this idea! I have been going back and forth between the million great ones on the internet, but I think the kids will really get a kick out of this and make some great discoveries 🙂
wow- what a great idea!
I love it too !! thanks for sharing !
I love it when learning opportunities are given to you. You certainly took advantage of a fun learning opportunity with the frozen table. What fun! (and what great learning)
What could be better than such a great idea like this being handed to you, thank you for passing it on to the rest of us 🙂 we have been getting a lot of use from our sensory table lately and I am always looking for new ideas.
Hi I’m your newest follower I love your blog & can’t wait to try out some of your ideas with my daughter! I’d love a follow back @ http://myadventures-in-mommyland.blogspot.com
I love the tubes & turkey baster idea! I will have to freeze my water table for Monday! Great idea.
What a fantastic learning opportunity. Can I suggest, if the cold weather continue that you set up an experiment with different liquids to see which freeze and which don’t 🙂
This is such a neat idea! We’re in Florida so not often cold enough but I love it!!
It never gets that cold here on the California Northern coast but I think I will try a few blocks frozen with items and put them into the tabel and see what the kids do with that. Thanks!! Just started using my tabel inside my house as we are often stuck inside with the rain outside, even in the summer!
OMG, we HAVE To do this!
I am loving this idea! Wishing we had a water table in my pre-k classroom! I have featured your blog and this activity on my blog’s weekly Teacher Spotlight blog post. Please check it out and grab our “Featured On..” button for your blog! You can find my post on http:paulasreadingchair.blogspot.com!