Inside: This learning shapes sensory bin combines shredded paper, assorted shapes, and tools to strengthen those fine motor skills. A fun way to learn shape recognition through play!
One of my favorite ways to teach shapes is through hands-on exploration. In fact, teaching preschoolers shapes using the sensory bin is one of my preferences. Our toddlers are exposed to shapes through sensory play, too!
I’ve shared how we’ve taught shape recognition with magnets during small groups.
And we’ve also played shape sorting games during circle time.
We’ve even added shape activities to our art table, such as when we made our own bubble wrap circle stamps.
So of course I had to add shapes to our sensory bin! And this particular activity was so easy to put together and both our toddlers and our preschoolers loved it.
Learning Shapes Sensory Bin
CLICK HERE to see a week’s worth of shape recognition activities!
We started off this shape activity by reading some of our favorite shape books:
We then took a walk around our building, going on a shape hunt. This is a favorite and it’s amazing how many shapes the children will find along the way!
You can use anything small for the filler. We happened to have some yellow shredded paper on our sensory bin shelf, so I used that. Rice and dried beans would work, too.
I also added some tweezers for extra fine motor fun.
I cut out shapes from craft foam and added some containers and heart-shaped scoops.
The children loved scooping up as much as they could, pouring it all into the containers.
This shape bin also helped us with our beginning-of-the-year assessments. I would ask them to put the green squares into the bucket. Or the yellow triangles. Or whatever shape and color I could find in the bin.
Simple and fun, right? While also strengthening shape and color skills!
Bonus! Grab your copy of Basic Shapes for Beginners!
A 79 page hands-on approach to pre-writing strokes for preschoolers. For $8.99 you can download your PDF digital today!
More Shapes Activities
- Learning Shapes at Home
- 25+Shapes Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers
- Setting Up the Classroom for the Shapes and Colors Theme
Are you following my toddler and preschool pin board yet? There are thousands of ideas to check out!
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Where did you purchase the tweezers from that you used in the sensory shape bin?
Hi Cindi! They are from Lakeshore Learning. Our absolute favorite because they have not yet broken, and we’ve had them a few years. So many of our previous ones broke quickly.