Preschool Autumn Sensory Bin

Inside: It’s easy to create a preschool autumn sensory bin with fall colors. Combine leaves, pom poms, pinecones, and other materials along with color sorting bowls for hands-on learning fun!

Invite your preschoolers to explore their senses with this autumn sensory bin!

We’ve combined a variety of materials that are different textures, such as pinecones, leaves, feathers, pretend pumpkins, pom poms, and more.

Want to work on color recognition skills at the same time?

We added color sorting bowls so the children could sort the pieces and place them in the matching bowls.

Fine motor skills are also strengthened with tongs and tweezers.

You will love adding this sensory bin to your fall theme!

The sensory bin is an every day activity in our classroom.

It’s a favorite during our free-choice centers time!

The sensory bin works on many different skills through play, including:

• Fine motor
• Sensory
• Color recognition
• Communication
• Sharing

Check out what we’ve put in our sensory bin over the years:

Big Collection of Sensory Table Activities 

Preschool Autumn Sensory Bin

What we used:

• Pom poms
• Feathers
• Pinecones (assorted sizes)
• Artificial pumpkins
• Artificial leaves 
• Bug tongs
• Tweezers
• Sorting bowls

Take a look at what you already have. This sensory bin can easily be adapted with a few different pieces!

Setting Up This Autumn Sensory Bin

One of the many reasons I love the sensory bin is because it’s so easy to put together.

No need to fuss about where every piece goes. Everything’s going to be moved around anyways!

So, once you’ve gathered all your materials, dump them into your bin.

That simple!

Invitation to Play

Another reason I love sensory bins? No directions are needed. Our preschoolers figure out pretty quickly how to use the materials.

Sometimes I will assist a child who might need help with one of the fine motor tools – such as the tweezers – but that’s it.

Many times they will find their own ways to use the materials, too.

For example, one of our preschoolers thought to poke the pom poms into the pinecone shown in the photo below.

Then, the pom poms could be pulled out using the tweezers!

Color Sorting

The color sorting bowls encourage preschoolers to find matching colored pieces.

When our preschoolers found the match, they’d toss the items into the bowls.

Fine Motor

I add fine motor tools to many of our sensory bins because there are so many opportunities to pick things up and move them around.

Some examples:

• Tiny Cups (Rice and Funnels Bin)
• Measuring Cups (Rice Apple Sensory Bin)
• Scoops (Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin)
• Tongs (Too Many Carrots Sensory Bin)
• Tweezers (Apple Sensory Bin)
• Nets (Ocean Sensory Bin)
• Bug Tongs (Color Sorting Water Bin)

You can also add tools for motion, and that works fine motor skills as well.

An example is scrub brushes in our fruits and vegetables water play activity.

In this autumn sensory bin I added tweezers and the children enjoyed picking up the leaves and placing them in the sorting bowls.

So much learning through play, right?

A fun way to build skills in the fall!

More Fall Activities

Leaf Painting in a Bag

Spider Web Art Activity

Apple Paint and Wash