Snowy Day Winter Sensory Table

Last Updated on January 19, 2022 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: Put together a winter sensory table that involves lots of scooping and pouring, strengthening those little hands to get them ready for writing!

Scooping a pouring is a favorite with 2 and 3 year olds and is important for building fine motor skills.

Gather accessories with different textures, along with pom poms, scoops and cups, and invite your children to explore.

Add some snowflakes to give it an extra winter feeling.

A nice addition to the snow and ice theme!

Fun Winter Sensory Table for Preschoolers

What you put in your winter sensory table can vary from what we used. What really made it was the pom poms, as the children loved scooping and pouring them. Make sure to also include some containers that the pom poms can go into!

What we used:

• White pom poms
• Blue pom poms
• Snowflakes
• Snow confetti
• Ice shaped containers.
• Jars with lids
• Scoops and cups

I also added some silvery tea lights which were a huge hit!

Here’s Another Winter Sensory Bin We Enjoyed!

In our preschool, all the teachers from each classroom share materials.

After many years of frustration, we put together a system that works so well.

We put together theme boxes so we could easily store related items in one spot.

(You can see the video here, and the blog post here.)

So, when I created this winter sensory table, I retrieved the box to see what we already had.

Just about everything you see in the photos we already had. I only needed to purchase some extra snowflake confetti pieces.

Then, I have a bin where I keep all our fine motor tools, such as scoops and tongs.

I make sure to have these type of tools in each of my sensory tables as it’s important to give the children an opportunity to transfer the materials.

CLICK HERE to see our entire collection of year-round sensory tables!

These plastic scoops are probably used the most. You can get them in different sizes and they are pretty durable! (None of ours have broken yet, and we’ve used them for years.)

If you prefer, you can get stainless steel scoops or wood scoops.

Note: These are also a great thrift store find!

I make sure to have plenty in the bin because we often have multiple children exploring together during centers time.

Another important piece? Cups and containers.

After scooping the materials, young children love to then pour them into something.

I happened to find some small silver party cups that worked well with the winter theme.

And, of course, they fill it to the very top, often overloading.

In our winter theme box was a plastic snowman jar with a lid. I just knew from past experience that this would be a huge hit.

Any container is that much better if there’s a lid to place on top!

I also found some fun plastic snowflake dishes from the dollar store several years ago. These have also been used on the light table, the science table, and the art table! (We get lots of use out of what we already have, that’s for sure!)

The finishing touch was adding the flicker tea lights. I did not plan on them fitting into the paper cups. That was a happy accident that the children quickly figured out.

They enjoyed placing one candle in each cup – 1:1 correspondence!

What I also love to focus on is adding different textures to my sensory tables.

Some of the pieces are rough, some soft, some hard, some smooth.

A delight for the hands as they move the pieces around!

Combine this winter sensory table with these activities:

Color Recognition: Colored Mitten Matching and Sorting (Free Printable)

Circle Time: Snowflake Props (Free Printable)

Books: Favorite Winter Books

Songs: Favorite Winter Songs

Math: Icicle Count and Clip Activity (Free Printable)

Art: Snowflakes

Cooking: Snowflake Cookies