I don’t know about you, but I love weaving seasonal and holiday fun into all of our learning activities at home. From picture books to unit studies, incorporating each new season just adds a little extra special touch to our school time. So today I want to share our Thanksgiving Preschool bins for those of you with children who are ready for some more academic activities!
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Thanksgiving Theme Sensory Bin
One of the easiest ways to add excitement and hands-on learning to your preschool week is with a themed sensory bin. Since the activities in our Thanksgiving Preschool bins incorporate a sensory bin, so it’s best to knock out the preparation early on! Our Fall sensory bin is always a hit—it’s simple to put together and offers tons of playful learning opportunities! Here’s how I like to set ours up!
FIRST, gather your materials. I like to use a plastic storage bin with a lid so I can cover and store the bin once it’s prepared. Choose your filler, like the dry oats we use in ours. Something about the oats really makes all the Fall colors in our Thanksgiving bins POP and gives children a very unique texture to experience. Once you’ve chosen your filler, fill your storage bin as much as you feel comfortable with (knowing each individual child can handle working with different amounts of materials).
NEXT, grab some extra Fall themed items like plastic apples and pumpkins, faux leaves, colorful pompoms, etc. These items make the perfect backdrop for the printable items in our preschool Fall pack! Scatter them throughout your sensory bin filler and watch the theme really come to life!
FINALLY, choose a space that you feel comfortable using the sensory bin with your child. I tuck ours away in our homeschool room with the rest of our Preschool manipulatives, and keep our sensory bin blanket nearby for when it’s time to get to work. The rule with our bins – everything stays on the blanket! This makes clean up SO much easier.
READY, SET, PLAY!!! When your sensory bin is not being used for the printable activities in our Thanksgiving Preschool bins, allow children to explore freely! Watch them scoop, pour, dig, and more! I love taking our bin our when I need a little extra quiet time for homeschooling an older child, or honestly if I just need an extra minute to sip my hot coffee!
Math Thanksgiving Preschool Bins
Academic sensory bins are one of my favorite ways to combine important Math and Literacy skills with another important skill – fine motor strength! In our world of screens, and it’s so important for us to make sure we are giving our children as many chances as possible to work on these skills and not expect them to just come about naturally. So combining them with academics is just one way to sneak them in!
Our set of Thanksgiving Preschool bins covers 3 Math skills – counting, shapes and colors. To use the activities, children choose cards from their sensory bins and identify what’s on them. Then, they will find and cover the correct match on their recording sheet! All of these activities are important for Preschool children to practice and are easily differentiated based on their skill level.
One of my favorite things about our Preschool bins is that each activity can be used in TWO ways! You saw the first above, and the second is this – matching mats! To use this way, children choose cards from their sensory bin and identify what’s on the card. (It may be shapes, counting, or colors.) Then, they place the cards on their matches until the whole mat is covered!
Literacy Thanksgiving Preschool Bins
Our set of Thanksgiving Preschool bins also includes 3 Literacy activities. During the Preschool years, I try to keep Literacy simple by focusing on letter names, upper and lower case letters, alphabetical order, and some beginning sounds. They will have plenty of time to practice combining the letters to build words as they move into TK and Kindergarten, so slowly mastering the letter names and sounds in the PreK days is a great way to get them ready at a comfortable pace!
Just like our Math Thanksgiving Preschool bins, our literacy bins can be used in TWO different ways. Not only does this extend the amount of times you can use each sensory bin over the month, it also allows you to differentiate the activities based on your children’s needs!
Let’s hang out!
I hope this post helped you get a better look at our Thanksgiving Preschool bins! Got questions? Let me know! I’d love to chat and get to know you better! You can find us below in some of our favorite places to hang out. Can’t wait to chat with you about your Preschooler’s learning journey!
SAVE THIS POST FOR LATER!
Was this post about our Thanksgiving Preschool bins helpful? Make sure you can come back to this post as much as you need by saving it for later on Pinterest! Click the image below to save this pin to your Thanksgiving Preschool Activities board! Then, CLICK HERE to read about more of our favorite November activities!
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