Need quick and easy edible sand? Or a fun, phonics bin for your child to play with this week? Stay tuned for what we did during our Under the Sea week!
I LOVE sensory bins! When I set one up my daughter will play with them on and off throughout the week. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to entertain your child, I recommend trying some sensory bins!
This seashell and edible sand phonics sensory bin was a big hit with my daughter! She loved manipulating the edible sand and playing with the seashells.
Benefits
In addition to entertaining my child, this sensory bin also worked on her scooping skills! Mastering scooping is great for kids because it not only requires them to have good fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, but it’s also a good crossing the midline activity! When a child masters a skill like scooping, it increases their confidence and makes them more independent.
The phonics aspect of this activity is a great way to expand your child’s vocabulary (by introducing them to new animals), and reinforce letter sounds!
Now, onto the fun stuff!
How to make edible sand
If you are here just to find out how to make edible sand, this is your part! If you want the steps for the full Seashell Phonics Bin, start here and stay tuned till the end!
The making of the edible sand is super easy! All you need to do is toss some cereal in a blender.
When I was doing this I used a little spatula to scoot the sides in. This helped ensure there were no lumps in the sand!
Supplies:
- Cereal
- Blender
Steps:
- Add cereal to the blender.
- Blend
Sea Animal Paper Plates
The phonics part of this activity does require you to also pre make some sea animal paper plates.
Supplies:
- Paper plates
- Sea animal pictures
To do this, I printed some ocean animal pictures I found online. I would recommend choosing 2 – 4. If you have too many the whole thing gets messier than it needs to be.
Once you have the pictures cut out, you can glue them to the paper plates! From here, I let my daughter color them.
This added some extra independent play time and handwriting practice, which I’m all about!
To pair with the paper plates, you will want to write letters on some sea shells. I used both uppercase and lowercase letters for this part. If your child is still learning the alphabet feel free to use just uppercase or lowercase, rather than both.
I also focused on just the letters for the ocean animals I used. Not only does this make the bin less cluttered, but it also means I don’t have to explain to my daughter that the letter Z doesn’t have a plate to sit on. Little things like this tend to derail any learning we are working on.
You will want to be careful not to include too many seashells. I did 2 or 3 seashells per animal to avoid overfilling the sensory bin and overwhelming my kid.
Seashell and Edible Sand Phonics Sensory Bin
Now that you have pre made those two parts, you can actually put together the full sensory bin!
With all of my sensory bins I recommend putting a blanket down before giving the activity to your child. I have found that doing this makes clean up a lot easier and it minimizes how frequently I need to vacuum.
Supplies:
- Edible sand
- Sea animal paper plates
- Seashells with letters
- Bin
- Spoons
- Tongs
- Small bowls
Now, you can give this bin to your child and let them play as they want. When my daughter does this she usually makes a pizza or cake or something on the paper plates.
If you are wanting to make this a phonics activity, you will want to walk your child through the following steps.
- Lay out the sea animal paper plates so your child can see all of them. Talk about the animal names and the letters they start with.
If your child is new to letter sounds, simply say, “Turtle starts with the letter T!” Maybe do a few T sounds before moving on.
If your child is familiar with letter sounds, let them figure out the letter! “This is a turtle. T T Turtle. What letter do you think Turtle starts with?” If your child is new to this activity you may need to repeat the beginning of the word a few times or even give them the answer to help them connect the dots. If you keep practicing this with them, they will eventually start jumping to the answer themselves.
- Point out how to use the tongs to pick up the seashells. This is a great fine motor skill activity! Doing stuff like this is a great way to strengthen your kid’s fingers before they start writing or using scissors!
- Show your child the letters on the seashells and discuss the sounds they make!
- Ask your child where each seashell should go. “Do you think the T goes with the Turtle? Because turtle starts with T!”
If you keep walking your child through this activity they will start getting through it quicker each time and become more familiar with the letter sounds and the animals.
What do you think? Was there anything that you added for extra fun?