Your little learners will have a blast with this black bat sensory bin for Halloween! It’s super quick and easy to set up for your preschool classroom or in your own home.
Often we overthink sensory bins and what to put inside, but the truth is that the simpler the sensory bin, the more fun your kids will have playing and learning.
Halloween Bat Sensory Bin
If you’re new to the sensory bin scene, you can learn all about them here.
Basically, sensory play is open-ended, which means there is not a pre-determined outcome of playing with or exploring the materials inside the bin.
Children use their senses and creativity to explore the materials offered in a sensory bin on their own without the expectation of an end product.
Young children learn best when they can touch and feel something, sensory play provides opportunities for children to learn in meaningful ways.
Halloween Bat Sensory Bin Materials
To set up this fun and festive sensory bin experience, first you’ll want to gather your materials. Almost everything on the list below is easy to source, the only thing you might have to search for are the mini plastic cauldrons. Many dollar stores will stock the mini cauldrons around Halloween and again around St. Patrick’s Day.
Check out this research-based, playful learning unit in our curriculum shop!
Halloween Bundle
The Halloween Bundle includes 16 of our most popular preschool resources, including math and literacy small group activities, fine motor...
- White Rice
- Tweezers (Gator Grabbers)
- Liquid Watercolors (Orange and Black)
- Mini Cauldrons (Dollar Store)
- Bowtie Pasta
- Gallon Size Zip Top Freezer Bags
Halloween Bat Sensory Bin Prep
Next, you’ll want to consider how you would like to color your rice. I prefer to use liquid watercolors because you only need one ingredient and the colors are really bright and vibrant. If you don’t mind if the color of your rice is a little more muted, then you can use food coloring and vinegar to dye your rice.
To color the white rice, just pour your rice into a plastic zip top bag and squirt in a good amount of liquid watercolor. Then, zip the bag shut and shake it up vigorously.
Continue adding liquid watercolors and shaking until your rice is the color you desire. When the color is how you like it, you can dump the rice out on a flat surface like a cookie sheet to dry. Be sure to cover your flat surface with paper towels or wax paper to prevent staining the surface.
You can use the exact same steps above to dye your bowtie pasta.
Show your kids how they can use the tweezers to pick up the bats and place them in the cauldrons, this is wonderful for developing fine motor skills.
Invite them to use the tweezers to fill the cauldrons with bats for some added counting and one-to-one practice.
Don’t be discouraged if your kids just play in the rice without counting the bats, they’re still getting plenty of fine motor practice as they manipulate the scoops, tweezers, and bats.
The most important thing about sensory experiences is that your kids are learning through play while having fun!
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