Who doesn’t love a fun, seasonal sensory bin?! I know I do- even if my kids don’t. ;) Just kidding-they always do, too! Sometimes these bins are hard for even me to resist and I just have to join in the fun. Although playing with rice can sometimes be a nightmare to clean up, the good news is you can always bust out a vacuum. We have been laying out a towel underneath our sensory bins so that most of the mess is contained and all I need to do is shake the towel out over the bin and voila! We’ve saved our rice AND cleaned up the mess. Sometimes half the fun of being a kid and playing in a sensory bin is making a little bit of a mess- let it happen!

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As you can see, the main filler for this sensory bin is dyed white rice. Have you dyed rice before? It is so easy and honestly kind of satisfying. Here’s how we dye our rice:

What you’ll need:
1 cup of rice
2 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar
Food coloring of choice
Large Ziploc baggie
Parchment paper or tin foil
Cookie sheet

What you’ll do:
1. Pour 1 cup of rice into large ziploc baggie.
2. Pour 2 tablespoons of vinegar in the baggie on top of the rice.
3. Squeeze a generous amount of food coloring into the baggie all over the rice.
4. Zip the baggie TIGHT (with no air left inside) and shake, mix, etc. until the food coloring covers all the rice in the baggie.
5. Cover the cookie sheet with parchment paper or tin foil and pour the colored rice out onto it to dry.
6. Spread the rice out and let it sit to dry for a couple of hours.

If you want to make more rice, you can just double the rice and the vinegar. For this fall-inspired rice, I did these steps three separate times once with red food coloring, once with yellow, and then once mixing red and yellow to make orange!

I felt like it was missing something to make it more “fall,” so I decided to add some BROWN. I had a mixture of dried/uncooked pinto beans and lentils that we’d played with in the past so I mixed some of that in with the rice and love the way it turned out. Aside from the fall colors, the different textures really added to the bin, too!

I poured the colored rice and bean mixture into a clear plastic storage container and added some small pinecones, fake leaves, and then filled a basket with all sorts of scoops, cups, and other sensory play tools. The cups we’ve been using lately in our sensory bins are from this color sorting bear set, which we also love! These silicone cupcake liners are one of our favorite items to use for sensory play. We have some scoops, some grabbers, and some spoons which are all a must for playing in a bin like this.

So WHAT in the world is so great about sensory play, anyway?! Everything! Sensory play not only gives kiddos new experiences and opportunities to explore their senses and engage in open-ended, imaginative play, but it is also very beneficial for language/vocabulary development, and provides a ton of opportunity for building fine motor and gross motor skills (scooping, pouring, dumping, transferring, etc). A lot of the fun in sensory play comes with a little bit of mess, BUT not all sensory play has to be messy! Check out this post for a super easy, NON-MESSY sensory play option that also works on fine motor skills.

One of the ways we played with this sensory bin was by hiding the leaves in the rice/bean mixture and searching through to find them. Of course once we hid the leaves, we had to try it with the pinecones too. My kids love when I hide things for them and then they get to search for them! You could add numbers, letters, or sight words to the fake leaves and have them identify the skills as they find the leaves, or you could add some magnetic letters/numbers to the bin and have them use a magnetic wand to discover them. My 2-year-old loves to just fill the little cupcake liners and pretend that she’s making baked goods. :) Sensory bins provide so many opportunities for learning, pretending, and playing- will you try this one?!

Be sure to pin this idea if you think you may want to give it a try, and if you do, tag us on social media so we can see!

Looking for more fall fun? Shop our fall-themed activity book here, or check out the following posts:
- Apple-Themed Journal Activities for Preschoolers
- Apple-Themed Activities for Toddlers
- Pumpkin Paint and Wash
- “5 Little Pumpkins” Counting Activity