Let’s dig in and get our hands dirty with these garden sensory activities for preschool. It never ceases to amaze me how much little ones love sensory activities and freely exploring materials. Just provide them with some simple materials to engage the senses: the ping of dried pinto beans against a metal shovel, the smell of planting a seed in soil, the feel of jumping like a grasshopper, and the bright contrast of puzzle pieces in dark black beans. Check out these garden sensory activities:
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Garden Sensory Activities
Soil Search ABC
Looking for an easy sensory bin that incorporates letter identification? We just filled a tub with dried black beans as soil, the letters from an alphabet puzzle, and gardening tools. The kids dug through the soil to find the letters and then placed them in the puzzle. Easy and engaging!
- Recognize the names of a minimum of 10 letters of the alphabet, specifically letters in own name.
- Exercise fine motor skills.
- Solve puzzles to build visual discrimination, attention, and memory.
Plants Can’t Sit Still Action Cards
After reading Plants Can’t Sit Still by Rebecca Hirsch, we acted like exploding seeds and growing plants. One of our favorite things to do is play charades. It gets my wiggly kids up and moving, and it gets them thinking of how to show objects and actions using their bodies. That’s harder than you think! So these action cards were the perfect activity to complement our reading.
- Exercise gross motor skills.
Garden Sensory Bin
Are you ready to grow a garden full of colorful vegetables? We pretended to plant seeds (pompoms) in our tin can pot. The pinging sound of the pinto beans hitting the metal was marvelous. The little ones especially loved using shovels in this sensory bin. Then, we pretended the seeds grew into the plastic vegetables for us to eat. Yummy!
- Exercise fine motor skills of scooping and pouring.
Washi Tape Flower Pot
As part of our science explorations this week, we planted seeds in water bottles. Since our bean plant is growing and growing (now about a foot tall), we made a sturdier pot to keep it in. My little one decorated the pot using Washi tape. Tearing the tape, hearing it rip, and feeling the sticky adhesive stick to her tiny fingers was such a sensation! We just added in some black electrical tape to make sure the ends stuck!
- Exercise fine motor skills.
More Garden Activities
Let the children dig in and get their hands dirty to invigorate the senses with these garden sensory activities for preschool! Hope you can enjoy some of these activities with your little ones! Let me know if you need anything by sending me an email here.
Also, don’t forget to check out some more garden activities for preschool!
