Fourth of July Sensory Bin for Less than $10!
Looking for a fun, patriotic, and educational way to share some Patriotic spirit? This simple Fourth of July sensory bin costs less than $10 to make and is great for toddlers or preschool aged kids. Read on to hear how easy it is to make this sensory bin and celebrate the upcoming Fourth of July holiday!
Disclaimer: this post may contain affiliate links from various sites, including Amazon. As a member of the Amazon associates program, we earn a small amount from qualifying purchases when you use our referral link. This does not add any additional cost to you and helps with the expenses of keeping in Life and Littles up and running.
When I say that this sensory bin activity is easy to make, I mean it! You need just a few items, less than 5 minutes and less than $10! This sensory bin is made of a base of rice, so it is taste friendly for the little ones that like to put everything in their mouth, but you’ll always want to keep a close eye on them to be safe. Below, we will recap what you need to make this Fourth of July sensory bin and then let you know what you can do with it to keep your kids entertained.
The first step for putting this Fourth of July sensory bin together is to dye your rice. If you haven’t used food coloring to dye your rice before, that’s OK because it is beyond easy.
Pour 1 cup rice into a ziploc bag.
Add in 1 teaspoon vinegar.
Drop in food coloring to your preference.
Shake the bag like a madman until it’s the perfect shade.
After the rice has been dyed, it is recommended you let it dry out before using it so the dye doesn’t come off on your hands or your little one’s hands when playing with the colored rice in a sensory bin. You can spread it out on paper towel and/or a cookie sheet to help it dry quicker. Mom tip: I like to dye a couple extra cups of rice at once so I always have some on hand for sensory play with my toddler.
Once your rice has dried, you are ready to put this Patriotic sensory bin together! In whatever bin you are using, lay your colored rice out into three strips by color. I did the red rice first, followed by plain white rice and then finally, the blue rice. 10 seconds later and you already have a fun red, white and blue sensory bin!
With the base of your sensory bin created, you can now set it up for your activity! For my toddler, I put the red stars in the red rice, the white stars in the white rice and the blue stars in the blue rice. Using the tweezers, he had to find each of the stars and pluck them out of there!
What I love about sensory activities like this Fourth of July bin is the versatility it offers. There are so many educational and developmental activities you can work on. These different activities can help encourage and develop fine motor skills, color identification, counting, problem solving and more.
These are several ideas of different ways your children can learn and play with this bin:
Find the mis-match:
Intentionally mis-match a few stars and their rice colors. i.e. put one white star in with the red rice and one red star in with the blue rice. Have your child find the one that doesn’t belong and pull it out of the sensory bin.
Match the colors:
Remove the stars one by one and group them together by color. You can have your child set them into separate piles, or have them place the star onto a piece of paper that corresponds with the color.
Practice counting:
Have your child identify the number of each colored star or the number of stars total.
Sort the stars by size:
Make sure you have stars of 2+ sizes, like the pack I got at Dollar Tree, and have your child group the stars by size. To take it a bit further, have them group by size and color - put all the small red stars in one pile and the big red stars in another pile.
Mix the rice:
Let your child remove all the stars, then use their hands to mix all of the rice together, merging the colors into a fun red, white and blue mess. It ends up looking gorgeous and will allow your little one some great sensory play. This should go without saying, but I’d save this until you are sure you don’t want the separated colors. It’s not *impossible* to get it back, but it would take a long, long time to resort the rice.
Each of these ideas is a fun way to keep your child involved with this Fourth of July sensory bin idea, but I’m sure there are some that I missed. Tell us below how else you would use this sensory bin!
