Community Helpers Recycling Sensory Bin

This recycling sensory bin has been such a hit!

We’ve been reading lots of books about community helpers and careers recently in preparation for this month’s virtual book club theme of “What Will I Be When I Grow Up.” From Pirates to Folktales we’ve been exploring books and connecting fun activities all year as part of our book club and this month we LOVED learning about community helpers and recycling.Of all the books and careers we’ve been reading lately about the girls are most in love with the garbage/recycling ones!!

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Our favorite community helpers and career themed book about garbage men and trash removal was hard to pick! The girls loved multiple but it seems that Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman was the top contender so after reading it (for the millionth time!) we set out to creating a fun activity that connected to the book.

We loved Trashy Town and as I started planning this activity I wanted to focus on the garbage man but it ended up being a recycling sensory bin activity.  Our garbage man comes early in the morning, before my daughter is a awake or any of the daycare children arrive, so on trash day we miss the garbage man but get to see the recycle truck in action and talk to the recycle truck driver! After that we ended up gravitating more towards the recycle truck and this activity was born.

Materials used in community helpers sensory bin:

• Matchbox Garbage/Recycle Truck (ours are from Fred Meyer/Kroger; I paid $1 each for them)
• Dried Black Beans
• Small Plastic Cups
• Recycled Plastic Cups (cut into small pieces)
• Acrylic Ice Rocks
• Newspaper
• Tweezers

I filled our sensory bin with dried black beans and added the trucks and garbage.  For the recyclables to sort I used acrylic ice rocks for glass, cup up a plastic cup for plastic, and crumpled some scraps of newspaper for paper.

Next I added small plastic cups that were labeled for each recyclable (glass, plastic, paper) and tweezers next to the bin so the kids could sort them into cups, giving a fun fine motor twist to this activity.

With the tweezers and trucks in hand the kids were off! They love cars and truck to begin with but with the added play of the sensory and sorting elements with them the girls were in heaven.  They loved this activity!

The recycle man in action!  Busy taking that paper to the “recycle bins” (aka the cups).

The tweezers worked perfect for the little recyclables and the girls loved this.  This activity has definitely been a favorite, it’s right up there with our Spaghetti Shop Pretend Play activity, as one of the most loved! The girls can’t get enough! Yay!

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