Forest Animals Sensory Bin

This forest animals sensory bin is full of fun and learning! I threw this activity together as part of our virtual book club. If you are not familiar with our virtual book club, it’s a set of engaging kids activities that connect to children’s books for preschoolers.  Our theme this month is “The Great Outdoors,” so we picked a great nature-themed book with that I connected this forest animal themed sensory bin!

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Our virtual book club is part of is a great way to connect reading to learning. These activities are aimed at preschoolers but can be adapted for kids of all ages! You can find all of our fun activities on my virtual book club page or click the links on one of our more recent activities –> a Lion Craft with straw painting and these cute Bird Feeders!

Virtual Book Club selection:

This month we are learning about the great outdoors so we picked a forest themed book. After a trip to the library, we ended up with the book Into the Woods: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George. This is a great read and inspired our forest animals sensory bin.

My daughter and the daycare girls LOVE this book.  The illustrations are beautiful and each page offers a small clue about the habitat or life of the animal that is about to be reviewed.  The girls would study the questions  (” an empty nest, who’s been there?”) and the illustrations on each page then try to guess what animal would be on the next page!

To extend the learning from this book we created this fun sensory bin for preschoolers!

Forest Animals Sensory Bin

Materials we used:

• Green Dried Beans or Rice (I used Split Peas)
• Rocks
• Blue Glass Gems (or use Water beads!)
• Safari LTD North American Wildlife TOOB 
• Playmobil Forest Animal Park

Just place the beans and gems in an empty sensory bin then throw in some forest animals and you’re ready to go! I had planned to just use the North American Wildlife TOOB and the Trees TOOB but MB has been obsessed with her Playmobil Forest Animal Park (she got it for Christmas last year) so I used it rather than using the Trees TOOB.

Our forest is very busy! Lots of animals to play and explore with! A Grizzly, beaver, deer, raccoon, squirrel and more!

The animals catching some fish and hanging out by the water. This was a fun way for the kids to learn about the life cycle of animals in the forest, how the food chain works, and the predator vs prey relationships.

And watch out for that cougar! 😉 Our cougar was out stalking the other animals, they had to keep moving to stay away from that sneaky cougar! 

Want more outdoor-themed books and activities?

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