Easy Sensory Bin Ideas for Toddlers

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Think about the last time you watched your toddler splashing water in the bathtub, or when your baby had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and instantly scooped (or dumped) it out.

This irresistible urge for little ones to explore everything with their hands is sensory play. It’s one of the most natural ways they learn about the world.  

​​Chances are, you’re already doing sensory play without realizing it. A sensory bin simply brings more intention and structure to that same hands-on learning.

So let’s look at why it’s important for baby and toddler development, and how you can use everyday items you already have at home to come up with easy sensory bin ideas.

What is a Sensory Bin? 

A sensory bin is simply a container filled with materials that stimulate your little one’s senses: touch, sight, sound, and even smell. It can be as basic as a large toy storage box filled with water, a few cups and spoons. 

This hands-on play setup invites your toddler to explore textures, and offers multiple ways for open-ended play. They can scoop, pour, sort and play pretend. It’s an amazing way to let them explore and learn while having lots of fun.

What are the Benefits of Sensory Play?

It might look like “just messy play,” but it isn’t only fun! 

Sensory bins support toddler milestones by building different skills through play. Here are a few developmental skills little ones are learning when engaging with sensory play:

Fine Motor Development: 

Scooping, pouring, pinching, and transferring materials in a sensory bin strengthens the small muscles in your toddler’s hands and fingers. (1) These are the same muscles they also use for many everyday activities, like dressing, self-feeding, and later, writing. 

If you want more information about fine motor milestones and age-appropriate toys to support baby’s development, check out our post about the best fine motor toys for babies and toddlers!

Cognitive Skills:

Sensory bins promote cause and effect understanding, problem-solving, and basic math and science concepts as little ones sort, count, fill, or dump the materials. The ‘hide-and-seek’ and ‘sort-and-categorize’ type of play helps boost cognitive development. 

Language Development:

When you engage in sensory play with your little one, you’re offering several opportunities to build vocabulary, follow directions, and practice back-and-forth communication. Labeling what you see and describing what they do helps boost speech skills.

Social-Emotional Skills: 

When little ones get overwhelmed with sensory input, engaging in sensory play can help them feel like themselves again. Sensory bins are also perfect for parallel play as two or more children can easily play side by side. (2)

How to Set Up a Simple Sensory Bin

Setting up a sensory bin doesn’t have to be complicated! Just keep these three things in mind, and you can start right away:

1. Choose Your Container: A shallow storage box, a baking tray or a large plastic bin would work perfectly. These are our favorite!
2. Add a Sensory Filler: Dry fillers, like beans, rice, oats, pasta or pom-poms are best for working on your toddler’s fine motor skills. Wet fillers, like water, jelly, shaving foam or ice cubes encourage tactile sensory exploration.
3. Include Tools to Play: Drop in some spoons, measuring cups, ladles, or tongs for scooping and pouring. Hide small plastic toys like animal figurines, toy cars, blocks, and play food) that your toddler can search for.

Now that you know how to set up a quick sensory bin, check out these simple sensory bin fillers you can start with today, using items you most likely already have at home! 

Best Fillers for Sensory Bins

Water 

Water play is so easy to put together and is almost always a hit. Start with just a bin (or tub) of water, and there are so many things you can do with it!

Our favorite is a homemade sensory table where you only need measuring cups and spoons. Even a simple pouring station like this keeps little ones happily busy. We talk more about it in our Summer Crafts Freebie, which you can download here! 

Here are some more ideas to extend water play:

1. Add a few drops of food coloring and toss in some (artificial) flowers for a flower arranging station.
2. Drop in toy animals and let your toddler give them a bath using a sponge or toothbrush. 
3. Turn your water bin into a car washing station with toy cars or trucks that need cleaning. 
4. Cut a sponge into 4 pieces, and add a few sponges in water for a sponge squeezing game. 
5. Put colorful, large pom poms in water, and provide an ice cube tray. Guide your little one to transfer pom poms with tongs or tweezers.

Sand

We love Kinetic Sand for older toddlers and preschoolers. It’s soft, moldable and incredibly satisfying to play with. 

A kinetic sand sensory bin can be a bit messy, but it’s so easy to set up. Or you can purchase a pre-made one to get started! An all-time favorite set up is just adding stacking cups and a toddler knife in the sand. Your little one will enjoy making sand ‘castles’ of different sizes and ‘cut through’ the sand.

Feel free to mix and match these easy sensory bin ideas using kinetic sand:

1. Hide a few dinosaur figurines and dino eggs in the sand. Give your toddler a spoon to dig and uncover the ‘fossils.’
2. Provide cupcake molds and candles. Show your toddler how to fill molds with sand, press it down, and decorate their ‘cupcakes’ with candles. 
3. Add a few shells, small sea animals, and a tiny bucket or spade. Dig and bury shells, and make sand ‘castles’ at the ‘beach’.
4. Use building blocks, textured lids or cookie cutters to press into the sand and make different patterns. Extend it to learning shapes later in toddlerhood. 

Add a few toy diggers, dump trucks and small cars. Let your toddler scoop, dig and make little ‘roads’, or ‘piles’ of sand for a construction-themed play.

If you like organizing play by theme, we have 52 weeks of play themes for toddlers you can download here for free!

Dry Food

Using dry food as your sensory bin filler is ideal for babies and toddlers who are mouthing. Use oats, rice, crackers, cheerios, puffs- whatever you’ve available at the moment!

An easy way to set up a sensory bin for your toddler is to see what’s the season going on, and come up with a similar theme. That’s exactly what we have done up here in our Hidden Egg Sensory Bin using oats. See this one and more in our FREE Spring Crafts resource! 

Here are a few more ways to play with oats (or any dry food):

1. Hide small plastic toys in oats, and hand your toddler a large spoon to “search and rescue” them.
2. Add toy farm animals and tractors to turn oats into a pretend farm field, and pair it with our favourite farm book for endless play!
3. Pour a little water on half of the oats to create a wet slide, add in some scoops, and your little one can compare dry vs sticky textures.Sprinkle cinnamon or a few drops of vanilla to add a subtle scent. Offer some baking tools, like whisks or muffin tin, to “mix and bake” oats.
4. Keep it simple with just a few measuring cups and spoons for scooping and pouring. Show your little one how to transfer oats between different containers.   

Taste-Safe Sensory Bins Ideas for Toddlers 

If you’re in the stage where your baby can’t help but put everything in their mouth, you don’t have to skip sensory play. Taste-safe sensory bins are the perfect solution!

These bins use safe, edible materials like cooked pasta, cereal, oats, or even chia seed gel, so your little one can explore textures freely without you worrying about what goes in their mouth.

We show you how to make Edible Snow and a Mashed Potato Snowman in our Winter Crafts Freebie. Some other taste-safe options include cooked spaghetti, crushed Cheerios, yogurt with food coloring, jelly and aquafaba (chickpea foam).

We have so many more play ideas for babies and toddlers!

For over 100 no-cost play ideas that help your toddler meet their milestones, check out our Toddler Playbooks! 

Sources:

1. Yildiz, R., Yildiz, A., Zorlular, R., & Elbasan, B. (2024). Relationship between sensory processing skills and motor skills in 12-month-old infants. Brain and Behavior, 14(9), e70052.
2. Abidin, Anis & Ishak, Siti & Bakar, Ruhil & Abdul Rahman, Andrialis. (2022). Significance of Sensory Activities among Toddlers for Sensory Skills Development. Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal. 7. 15-27.