A fun, first story sensory bin, this We’re Going on a Bear Hunt sensory bin is perfect for encouraging the imaginative play and literacy skills of preschool and kindergarten age children.
Choosing a familiar, popular story as a basis for a sensory bin is a fabulous way to encourage young children to engage with learning, and We’re Going On A Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen is a perfect choice thanks to the wonderful chanting prose.
To create a story sensory bin, choose a variety of age appropriate sensory materials that relate to the theme of the story and arrange them thoughtfully to create an engaging invitation to play. The potential and possibilities are endless and you can really use your imagination.
How to Make Your We’re Going On a Bear Hunt Sensory Bin
The first step is to choose a bin for your sensory play area. Like we used for our Brown Bear, Brown Bear story sensory bin, a large, shallow bin is easy for children to access and demarcates a dedicated play area.
Each of the elements of this We’re Going On a Bear Hunt sensory bin has been selected to reflect part of the story. To make a story bin like this one, you will need;
- Grass – shredded green paper
- River – dyed blue rice and/or gems
- Mud – brown playdough
- Forest – toy trees
- Snowstorm – cotton wool balls
- Cave – a small box
A small teddy bear acts as the bear character from the story and some small people figurines complete the set up.
For older children, or children who love to get messy (and parents who don’t mind the mess) here are some other ideas of materials that could be used for a bear hunt sensory bin;
- Grass – actual grass clippings from the garden
- River – water with blue food colouring
- Mud – actual mud
- Forest – leaves and twigs from the garden
- Snowstorm – shaving cream mixed in with the cotton wool.
To play, encourage your child to move the people figurines through each area of the story bin while you tell the story together.
There are so many fantastic learning opportunities with this story – in particular positional language (over, under, around, through) and ordinal numbers (first, second, third).
Once the story retelling is done, your child can then use their imagination to create their own stories. They might like to add additional figurines or story elements to extend the imaginative play.
A sensory play bin really is a fabulous book activity for young children!
For more activities inspired by popular children’s books, check out these book activities;
Lauren Hunt is an Early Childhood Teacher who currently works part time teaching children in their first year of school. She is also mum to a two year old daughter. Lauren is passionate about play-based, hands-on learning and is certainly kept busy by her energetic toddler!
