Preschoolers Planting

Here’s a quick sensory table idea for your unit on plants, seeds, flowers, or gardens.  Fill your sensory bin with soil – either right out of the bag, or right out of the ground.  Add some pansy pony packs, hand tools, magnifiers, a few small containers with water, gloves, and even worms if you’re feeling extra organic!  Let the children plant the flowers in the bin, examining the roots as they go.  If they want to pull the flowers apart, examining their parts, that’s OK too!

It’s the sensory table – it’s a time to explore!

You could substitute an actual planter box for your sensory bin and use it in your window or on your front step once the children have finished!  You could also supply seeds for the children to plant in the bin, and then scatter the soil in your flower beds where they could grow!  If you haven’t used worms or seeds, you can also head right over to the bin to fill up planter containers for any of the seed sprouting activities here, with less of the mess than if you tried to have little hands fill their pots and cups by scooping directly out of a bag of soil.  Of course, you can also skip the bin and head right outside and do all these activities in your own gardens too!

Planting activities reinforce science concepts such as the plant life cycle, the needs of plants, and the parts of plants.  It also encourages motor development and provides a sensory experience as the children dig in the dirt and mud.  Oh, and bonus sensory points for playing with the worms!

For more Seeds & Plants activities, click here.