Looking for fun summer sensory bin ideas? Try this Easy Watermelon Sensory Bin for Preschoolers! It’s so much fun!
This simple watermelon sensory bin is perfect for little ones who love pretend play. It encourages creativity and imaginative play as well as basic math skills.
My kids loved this watermelon sensory play idea.
They were so busy creating watermelon slices, counting seeds and pretending to serve watermelon to customers. What fun!
Before we dive into the tutorial, let’s talk about….
What is a Sensory Bin?
A Sensory Bin is a tub or container that is filled with items that stimulate curiosity, the senses and encourage imaginative play.
Many sensory kits have a theme like dinosaurs, construction, farm, or a holiday. I also like to create sensory bins based on my child’s interests like unicorns or mermaids.
Sensory bins have a main filler that can be scooped or poured. This could be dry rice, water, sand, beans, uncooked pasta, and more. There’s endless possibilities.
You can find more ideas for easy sensory bins here.
Benefits of Sensory Play
According to Good Start Learning, sensory play is:
- A great way to build fine motor skills and language development.
- Helps young children develop problem solving skills.
- It helps build connections in the brain.
- Plus, it helps little ones destress and regulate.
As you can see there’s a lot of reasons to do sensory activities.
And….of course, sensory play is lots of fun! My kids have enjoyed hours of imaginative play with our sensory bins.
Watermelon Sensory Bin Supplies
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You will need the following items to make this Watermelon sensory bin:
- Sensory bin or box – Any large plastic container will do. I like to use a large under the bed storage plastic container
- Red Dyed Rice – we used this method to create our Colored Rice with red food coloring
- Green Paper Plates
- Scoops
- Kid Tongs
- Sunflower seeds (in shell) – washed and dried
- Watermelon Number Flash Cards – found at the end of this tutorial
How to make a Watermelon Sensory Bin
Alright! Let’s get starting making this watermelon sensory bin.
First, take your sensory bin and fill it with red colored rice. We used the process here to create our colored rice. Remember that if you don’t want the red to come off onto your child’s hands, you want to add less dye and do a more mild color of red. Ours was basically pink.
Once your bin is filled with pink or red rice, you can add some green paper plates. These will act as the watermelon rinds.
I added both half plates and full plates to allow my kids to experiment and see what they liked best. To create a half plate, simply cut your paper plate in half with sturdy scissors.
Next, add something to represent watermelon seeds.
We used sunflower seeds that I washed to get the salt off. (I removed the salt so that my kids weren’t tempted to lick the seeds and also to keep salt off their hands and not get it into their eyes).
Alternatively, you could use black beans or even real watermelon seeds.
Or, an easy idea would be to create paper seeds with black construction paper.
My little ones enjoyed scooping the rice onto the plates to create watermelons and then adding seeds with kid safe tongs.
I also added some number cards to inspire my kids to count seeds to add to their watermelon slices. What a fun way to encourage early math skills through play!
My kids really enjoyed serving up slices of juicy watermelon to each other and playing creatively with the bin. This is a fun addition to a summer unit and a great way to keep kids busy on a hot summer day or a rainy day.
Download the Free Watermelon Number Cards
I created these simple watermelon number cards for my kids.
If you’d like to use them too, you can download the free printable Watermelon Number Cards here:
More Sensory Activities for Kids
Looking for more sensory play ideas? Here’s more hands-on play ideas that inspire imaginative play!
My kids loved this Car Wash Sensory bin! It’s super easy and definitely one of my go to sensory play activity ideas. Perfect for young kids on a hot day during summer break!
Do your kids love kinetic sand? Here’s a list of hands-on activities to extend the fun of kinetic sand. So many different ways to use it!
Dive into some summer fun with this cute Ocean Sensory Play. Kids will enjoy plenty of imaginative play with this fun idea for water play.
Be sure to check out this sweet Ice Cream Shop themed sensory bin. Nothing says Summertime like ice cream! This sensory bin filler has all of the fun of ice cream without the stickiness. Kids will love topping their ice cream creations with pom poms, sprinkles, and more!
Do you have a mermaid loving child? Here’s a Mermaid Sensory Bin that’s perfect for summer time! Inspire pretend play with a new sensory bin. This is sure to be a fun sensory activity for mermaid fans!
You can also find tons of inspiration and ideas for sensory play here as well.
More Watermelon Activities for Kids
Looking for more fun Watermelon themed Summer Activities for your lesson plan?
You can find a fun Lacing Watermelon Paper Craft here. Kids lace the outside of the watermelon to create a one of a kind craft.
There’s a big list of Watermelon Crafts and Activities for kids here. You’ll find printables, crafts, sensory fun and more!
There’s some fun Food themed Playdough Mats here in my Etsy shop. Kids use dough to follow a prompt to complete each picture. This fun set includes a Watermelon!
Want to save this watermelon sensory play idea for later? Pin the image below to your preschool activities board on Pinterest.
