Sneak peak for Fall - Sensory Bin

Am I the only one?

When a new season is beginning to peak itself around the corner, I get so nostalgic!

You know what I'm talking about, right?

The smells, the colors, the food.

Who else has already gotten a pumpkin spice latte??

Well that's how excited I've been getting about a big Fall Unit I'm planning for my girls.  I'm been researching like a nerd, printing like a crazy woman, and laminating, like only a teacher could :)

Our Fall Sensory Bin

My favorite "ah ha!" for this unit is using more hands-on materials.  We're going to be doing some really big-kid kind of scienc-y stuff!  However, one thing I'm just plain giddy about is my first sensory bin for the girls!  Charlotte is SUCH a kinesthetic learner and I'm hoping they both love this bin as much as I do!

I've been looking at a million sites, reading a million posts, but the one that I loved and stole from just last night was THIS one.  I had planned to use dried beans as a pretty-fallish-looking base to this bin, but the idea of using whole oats with a jar of pumpkin pie spice dumped in...brilliant!  Not only does this sensory bin look inviting....

It smells heavenly :)

I'm loving all of the different textures and found I had to restrain myself from adding leaves, etc.

One of the things I like best about this is how the small apples, berries, and pumpkins can hide in the oatmeal so they have to dig and sift find them!

I used a lot of things that I already had used for fall decorations around the house:

small bale of hay, dried corn, potpourri pumpkins (although they lost their smell years ago), yellow shovels from the sandbox, light-up tweezers, canning jars & rings.  We also picked these little red berries on our walk yesterday and they made a perfect addition :)

I also bought some things from Walmart this morning:

mini-pumpkin, fake apples, silver buckets, glittery acorns, oatmeal (I used 3 containers), pumpkin pie spice.

The lid is on it and it's been tucked away.  I can't wait to surprise the girls with it later this week :)

What else is cooking at the Manke house?  Brownies?  Chocolate covered strawberries?

Nope!

Chocolate playdough :)

How fun is that?

I plan to use playdough a lot during this fall unit, so we started making some fall colors this morning.

So far we made chocolate brown from this recipe and cherry-flavored red 

(I used some red food gel and some of that new liquid kool-aid to add smell to my regular stove-top playdough recipe like this one).

The best thing about both of these ideas?  They work for any home....

Happy almost Autumn :)