Flower Games and Sensory Bins

Today we played games that were based on flowers and all things you find outside in your garden.  I had so much fun with these games!  Sadly, I won't be doing any more sensory games until the fall.  We start our summer reading program next month, and I'm not brave enough yet to pull out sensory bins and games with our crowds during the summer.  But we are going to work up a sensory play day for next year, so I am very excited about that!  

Below are pictures of the games we played, along with a description.  I included a link to show where I found the idea for our games.  I hope you can enjoy them as much as the kids did!

1.) Flower and Vase Matching

This game is so adorable!  All I did was print out the flowers and vases.  I taped the vases to cups and filled them with Easter grass.  Then I took the flowers and velcroed them to small popsicle sticks.  I was a little worried the kids wouldn't understand what to do, but they had no problem figuring it out!  Only the preschoolers did this game.   I found this game here.

2.) Bee Sensory Bin

I wanted to have another sensory bin for the kids, and remembered last month we did a color matching game.  The kids did awesome with that game, and I wanted to use something I already had on hand.  I keep a bag of items laminated that I hand out to the 2's that they can dance around with and stick to the flannelboard, and inside my bag were different colored bees.  So all I needed were my flowers!  I hid the bees in easter grass, and the 2's matched them up to the correct flower.  They did wonderful!  Yes, some easter grass ended up on the floor, but placing all of this in chairs made it much easier for the 2's to reach.  Only the 2's played this game. Cleaning up was super easy too!

3.) Spelling with Flower Petals
I found the idea for this sensory bin here, and decided to make my own. What I did was print out a flower set I made, along with flower petals to match. I wanted to turn this game into a sensory bin, so I hid the flower petals inside Easter grass. I'm trying to include some kind of letter recognition with each set of games we do monthly, and the kids did really well with this one. We spelled out the words B-O-O-K-S and R-E-A-D. Obviously you can tell I was in a hurry, because I laid the petals down incorrectly for this picture! If you can't laugh at yourself, then you're in trouble! Just the preschoolers played this game.

4.) Leaf Counting Sensory Bin
This game was so easy to do, but so much fun! All you do is make a couple of flower tops, and number them 1 to 5. Then you place a pipe cleaner for the stem and cut out leaves. I wanted to turn this into a sensory bin, so I hid the leaves inside our butterfly petals. The kids dug out the leaves and placed them on the flowers. This is a great way for them to learn their numbers and to practice counting at the same time. I found this game here.

5.) Shadow Matching
The kids love matching shadows to the correct item, and this is a great spring-themed game. You can find this here.

6.) Number Puzzles
We have a long, skinny table that I use for our games. On one end of it I had the shadow matching game taped down. On the other end I taped down this number puzzle game. You can find this puzzle here.

7.) Flower Box Knockdown
This game is super easy to make, all you need is empty boxes and construction paper! I took empty boxes and wrapped them in white paper. Then I made my flower, but divided it up into three parts. I made sure to put an ant at the bottom of the flower, to show the kids where the bottom went. Of course, the kids enjoyed knocking down the boxes the most. The purpose of the game is to teach the kids the different parts of a flower. You can tell my flower has been knocked down quite a bit, but that's the reason I made it!