Mar 5, 2024 | 0 comments
If you didn’t know this, frogs hibernate in the fall when the temperatures drop and emerge when the warmer spring weather hits. When you notice your kids catching lots of little frogs in the yard, that’s why! They are ready to enjoy that warmer weather. So, doing a frog preschool theme in the spring months is a great way to work on building knowledge about these amphibians. To increase engagement with your sessions, making a frog sensory bin to teach children about a frog’s environment and the frog life cycle can bring vocabulary and new concepts to life. Today, I will help you make easy frog sensory bins that you can use to cover a TON of speech and language goals.
Fillers for Your Bins
Whether you are making a frog pond sensory bin or more of a backyard frog bin, you can use a variety of fillers for your bin. I always recommend using fillers that make sense for your budget, level of mess tolerance, or safety for the kids you are working with in your speech therapy sessions. So, review this filler list and decide what will work best for you. I will put a * by the fillers I think are budget-friendly, not too messy, and safe for kids.
- Water *
- Blue glass beads from Dollar Tree for water
- Green or blue Dyed chickpeas or rice
- Shredded green or blue paper *
- Black or brown beans for dirt/mud *
- Green dried lentils
- Coco Puffs or Coco Krispies for dirt (taste safe) *
- Blue Jello or dyed water with cornstarch (taste safe)
To get more ideas for fillers, you can find that in the free Ultimate Sensory Bin Guide.
Materials for a Frog Pond Sensory Bin
If you want to make a frog pond sensory you will want a filler that would represent water and an area that could be mud or dirt in your bin. Here are some materials that you can use to add to the bin:
- Green paper or green foam paper to make different sized lilypads
- Green bath toys from Dollar Tree, or Amazon, this set has a bigger sized frog, so you could work on big/small
- Another option are these plastic frog figurines
- Get some real wood sticks as a log or use toilet paper rolls. If you own the camping s’mores toy set you can use the logs in that set.
- Frog life cycle toy figurines
- Cut up green pool noodle to make lilypads
- plastic flies and insects
Printables for frogs and a sensory bin cheat sheet is in the Themed Therapy SLP Membership. You can add mini binder clips to the frogs to help them stay up on the lilypads.
How to Use Your Frog Sensory Bins
Depending on what books or songs you are pairing with your frog pond sensory bin, you can cover a variety of speech therapy goals. For example, if you use the book Jump, Frog, Jump by Robert Kalan you can retell the story using the sensory bin props.
And similarly, if you incorporate songs into your sessions, you can act out the 5 Green and Speckled Frogs with your bin.
For non-fiction books that teach about the frog life cycle and facts about frogs, use the sensory bin to target goals. For example, students can explain the frog life cycle in their own words using the figurines. Or, students can work on verb actions, wh-questions and vocabulary about a frog’s life.
Speech Therapy Goals to Target
With a frog preschool theme, use sensory bin materials to target basic concepts, verbs, AAC core words and more. Here are some ideas:
- Basic concepts: in/out, wet/dry, high/low, over/under, up/down, more/less
- Answer yes/no questions (Is the frog in the pond?)
- Answer wh-questions (Where is the frog? What is he doing?)
- Verb actions: hop, leap, eat, catch, sit, blink, splash
- Vocabulary: pond, water, wet, lilypads, mud
- Sequential: first, next, last
- Play a fly catching game. Students roll a die to see how many flies they can catch. Whoever has the most flies wins.
Do you pair books with your sensory bins?
One of the easiest ways to plan for your preschool and kindergarten sessions is to pair sensory bins with related books. With these frog preschool themed sensory bins, we provide book companions, cheat sheets, and extension activities for a frog theme in the month of March. We want to take speech therapy lesson planning off your plate, so you can focus on supporting your students. First, you would read the frog-themed book using the cheat sheets and any companion activities. Then, pull out your frog sensory bin to target goals with students. Make sure to tag me @themedtherapyslp with pictures of your frog-themed sensory bisn! This isn’t the only spring sensory bin you can make! There are lots of great ones for insects, flowers, and more.
