DIY: 30+ Sensory & Pretend Play Bins for Never-Ending Growth & Learning Experiences

DIY: 30+ Sensory & Pretend Play Bins for Never-Ending Growth & Learning Experiences

Judy Benz Duncan, Occupational Therapist

Sensory and pretend play bins are more than just fun. They are an important part of any early childhood growth, development and learning experience.

Young children learn best with a wide variety of sensory experiences where they can touch, feel, interact with, and have the all-important pretend playtime. Providing sensory playtime gives a child the opportunity to learn in purposeful and meaningful ways.

Children learn through their exploration of their world. Play is how they explore and learn and grow.

Through play a child uses all of their senses in order to explore and learn – they use touch, taste, smell, proprioceptive/movement, vision, body awareness, and so on while they play and interact.

When a child can see, smell, touch, experience, and even hear something – the learning experience becomes more meaningful and more effective. The use of a variety of sensory bins combined with pretend playtime makes for a wonderful learning time.

Having a variety of sensory input, sensory experience, and sensory sensation, helps to promote the development and maturation of a child’s sensory systems.

This book, Easy to Make at Home: 30+ Sensory & Pretend Play Bins for Never-Ending Growth & Learning Experiences, at over 100 pages, includes the following:

• Introduction

• Sensory Playtime Gives Great Learning Experiences

• Impact of Sensory Processing Deficits

• Using Sensory and Pretend Play Boxes & Bin

• Tolerance Levels to Sensory Activities

• What is the Purpose Behind Using a Sensory or Pretend Play Bin?

• What are the Educational Aspects of Sensory and Pretend Play Bins?

• Are Sensory and Pretend Play Bins Messy?

• Safety Note

• Variety of Sensory Bin & Play Box Experiences

• 30+ Different Sensory and Pretend Play Bins with DIY Directions, Ideas for Use, Activities, Material Options

• Sensory Light Box (DIY Directions & Ideas for Use)

• Sensory Feely Bags (DIY Directions & Ideas for Use)

• Gelatin Play Bins (DIY Directions & Ideas for Use)

• Legal Housekeeping

• Notes Section

This OT Publication is available:

On Amazon Kindle

Now on Paperback: Click & Go

See all Judy Benz Duncan’s books on Amazon

Author, Judy Benz Duncan has been an Occupational Therapist for over thirty years. She has worked with children from infants to teenagers in numerous settings that included early intervention, pre-school programs, grade school, home health, developmental training centers, and sensory integration clinics.

Judy developed the foundation for designing therapeutic activities and tasks using interactive play and creative imagination to engage the children at a level they could easily relate to while working toward the achievement of their Occupational Therapy program’s functional goals and treatment plan

Judy attended the University of Florida, University of Kansas, and the University of Tennessee. She received New York State approval as a Supplemental Evaluator for OT with early intervention and pre-school students, and has helped develop and start an OT program for families and children in New York. Judy continues to stay up-to-date in the clinical field through mentoring other OT students and new graduates.

She continues to contribute to children, families and professionals everywhere through her professional writing endeavors which include writing books and manuals, managing the therapeutic website, TheraPlay4Kids.com, writing OT blogs and topic-specific articles, working on "interactive story play" book series, writing bi-weekly professional blogs for a pediatric orthopedic surgeon group, a psychiatrist, and an attorney at law. She continues to be an active mentor of new OT graduates, as well as OT students.