Recently we did a fun little Jesus and the Net Full of Fish craft. That day I ran into the issue of having some waiting time while the paint on the plate dried. For a preschooler…waiting? Yeah, that didn’t go over well. So I came up with an impromptu sensory bin activity that we could do while we waited and that utilized the fish we had already cut out for the craft.
This preschool sensory bin is a very easy sensory bin activity using materials you probably already have on hand anyways. It can be adapted for a variety of lessons involving fish or Bible stories such as the net full of fish miracle, fishers of men lesson, and more. It’s pretty flexible.
Find the Fishes Preschool Sensory Bin Activity Supplies:
- small plastic tub (a small dishpan works great)
- beans or rice (white beans or rice dyed blue would be really cool here to look more like water)
- construction paper
- scissors
- writing utensil (Sharpie, black marker, pen, or pencil)
Find the Fish Sensory Bin Activity for Preschoolers Instructions:
First gather your supplies. We already had the fish drawn and cut out from our net full of fish craft. But if you’re not doing that then just draw simple fish and cut them out. If your preschooler is good enough with scissors then you could have them help with this step using safety scissors.
Next put all the fish into a bin with beans. Then try to push them down under the beans. Some will probably poke out still depending on the amount of beans you have, that’s okay. Your preschooler will love helping with this step. 🙂
Have your preschooler go searching for the fish! Depending on the story you’re telling along with this, you can talk about the lesson at this point. For example, you could discuss is how we are like the fish and sometimes we can get lost but that God can always find us.
You can also play this to learn colors too. Tell them to find a blue fish or green fish, etc. And see if they can hunt down the right colored fish. You can even learn counting with this too. As they pull out fish count them as they find them or once they are all found you can count them.
There are lots of possibilities here. It’s a pretty flexible activity.
Another Fish themed educational board game for preschoolers:
After we did the sensory bin activity, my son wanted to pull out his fish board game. It’s called “Here, Fishy, Fishy!” by Haba. It’s such a cute and fun game to learn colors. Totally unrelated to the sensory bin except that it’s also fish. But, I thought I’d share this one too in case you’re doing a fish themed lesson. It’s mainly about learning colors but is good for fine motor skills too because they have to fish out the right color with a little magnetic fishing rod.
I hope you enjoy the sensory bin. If you decide to use it for your preschool lessons, be sure to leave a comment with the story/lesson you used it for, I’d love to hear!
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