social emotional | Living Arrows

You know those minivan and suv commercials where they make the car look like it can do literally anything?

That’s basically the same as a sensory bin.

What is a sensory bin?

A sensory bin is a container filled with a variety of materials cultivated to ignite one or more of the five senses: touch, sight, smell, sound, and taste. You’ve probably seen water tables and sand tables at Target or Walmart. You might even have one in your backyard! There are tons of tutorials on the internet that show how to use pvc pipe and storage tubs to create a cheap table. I’ve found that those plastic under the bed storage tubs straight on the floor work wonders. You can move it anywhere (speaking from experience, don’t try to move it when it’s full) and you can store your materials in it when you’re done!

Scroll to the end of this post for a list of materials for your sensory bin!

Continue reading →

“Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart.”
— Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Being outdoors is a magical experience. Even as adults, we love to “get away from it all.” We often spend lots of money so we can go relax on a beach, camp, hike, or sit on a porch in the mountains. We crave getting back to nature. It helps us forget about the mundane aspects of life: bills, work, to do lists…

Recently, the early childhood field has seen an uptick in “nature schools” in which the outdoors is the classroom. At my last preschool in San Francisco, many of the children had limited outdoor space at their homes. Those who did often had small, shared, or hardscaped backyards. Thankfully, San Francisco has a great parks system and we took advantage of that. Nature wasn’t our everyday classroom, but at least once a week, our classes didn’t meet at our schoolhouse; we spent the day exploring in one of the city’s beloved parks.

Continue reading →