Do you need an activity for St. Patrick’s Day that will cover lots of goals and be adaptable for many ages? I have just the sensory bin for you! This lucky green sensory bin is easy to make and will be great for your younger students and older ones too. Don’t you love it when you have materials that can be used across a lot of ages? This lucky green sensory bin will help you implement engaging therapy during the crazy month of March when all the paperwork is due.
I started using festive St. Patrick’s Day sensory bins many years ago and this lucky green sensory bin is still a hit. Check out this post for more March bin ideas.
How to Make a Lucky Green Sensory Bin
All you need is a bin, some shredded green paper and green items from around your speech room. If you need more ideas for what types of bins to use, head to this blog post.
For my lucky green sensory bin, I used the following items (Amazon Affiliate links are included for your convenience. I get a small commission when you use these links):
–Aluminum Pan (these make great sensory bin containers)
–Shredded green wrapping paper from the Dollar Tree or green grass for Easter baskets
-Green toys and items from around my room
If you need ideas for green items, I grabbed vegetables and fruit from my play food, cars, insects, green cups, green markers and crayons, play money, green toy clothing items, or items from your Alphabet Sounds Tubs from Lakeshore Learning. I would love to know what green items you have found, so I can grab materials to add in my future lucky green sensory bins. You can also head to the Dollar Tree and find items that are green too.
Can You Find It? Lucky Green Sensory Bin Activity
One activity that I love to play to work on noun-functions is my Can You Find It? Game. I put items in the bin and then give clues to my students. Can you find something that you eat? Or, Can you find something that you wear?
Because I don’t have a TON of real items, I made a sensory bin activity using different green items. It includes visual supports, and visual sentence frames to work on describing the items. If you need this activity, head to my TPT store. You won’t regret having a sensory bin companion that will last you the whole month of March (lesson plans are finished, so you can focus on therapy without the stress.)
See the pictures below to check out some of the items and visuals included in this resource.
Ways to Use the Green Sensory Bin
You can use this bin to cover your speech and language goals in therapy. For articulation and speech sound students, they can hunt for items with their speech sound. Have your students hide an item in the green grass after they produce their target sound 5 times.
For your students working on grammar and syntax, work on naming the items with a plural tense marker. Or, have them create sentences with adjectives, prepositional phrases, and the correct noun-verb agreement.
This green sensory bin has so many opportunities for building vocabulary. Have your students describe the items in the bin by attributes. Or, have them look for items in specific category groups. Work on answering wh- questions while using the items. You can cover “yes/no” questions and “Who, What, Where, When, and Why” questions.
For articulation carryover, have your students create a silly story using the items in the green bin. This can work with well with your language students too. You can have them work on story retell and oral narration.
How would you use this bin in therapy? Leave a comment below and share your therapy ideas! Sharing an idea may help another SLP with using this bin.
Are you looking for more St. Patrick’s Day themed ideas? Head to this blog post and your lesson planning will be a breeze!!
Need More Sensory Bin Ideas
If you are wanting to use more sensory bins during March, head to this blog post for other sensory bins you can make. You can also plan some spring sensory bins by heading to this blog post.
Make sure you download my FREE ultimate sensory bin guide (click the pink button above to grab) and make a fun baby chick sensory bin. If you head to this blog post, you can make a chicken inferencing sensory bin activity (it’s a free download on that post.)
I am always looking for sensory bin inspiration and I am sure other SLPs are too. You can share your sensory bins on Instagram using the #slpsensorybin hashtag. If you are looking for new ideas, I recommend following that hashtag to get sensory bin updates in your feed.
