How To Set Up A Letter Dig Sensory Bin

With the weather warming up, it's much easier to enjoy sensory play and messy work, without worrying about the mess.

At home, we've been working on a Letter Dig - where letters are hidden in a bin of rainbow rice.

This is a fun way to practice letter recognition, phonics, or word building, depending on the age of your child.

How To Set Up A Letter Dig Sensory Bin

Materials:

• Rainbow Rice. Click here for a rainbow rice recipe.
• Letters - you could use letter magnets or this free printable moveable alphabet and laminate the letters
• Small Scoop

Adult Preparation: 

1. Add rainbow rice to sensory bin.  
2. Hide letters in the sensory bin and place the scoop in the rice.
3. Set it up in an area of the home where it’ll be easy to sweep up any fallen materials, i.e. no carpet.

Presentation: 

You can show your child how to explore the sensory bin or simply put it in an area accessible to your child and invite them to explore independently.

Notes:

• Sensory bins are meant for exploration so your child doesn’t need to be familiar with letters to enjoy this activity. Simply finding the letters, burying them and finding them again is an activity in itself.  
• If you’re using this sensory bin to develop the child’s letter recognition skills, I’d recommend only putting in a few letters at a time to avoid overwhelming them. 
  
  Start with letters the child is already familiar with or ones that are meaningful to them, i.e. first letter of their name, first letter of your name, etc. You can always rotate the letters or add more as they explore.
• Have some cleaning materials nearby, i.e. broom and dustpan to make clean up easier once their play is done.

Extensions:

• Place a phonics chart next to the sensory bin for the child to match and sound out the letters
• Do this same activity with numbers instead