Bible Verse Sensory Bin Activity

A couple of weeks ago, while searching for fun activity ideas for my Sunday school class, I came across a few different blog posts about sensory bins. Sensory bins are small storage totes or other similar containers filled with all variety of fun stuff for kids to play in- like rice, or beans, or sand, or water, along with other fun goodies like toys, rocks, animals etc. When my kids were little I had a bin of rice with sand toys for inside play, and sometimes I would fill a container with water and a few drops of food color and some plastic sea creatures to play with. This is a wonderful activity for little ones, of course remember to never leave young children alone with these activities, many of the small items are very bad choking hazards and things like beans can end up in noses and ears.

Well, I kept running into different posts about sensory bins, with lots of wonderful new ideas. One idea I saw, was to use Moon Sand in the sensory bin- it looked really interesting, and different from classic sand. Moon Sand is sold near the play dough section of the toy store, and it has a wonderful quality of being able to be molded into shape like a sand castle, without water.

So when I happened upon a small set of Moon Sand at the craft store on clearance, I decided to buy it. Then I found some other fun goodies, and before I knew it, my trip to the craft store to buy a sketch book for my son and some cake decorating tips for me and my daughter had turned into a purchase of sensory bin ingredients.

I came up with a fun Bible verse activity for my Sunday school class using the sensory bins I made. I decided to print out a bible verse in a large font, and cut it apart into groups of words on strips of paper. I then hid the pieces of paper in the sensory bins, so the children can hunt & dig them out. They will then re-assemble the verse. You can match the sensory bin to the lesson- I have thought of wonderful ideas for the creation story, and look forward to making other bins for verse hunts.

The first one I made was a dessert archaeological dig type theme. I mixed together two tubs of red Moon Sand, two tubs of yellow Moon Sand, and one tub of orange Moon Sand to get a dessert looking sand.

Here is the moon sand before it is mixed.


Here is the sand mixed.


I added some red and greenish colored decorative rocks.


Here is our verse Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 This is one of my favorite verses and happens to be the main verse for the curriculum we are working with right now.



I cut it into strips with my paper cutter.


Here are all of the verse strips.


Then I folded them up and hid them under the sand.


For fun, I added some Dinosaur fossils from a Dino Toob set (Toob sets are wonderful little well made figures with lots of different themes, my children loved them when they were younger.)



Here it is all ready to go- I am very excited to try this with my class. I teach a multi-age class and this will be perfect, they will all have fun searching for the verses and the older children who are readers can help put the verse back together.



Here is an outer space themed sensory box I also made (I mixed blue and green moon sand) - this will make a fun "Lost in Space" themed hunt.



This sensory bin bible verse hunt would be a wonderful VBS or backyard bible club activity, as well as a wonderful homeschool tool for just about any subject. Sensory bins are very fun to make, can't wait to make a few more!!