Apple Sensory Activities for Kids

The smell of apples and apple pie spice is just one of those things that reminds you that fall is coming (if it isn’t already here, which it won’t be for quite some time where I live). If apple picking isn’t on your agenda this year, or you just want to bring some apple themed sensory activities into the home or classroom, read on.

Views from a Stepstool has a recipe for apple pie spice cloud dough, and now I’m wondering why I never made scented cloud dough when my daughter was playing with it. (The recipe we used had baby oil in it and I hated the smell, but she loved to play with it so I made it anyway. The things we do for our kids.)

Of course where there’s cloud dough, there needs to be play dough, too, right? Here’s a recipe for apple scented playdough from Preschool Play and Learn. Grab some apple playdough mats from Natural Beach Living to go along with it.

Make red and green “apple” stress balls out of balloons with this idea from Little Bins for Little Hands. You can even use them as a STEM activity by trying to stack them, a la Ten Apples Up On Top.

And while we’re talking about sensory things we’ve got to mention a few sensory bins, right? Try an easy and low-prep apple washing bin like this one from Busy Toddler, or make a fun apple orchard themed bin with this idea from I Heart Crafty Things.

Fun-a-Day has a great apple sensory bin made with dry chickpeas that are dyed different apple colors and uses apple pie spice to give you double sensory duty. This one is so cute! You can also use colored rice as the base if you don’t have chickpeas handy, like in this sensory bin from Life Over Cs.

Are you looking for the best sensory toys and activities for your child? Explore our comprehensive resources to enhance your child’s sensory play and development. Check out our curated Amazon Idea List featuring top-rated sensory toys and items, and don’t miss our expertly written articles on sensory activities. Start creating fun and educational sensory experiences today!

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Thanksgiving Sensory Activities

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

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