Skeleton Sensory Bin: Halloween Activity for Preschoolers

September 14, 2021 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

A skeleton sensory bin is a fun way to bring a little Halloween curiosity to your preschool activities. With hidden toy bones to uncover and a colourful base to explore, this activity gives children an invitation to dig, investigate and talk about what they find.

I like Halloween activities that offer something beyond making a decoration. A discovery tray can become a little adventure, with children deciding where to search next, comparing their finds and asking questions along the way. You can keep the play open-ended or introduce a simple challenge, such as finding matching pieces or identifying where a bone belongs.

This skeleton sensory activity from Taming Little Monsters uses coloured salt and a toy skeleton that separates into sections. Children can uncover the pieces and match them to a skeleton picture, adding a puzzle element to their sensory play.

Try asking, “Which part have you found?” or “Where do you think this belongs?” There’s no need to turn every discovery into a lesson—leave room for scooping, exploring and enjoying the search.

For another hands-on project, older children might enjoy our articulated skeleton hand activity.

Supervise throughout, choose age-appropriate skeleton pieces and avoid this setup for children who mouth objects. The salt is a play material, not a snack.

They use colored salt as a base to bury skeleton pieces, which kids can play with, dig up and name (or put the skeleton back together) as they go.

Singing “The Skeleton Dance” while you play is optional.

Head to Taming Little Monsters to get all the details and the full how-to.

[Photo: Taming Little Monsters.]

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Celebrate Inventor’s Day by Learning about Inventors

Several countries have a day set aside to honor and recognize their inventors, but Nov. 9 is a special one that’s known as Tag der Erfinder in German. It’s celebrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and it falls on Nov. 9 because that’s the birthday of Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy Lamarr is widely known as an actress but there’s a lot more to her story. You can get a little of it geared to little kids in the Little People, Big Dreams book Hedy Lamarr (32 pages, hardcover, published 2023 by Frances Lincoln Childrens Books, suggested retail price $15.99).

The book explores her birth in Austria and how she spent time when she was young coming up with inventions. She became an actress, married an arms dealer, made her escape to America and became an actress again.

But she also helped develop a frequency-hopping signal device for airplanes that was used by the Americans and their allies during World War II. That technology became the basis for wireless technology such as wifi and GPS.

While Inventor’s Day is a great time to learn about Hedy Lamarr, you can take this opportunity to check out books and do little studies on lots of different inventors. If there’s an inventor or an invention your child is particularly interested in, that’s a great place to start. It’s fun to think about all the things we use every day that didn’t always exist; someone had to invent them!

For a start here at Craft Gossip you can learn more about Garrett Morgan, who invented traffic lights; Maria Oroso, who developed a clay oven that could cook food without electricity; and more female inventors and scientists.

And for more general inventors’ fun, check out this inventors word search from Fun Findery (and another from Let’s Do Puzzles) or take a quiz on inventors and their inventions from Flanders Family Home Life.

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