"Acorns Everywhere" Sensory Bin

I was super excited to pick up Kevin Sherry’s book “Acorns Everywhere” from the library because I had a sensory bin already in mind for my daughter to go along with it. It’s a really simple book, perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. A squirrel is frantically hiding acorns for the Winter and tries to get other animals to help him collect and hide them as well. Suddenly he realizes he is hungry but he can’t remember where he hid all of his acorns. What is he to do??

I used split peas for my base and since I don’t live near any acorn trees, I purchased a couple packages of fake acorns from the Target dollar section. I put a metal container in the bin with some tongs and a scoop for play and I also printed out a couple squirrel clipart images from clker.com and attached them to empty toilet paper rolls.

After reading the book, but before my daughter played with the sensory bin, I hid all the acorns down inside the peas to tie the bin in with the book. I wanted her to be able to dig in and find all the hidden acorns.

My daughter dug right in. She loved finding all the hidden acorns and putting them in the metal container. We practiced counting all the acorns after she had found them and then I just set her loose to play as she chose.