We had a school holiday today which meant even more time for some fun tikkun olam inspired sensory play with this Tikkun Olam Ocean Clean Up Sensory Bin!
The set up was super easy and the kids really enjoyed looking for the pieces of trash and oil that were polluting the water and transferring them out. Lots of good fine motor skill practice, sensory feedback, and, with our discussion guided by the handout I made about ocean pollution, a really engaging learning experience and a lot of motivation to be part of the change to help clean our oceans for real!
What You’ll Need
- Sensory bin
- Water
- Blue food coloring
- Plastic sea animals and other related ocean items (we used shells and blue glass vase fillers)
- Trash (we used a cut up plastic water bottle, net and packaging)
- Oil
- Tongs and eye droppers
- Ocean Clean Up & Tikkun Olam packet, optional & FREE!
Putting It Together
- Put your sea animals and related ocean items in the sensory bin.
- Add water and blue food coloring.
- Toss in any trash you’ve gathered.
- Add some oil drops if desired.
- Invite your children to use tongs and eye droppers (hands always welcome too of course!) to transfer the trash and oil from the sensory bin. We had a second bin to collect these items. And beach towels on hand for easy clean up!
- Discuss how the trash and oil represent the real pollution in our oceans. Use the Ocean Clean Up & Tikkun Olam packet if desired!
Finished & Loving It!
The kids’ eyes totally lit up when they saw this Tikkun Olam Ocean Clean Up Sensory Bin invitation. We’d been sick for almost a week and it was really nice to have a fun and engaging activity now that we are feeling better.
Tongs and hands eagerly went in as they separated out the trash. The oil was much more challenging to suck up with the eye droppers but using these tools are such good fine motor practices.
Hands may be temporarily dyed blue but they really enjoyed clearing their ocean from the trash and then playing with the sea animals.
We used our Ocean Clean Up & Tikkun Olam packet to help guide learning and discussion about the horrible pollution in our real oceans and how we can help. There are numerous topical learning activities there that also help the kiddos practice counting, sorting, identification and writing.
Environmental concerns such as pollution and ocean wellness are a significant aspect of tikkun olam, our duty to repair the world. It’s so helpful to have engaging hands on activities to explain these concepts to kids and motivate them to take action!
Help Repair Our World! Check out more information and activities about tikkun olam on our Tikkun Olam Page!
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