Easy Sensory Table Recipes
Clean mud:
3 rolls of toilet paper
1 Shredded bar of Ivory soap
¼ Borax
Water
Best Bubble solution
1 cup water
2 T light Karo syrup OR 2 T glycerin
4 T dishwashing liquid
Mix together
Sparkle Snow
Frozen Snow Recipe
2 large boxes baking soda
½ bottle hand lotion or hair conditioner
Blue or silver glitter
Combine baking soda and lotion in sensory bin and
mix well. Continue to add more lotion and mix
until desired consistency. You want it moist and
moldable but not too wet.
Soapy Slime
2 boxes corn starch
1 can shaving cream
Peppermint extract
Buffalo Snow Iridescent Flakes
Lux flakes or pure soap flakes
Hot water
Tip your soap flakes into the tub and add hot
water….1 c soap flakes to 3 cups water. Mix with
whisk or spoon.
Flubber
Colored Moon Sand
¾ c cold water
1 cup Elmers glue
Liquid food coloring
½ c hot water
1 t Borax
Mix cold water, glue, food coloring and set aside.
Mix together hot water and borax until borax is
dissolved.
Slowly add glue mixture to borax mixture, mix, and
pour off excess water.
Try using scissors with this.
4 cups play sand
2 cups corn starch
1 cup water
2 Tbsp. colored powder
Huge sprinkling of glitter
Mix sand and corn starch in large bowl until
combined. Then slowly pour in water mixing as
you go along. By the end it should be well
combined and consistency is like crumbly pastry
mix. Add water until it can be formed into a ball.
Then stir in the powder paint and mix with fingers.
Sudsy Paint
Moon Sand II
Use a foaming soap dispenser. Add 1 part dish
soap to 7 parts water. Put tempera paint on the
bottom of a paint cup and then add the sudsy
foam. A long handled brush is used to mix the
paint and the suds.
8 cups flour
Add 1 cup baby oil
Frozen white rice
Iridescent glitter or buffalo snow
Peppermint extract
Muddy Cornstarch Paint and Cars
3 Tbsp. cornstarch
¼ cup cold water
1 cup boiling water and cocoa powder for dirt
Mix until smooth and add boiling water while
stirring until it thickens. Let children drive cars
through it and splash in the “mud”.
Easy List of things to add to your sensory table
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Rice
Moon Sand(recipe
included below)
Buttons
Beans
Chow Mein noodles
Gourds
Birdseed
Strips of wrapping
paper, scissors, and
tape…practice cutting
and taping
Pom-poms and tongs
Shredded paper
Packing peanuts and
shoelaces….string
packing peanuts on
laces to make “icicles”.
They don’t get poked
and it’s a perfect small
motor skill
Steel cut oats
Oatmeal
Cream of wheat (dry)
Snow
Popcorn kernels
Corn meal
Sugar or salt
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Pellets used for animal
feed
Shaving cream
Applesauce
Marbles and cardboard
tubes
Seaweed
Bubble wrap
Potato flakes
Oobleck (cornstarch and
water)
Curling ribbon
Water and mineral oil
Hand lotion
Paper Mache-soak strips
of newspaper and put in
blender with flour and
water
Used coffee grinds
Insides of pumpkin
Pillow stuffing
Toothpaste
Nuts and
nutcrackers/tools (with
caution)
Hair gel
Yarn and string and
scissors
Pea gravel
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Tinsel
Natural clay
Wood scraps and
sandpaper
Buttons and pipe
cleaners (for threading)
Separate bowls of
vinegar and baking soda
for mixing
Sawdust (from local
lumber company)
Homemade silly putty
(equal parts of glue and
liquid starch)
Sod
Easter grass
Water with bars of Ivory
soap
Glue
Kinetic sand (Michaels)
Paper and water
Things that sink and
float
Wood pieces and sand
paper
Magnets
flashlights
Other Sensory Table Ideas
Letters and language
*Bury letters in colored sand and let children use fat paintbrushes to “discover” letters. Students can then
write discovered letters on easel.
*Use muffin tins with a large variety of letters to sort letters
*Buy alphabet ice trays and freeze colored water for children to manipulate letters.
*Freeze alphabet letters in muffin cup liners. Give students a variety of tools to get them out.
*Mix letters in colored and/or scented rice
*Cut up a pool noodle. Write capital letters on one side and lower case on the other or a set of each.
Students can match up the letters, put them in alphabetical order, or make sight words with them.
*Spray paint Pringles chips lids gold to make gold coins during St. Patrick’s Day. Write sight words on “gold
coins”. Hide them in green dyed rice to be found. Add clipboards and a handout for children to write what
they find.
*Add shredded green paper with rhyming words written on bug shaped cards. Encourage students to help the
bugs find their rhyming pair. When found students can clip them together with clothes pins and collect bug
pairs in a Mason jar. There are many rhyming word pictures available on Teacherspayteachers.com.
*Spray paint dog biscuits white. Write sight words on painted bones and hide them in colored sand. Uncover
words with a paintbrush like an archeologist.
*Purchase letter beads (Michaels) and add them, along with pipe cleaners and word cards, to your table.
Students can string the letters onto pipe cleaners to make sight words or theme based words.
*For word-family practice, write single letters on the top ends of plastic Easter Eggs and the word family on
the bottom end. Children can match up tops and bottoms to make words.
*Add oatmeal and various sized bowls with little bears to retell Goldilocks and the 3 Bears
*Use cardboard bricks, plastic eggs with faces drawn on them, play people, and play horses placed in dry
oatmeal to retell Humpty Dumpty
*Add corn and farm animals with tongs to retell Old Mc Donald or to go with a farm unit.
*Add cooked spaghetti and plastic buildings to retell Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
*Retell polar bear stories by placing aluminum foil on bottom of table for ice. Add polar bears to fake snow,
tinsel, or Styrofoam (for snow).
*Retell Going on a Bear Hunt by adding tubes, blue paper, real or fake grass, sticks, and cotton. Use counting
bears or other small Lego people to act out the story.
*Use beans with green and yellow glass rocks for the magic beans. Use plastic/fake leaves to write letters to
retell Jack and the Bean stalk
*Add gutter extenders for “water spouts” and plastic spiders to water in the sensory table. Act our “The Itsy
Bitsy Spider.”
Math
*Sort water beads by color. Graph colors by keeping a clipboard with a graph printout next to sensory table.
*Add water bottles, cups, etc…with a variety of holes poked into them. Fill sensory table with colored water
and pitchers to fill bottles and watch as water “leaks” from bottles and cups.
*Purchase cheap rubber ducks. Write a number in sharpie on the bottom of each duck. Students can pick up a
duck and name the number. Or, put numbers on top and sing “5 Little Ducks” with children. Children count
down the ducks by taking away the next numbered duck until they end with just the “momma duck”. Add
them back to the momma duck one by one beginning with one and ending with 5 (or larger number).
*Add marshmallows and toothpicks to make 3D shapes
*Add measuring cups, spoons, rulers, and pitchers to measure volume and distance. Use sifters, bowls, and
flour so children can pretend they are baking.
*Play “Eye Spy” at Christmas time. Add many Christmas items and make an “Eye Spy scene” with evergreens
etc…Provide each child with a clipboard and list of what to find. i.e.…1 baby Jesus, 2 reindeer, and 3 candy
canes.
Science
*Add baby oil, water, colored ice. Watch as water and oil separate
*Add mirrors to the bottom of your table filled water.
*Add magnets and lots of things that will “stick” and “not stick”
*Add baking soda to sensory table. Add colored vinegar in a spray bottle. Students can spray the baking soda
and watch the reaction take place.
*Mix up a batch of “oobleck” with corn starch and water. It’s an oldie but a goodie.
*Add bubble recipe to water table with some liquid water colors. Add strawberry baskets, fly swatters, and
whisks for big fun.
*Add flashlights to any activity (that does not include too much liquid) for new thoughts on reflection and
light.
Social Studies
*Buy play rocks and add trucks and cardboard tubes to create a construction zone.
*Add plumbing pipes to water play to explore how pipes work.
*Add blocks and cars to sand play to create your hometown or school campus.
*Add baby bathtubs, clothes lines, baby dolls, washcloths, towels, and baby shampoo so children can pretend
to wash and care for babies.
Jesus Time
*Make clouds with ivory soap put in the microwave. Give people to play as Jesus ascending to heaven.
*During Christmas, add hay and dolls and blankets so children can experience real hay. Let children practice
swaddling and caring for baby Jesus. Add rocking chairs for children to rock baby Jesus.
*While learning about the days of creation, add black/yellow paper, foamy flowers, glow stars, plastic fish,
play animals and Lego people. Place items in sand and have children line them up sequentially.
*Make crosses out of craft sticks and encourage students to create a Good Friday scene with sand, play
people, and a small shoebox with a rock (for the tomb)
Expressive Arts
*Paint cooked spaghetti
*Create ice sculptures with salt and paintbrushes, water, and colored ice
*Create floating foam or sponge sculptures
*Create sculptures with pipe cleaners and a variety different shaped Styrofoam pieces
*Fill the sensory table with snow or cotton/pillow filling. Give students watercolors to paint the materials
*Add straws and string, stredded paper etc. to your sensory table. Include scissors to practice cutting skills
Winter Ideas
*Float ice cubes (frozen “bowls” of ice) and arctic animals to create icebergs. Children should try to balance
animals on the icebergs.
*String Styrofoam packing peanuts to lacing string to create “icicles”.
*Freeze animals in ice cube trays. Let students use a variety of methods to free the animals from the ice.
*Freeze water in a big bowl. Release ice into the sensory table and sprinkle salt on top of the ice. Use
droppers and colored water to create craters in the ice. Ask why they think we put salt on our roads in the
winter?
Spring Ideas
*Grow wheat grass in your sensory table or simple purchase a piece of sod. Let children water the grass.
Watch the grass grow and encourage students to role play with plastic or rubber bugs.
*Add mini flower pots, silk flowers, shovels, seeds, empty watering cans. Children may pretend to plant seeds
or silk flowers in pots.
*Add mud or dirt and worms. Sprinkle dry oatmeal to feed the worms and watch them grow like crazy.
*Frog Lifecycle can be recreated by adding green glass rocks, plastic leaves, and a foam circle for a lily pad.
Frog life cycles are available at insectlore.com
Fall Ideas
*Find a sunflower head with seeds still in it. Give children narrow craft sticks to pluck out the seeds.
*Open up a pumpkin for children to feel and dig in. Encourage them to find and count pumpkin seeds.
*Add acorns and/or Indian corn to shuck and grind with rocks (into flour) like the Native Americans.
*Purchase manual juicers from the Goodwill and sliced orange for children to squeeze oranges into juice.
*Add split peas and red pompoms (apples) for students to find and count “apples”. Add the letters in the
word “apple” for students to spell out the word apple.
Tom Bedard’s ideas are all found on www.tomsensori.blogspot.com