Spring is in the air and Easter is almost here! There are so many ways to celebrate the new season and holiday at daycare, including Spring and Easter sensory activities for toddlers and preschoolers. Everything from Spring sensory bins to Easter and Spring art and crafts.
Sensory activities are a great way to help develop fine motor skills, while supporting brain development and learning. When children explore materials like sand, water, playdough, or textured objects, they use their senses (touch, sight, sound, smell, and sometimes taste). This kind of exploration helps build neural connections in the brain, which are important for learning, memory, and problem-solving.
Embrace the Spring season in your child care center with some of these fun and simple Spring and Easter sensory activities for toddlers and preschoolers.
Spring Sensory Bins
The sky’s the limit when it comes to sensory bins. Simply add in your base and then your choice of seasonal or themed sensory bin elements to create any sort of themed sensory bin. These bins can be adjusted for either toddlers or preschoolers, switching up some of the items, or adding in more learning elements, such as counting or incorporating letter recognition.
Easter Sensory Bin
For a fun Easter sensory bin idea, add your filler, such as coloured rice, and then add in fun Easter-themed items like plastic eggs, plastic cups, fluffy chicks or bunnies – check your local dollar store for great-priced seasonal items. Mini themed erasers can also be a great addition to your Easter sensory bin. Ask toddlers to sort items by colours, and preschoolers to count the number of items or eggs. For inspiration, Busy Toddler has an excellent Easter egg and rice sensory bin.
Items needed:
- Coloured rice/pasta or shredded coloured paper
- Plastic eggs
- Plastic scoops and cups
- Small items: wooden eggs, plastic bunnies, fluffy chicks, erasers, etc. (nothing too small if the bin is for toddlers)
Spring Garden Sensory Bin
Nothing says Spring sensory activity for daycare like a garden sensory bin! Following the same concept as the Easter sensory bin, add some filler – in this case, you could do soil, brown play dough, or even fake grass. Next, add sensory bin “tools” like mini pails and cups, and gardening rakes. Hint: Look in the summer aisle of your local dollar store, for mini beach toys.
Items needed:
- Filler: soil, fake grass, beans/coloured rice, or brown play-dough or kineticsand
- Fake or real flowers and greenery
- Tools: mini cups, pails, gardening tools, mini pots
- Mini items: fake bugs, plastic animals
Easter Play Dough Station
Play dough is also full of endless possibilities for open-ended sensory play for older toddlers and preschoolers. You can either buy or make your own play dough for this fun Easter sensory activity for daycare. Making your own play dough can be easy – try this DIY play dough recipe!
Once you have your play dough ready, set up a fun play dough Easter decorating station. Add cookie cutters for shapes so kids can decorate their own Easter egg. Pipe cleaners, buttons, beads, and loose parts can create lots of open-ended fun sensory play. Children can also decorate their own bunny. We love this fun open-ended idea from Nurture Store. You can also print out these fun play dough mats from Picklebums, laminate them, and let kids re-use these over and over.
Items needed:
- Play dough – DIY or store-bought
- Cookie cutters: think Spring or Easter, such as flowers, bunnies, chicks, or eggs
- Loose parts: pipe cleaners, buttons, beads, googly eyes, coloured pasta
Easter and Spring Sensory Bottles
Children love sensory bottles. You can customize sensory bottles however you’d like, and they are also quite simple to make! Reuse a thick plastic drink bottle with a sealable lid, or find some at a discount or dollar store. Add water, sparkles, and your choice of filler. For Easter, you can add yellow pom poms, plastic chicks and bunnies. It makes the perfect Spring sensory activity for daycare.
For a Spring-themed sensory bottle, add in fake flowers and plastic animals like birds or rabbits. Find some great Easter sensory bottle inspiration at Raising Wild Things Sensory – how great are these sensory bottles?
Items needed:
- Empty clear bottles – reused or from your local dollar store
- Water
- Sparkles or glitter
- Mini sensory items: pom poms, plastic bunnies and chickens, mini fake flowers and animals
Spring Sensory Walk
There’s nothing better than a nice walk on a sunny Spring day. It’s also the perfect opportunity to use all of your senses and teach children about senses. A spring sensory walk is a simple outdoor activity where young children walk outside and intentionally notice what they can see, hear, smell, touch, and sometimes even taste in nature. One key benefit for preschoolers and toddlers is sensory development support.
During a spring sensory walk, children experience many natural sensations—like feeling soft grass, hearing birds, smelling flowers, or seeing colourful plants. These experiences help develop their sensory processing skills, which are important for brain development, attention, and learning.
- Listen to the sounds of chirping birds, or leaves moving in the wind.
- Look for newly emerging baby animals and signs of spring like the first tulips or daffodils.
- Feel the grass and other plants and greenery that are finally starting to appear, or the bark of a tree.
- Smell the sound of rain and new plants and growth.
Egg decorating with Paint
We love a good traditional activity like egg decorating. Instead of going through the tedious process of blowing out eggs to colour, use plastic or wooden eggs and create an open-ended art and sensory activity by painting eggs however they would like. Designs, scribbles, pictures – this is the best part of open-ended art for toddlers and preschoolers. Add another element of sensory play by letting them use their fingers to paint and decorate the eggs.
Items needed:
- Plastic or wooden eggs – check your local dollar store
- Washable paints and a variety of paintbrushes
- Washable markers and glitter glue
- Painting smocks
Easter Sensory Egg Hunt
An Easter sensory egg hunt is such a fun sensory activity for toddlers and preschoolers, and a great way to celebrate the season at daycare. It includes:
- Sensory exploration: Feeling different textures and hearing different sounds when shaking the eggs.
- Curiosity and problem-solving: They guess what might be inside.
- Movement and excitement: The egg hunt keeps kids active and engaged.
- Language development: Teachers can ask questions like “Is it soft or hard?” or “What colour is it?”
Simply fill plastic eggs with all sorts of sensory materials, close the eggs and hide them around the room, and then give each child a basket and let them search for the eggs! When they find one, they can shake it, open it, and explore what’s inside. If the weather allows and your space permits, you can even do the egg hunt outside.
What you need:
- Plastic Easter eggs
- Sensory fillers (rice, dry pasta, pom-poms, beans, or shredded paper “grass”)
- Small basket or bucket
Tip: For toddlers, use larger eggs and safe materials and supervise closely to avoid choking hazards.
There are many Easter and spring sensory activities for toddlers and preschoolers, offering lots of fun for children in daycare. Try one or try them all, and let us know which activity is your favourite
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