Spring is in the air and Easter is here! There are so many ways to celebrate Easter at daycare including multiple Easter activities for toddlers and preschoolers. Everything from Spring sensory bins to Easter crafts and spring and Easter-themed art ideas. Embrace the Spring season in your childcare center with some of these fun and simple Easter and Spring sensory activities for daycare.

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.

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Easter Sensory Bin for Toddlers and Preschoolers

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. For inspiration, Busy Toddler has an excellent Easter egg and rice sensory bin.

Spring Garden Sensory Bin

Nothing says Spring sensory activity for daycare than a garden sensory bin! Following the same concept as the Easter sensory bin, add some filler – in this case, you could do soil or 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. Next, add fake or even real flowers as well as other fun spring items like plastic animals, fake bugs, and mini pots.

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Easter Play Dough Station

Play dough is also full of endless possibilities for open-ended sensory play for 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.

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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 activities 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?

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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.

Listen to the sounds of the birds.

• 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.

• Smell the sound of rain and new plants and growth.

A super fun and simple Spring sensory activity is Spring sensory bracelets. Use packing tape, create a bracelet tape-side out, and let children fill it up with signs of Spring on your walk.

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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 let kids have open-ended art and sensory time 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.

There is no shortage of Easter and Spring sensory activities for daycare. Try one or all of these and let us know which one is your favourite!

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