Sensory Tray Shelf

Today I got a little more organized and made a sensory tray shelf.  This way the baskets are all in one place and the kids know that these are the trays they can explore after certain lessons.  I previously posted about the new trays I made for magnets and lights and prisms.  The kids right away were creating rainbows, reflections, magnetic energy, etc.  I loved seeing their brains work and with no direction and only observation the kids really tried all different sorts of things with the objects.

In Mexico, I came across this amazing artist who created balancing rocks using the vertical side of a flat rock and then adding smaller rocks in between those.  I was so impressed that I had to bring that back for the kids to try.  I snapped this picture and collected as many different flat (or somewhat flat) shaped rocks.  Ms. Austin and I tried to see how high we could stack them without them falling over.  I am interested to see what the kids will do with this new basket tomorrow.

This is the final basket I have at the top of the shelf.  The kids love our real pattern blocks and so I figured this would be a great addition with stamping a design out and maybe copying it using pattern blocks or vice versa.

I am still trying these new sensory trays out and I think it will be a great addition for student exploration and wonder.  The students are eager to finish their work and try out all these new stations.  I am finding the kinks with only two people per basket (makes it easy when I only have 10 students) and giving them the time to explore these things on their own (which I sometimes have to hold back haha not easy for me).

Stay tuned on our progress...