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Sensory Summer

10 Ways to Play with Magnets {Sensory Summer}

July 17, 2017

What kid doesn’t love exploring with magnets? Other than our magnet letters we really haven’t played too much with magnets together. So I ordered some magnetic wands and this week’s Sensory Summer theme was all about magnets!
If you want to gather all of your materials before you start, we found almost everything  we needed at Target, The Dollar Tree or on Amazon. Here are all the materials we used:
**This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. View our full disclosure policy here.**
Magnetic Wands
Pipe Cleaners
Magnetic Bingo Chips
Magnet Letters
Shape Ice Trays
Foam Shapes
Paper Clips
Magnet Clips
Magnetic Fishing Pole Set
Magnatiles
Pouch Lids
Colored Pom Poms
Melissa & Doug Puzzles
Foam Magnet Counters
Empty Cans
Clothespins
Other magnetic/non magnetic items

This summer fill your sensory bin with pipe cleaner shapes, water and use magnetic wands to play and explore! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Magnet Shapes:

We started out magnet week exploring with magnet shapes and water.  To make the shapes I cut pipe cleaners into pieces and bent them into basic shapes. The my girls used their new magnetic wands to stir the water and pick up shapes. I always like to sneak in some basic skills, so this was a great way to practice naming shapes and colors too! We found that bigger shapes were much harder to pick up, so keep that in mind when creating your pipe cleaner shapes.
This summer fill your sensory bin with magnetic bingo chips, water and get ready for lots of fun and exploration! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Magnet Chips:
After rescuing all of the pipe cleaner shapes, I poured a bag of magnetic bingo chips into our bin full of water and the girls were happy to explore more.  The bingo chips are MUCH more magnetic than the pipe cleaners so it was fun to experiment with how many we could pick up at one time, and also trying to pick up just one chip or color.

This summer make alphabet soup with magnetic letters, magnet wands, water and get ready for lots of fun and exploration! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

 Magnet Letters:
Next up, it was time for a little alphabet soup! All I did was switch out the bingo chips for magnet letters, easy peasy. I’m telling you, I LOVE that these little magnetic wands have grabbed my girls interest. Not to mention they are loving the combination of magnets and water on our hot summer days this week.

This summer fill your sensory bin with frozen bingo chips, magnet wands, and water and get ready for lots of fun and exploration! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

 Magnetic Ice:
After the girls finished playing with the magnetic bingo chips, I threw them in some shape ice trays, covered them with water and froze them overnight.  Then I threw them in our bin full of water and let the girls try to pick up the magnetic ice cubes.  I forgot to refill the bin with cold water though and they melted super fast… So if you leave your bin outside and the water gets all warm in the sun, I’d definitely recommend refilling with cold water or your ice play will be super short like ours, oops!

This summer go fishing for shapes with this sensory bin! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

 Magnet Fishing:
I ordered this magnetic fishing pole set on Amazon, but it didn’t come in time or this week’s sensory bin, so I improvised with a plastic fishing poles from our little fishing game, and magnet clips from our refrigerator.  Then I added a few paper clips to some foam shapes to make “fish.” Our magnet clips are the extra strong kind which made this activity easy and fun for both girls to enjoy.

This summer fill your sensory bin with Magnatiles and get ready for lots of fun and exploration! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

 Magnet Letter Building:
We bought these Magnatiles for the girls for Christmas and they still get played with almost daily around here. I am always trying to find new ways to get the most out of our toys (especially when they are a little pricey like these Magnatiles) so we threw them in our bin along with pouch lids and pom poms for some color. Madelynn and I tried to build letters while Aubrey practiced sticking the tiles together and sabotaging our letter building attempts.

Spice up your puzzle play with this magnetic puzzle sensory bin search. This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Magnet Puzzle Hunt:
I noticed that our Melissa & Doug puzzles had little metal knobs on them so I though we’d try those out in our bin for a little puzzle hunt. I kept the pouch lids and pom poms in the bin and hid the puzzle pieces underneath.  The girls stirred around with their magnetic wands to find the pieces. They were a little tricky to pick up because the metal piece is so small, but practicing patience is always a good thing!

Fill your sensory bin with magnetic counters, pouch lids and pom poms and have fun sorting with this sensory bin. This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Magnet Colors:
After finding all the puzzle pieces I threw our foam magnet counters into the bin.  The girls used their magnetic wands to find the counters and then sort them into circles I drew on the ground with sidewalk chalk.

Sort shapes with this Magnatile sensory bin, a perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Magnet Shapes:
Using our Magnatiles again, I traced the different shapes on the ground with chalk. Then I threw them all back in the bin and the girls tried to sort, match and stack each different shape.

This summer fill your sensory bin with magnetic and non magnetic items then sort away! This is the perfect outdoor activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!
Magnetic Sort
And finally, magnet week wouldn’t be complete without a magnetic/not magnetic sort, right? So for our outdoor version I drew 2 big circles on the ground with chalk and wrote yes/no above each circle. Then, I threw everything we’ve used all week into our bin. Aubrey was definitely too young for this one, but Madelynn enjoyed exploring and testing all of the items in the bin that we’ve used this week and sorting them into the circles.

Do you have fun magnet themed activities you love to do with your kids? I’d love to hear them!
If you missed our  previous themes, you can catch up here:

Sensory Summer
This summer we are spending a whole week at a time using the same sensory bin full of materials and coming up with different ways to play every day. See you next week when we explore, play, and get learn with…cereal!  Here are the themes and plans coming your way all summer long:
by Jessica 
1 Comment

About Jessica

Bright ideas for the little learners ~ Mrs. Plemons' Kindergarten is an education blog dedicated to fresh, engaging, and fun teaching ideas for toddlers, preschoolers, and the primary classroom.

View all posts by Jessica

Related Posts

  • 10 Ways to Play with Pouch Lids {Sensory Summer}
  • 10 Ways to Play with Sand {Sensory Summer}
  • 10 Ways to Play with Cereal {Sensory Summer}
  • 10 Ways to Play with Paper {Sensory Summer}
previous article: 10 Ways to Play with Paper {Sensory Summer}
next article: 10 Ways to Play with Cereal {Sensory Summer}

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