10 Ways to Play with Paper {Sensory Summer}

This fall I filled our sensory bin with shredded paper for the first time and discovered that it was a really fun, engaging, (and easy!) sensory bin filler. So this week’s Sensory Summer bin was filled with….paper! I chose red, white and blue for our colors since it was Independence Day on Tuesday but you could really use any color you choose.

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:

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Astrobright Paper

Colored Tissue Paper

Empty Wipe Containers

Empty Water Bottles

Child Scissors

Foam Alphabet Puzzle

Colored Plastic Trays

Glue Sticks
Dot Markers
Construction Vehicles
Hand Broom and Dust Pan

Practice fine motor skills with this paper filled sensory bin! This is a perfect activity for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Paper Stuffing:

What kid doesn’t love pulling every single wipe out of the wipe container? I know my kids can’t be alone on this one. So to start out our paper themed bin I stuffed small squares of colored tissue paper into wipe containers for my girls to pull out. And filled our our under bed clear storage bin with Astrobright paper that I ran through our paper shredder. The girls pulled the tissue paper out and stuffed it back in over and over again. Lots of great fine motor practice and good clean fun!

{MORE} Paper Stuffing:
For some really good fine motor practice we used the paper shreds and stuffed them into water bottles for really pretty decorations for our fourth of July party. Later we added a few pony beads to make them into noise makers as well.

Paper Cutting:

A sensory bin filled with paper is just begging to be used for scissor practice, so one day while little miss was sleeping, Madelynn took out her scissors and we practice cutting up pieces of tissue paper into tiny bits!

Paper Tearing:

And when cutting gets frustrating, it usually leads to Madelynn tearing and ripping the paper apart. This was a great opportunity to indulge her desire and crumple, tear, and scrunch to her heart’s content.

Paper Puzzle Search:

After the paper was all cut up and mixed together it made a great base to hide puzzle pieces in. We used our Foam Alphabet Puzzle but you could really use any puzzles you have around. Just hide the pieces in the bin then hunt and find them to complete the puzzle.

Paper Sorting:

For this activity, I pulled out our colored plastic star trays and Madelynn crumpled and sorted the colors onto each of the stars.

Paper Collages:
Once our paper was really well cut up and played with, we used it to make some collages using scissors, glue sticks, and dot markers. No real end product in mind here, Madelynn just created her own little design.

Paper Construction Zone:
My girls never seem to pull out cars to play on their own, been whenever I bring them out as an invitation to play, they are super engaged! They used this set of construction vehicles to dig, fill and dump the paper pieces and shreds.

Paper Sweeping:
For our last activity I definitely needed a lot of help cleaning up the paper shreds that were every.where. The girls always want to help with sweeping, but regular brooms are too much to manage so I grabbed these hand brooms and dust pans so they could help without knocking each other out with the broom handles. Win-Win.

Paper Making:

Finally we ran out of time this week for our last activity, but I planned to make homemade paper with all of our paper bin filler. Here is a great tutorial if you want to try it yourself. I’m going to save our paper and try it out the next time we are looking for something to keep busy!

Have you made paper with your kids? I’d love to hear how it went!

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…magnets! Here are the themes and plans coming your way all summer long: