Every year I roast up our pumpkin seeds from the Jack-O-Lanterns. They usually go pretty quick around here.
This year, though, it seemed the seeds were kind of woody. They hung around for over a week, and I was about to pitch them in the trash, when I decided to use them for simple Thanksgiving Sensory Play.
Those seeds could also be used in some other fun Thanksgiving crafts & activities.
This Thanksgiving activity would be perfect after doing our Mayflower craft.
Thanksgiving Sensory Play
To make this sensory bin for Thanksgiving, I grabbed our big round plastic tub and added the roasted pumpkin seeds.
It just didn’t seem like enough at the bottom of our large tub, so I decided to add some of our colored rice using the fall colors of orange, green, and yellow.
Then I added a strand of colorful beads, reminiscent of the beads the settlers and Native Americans may have traded. I also added some turkeys from our animal collection.
I knew my husband had a couple (affiliate link) Playmobil Native American figures in his old collection, but I was surprised to find a teepee as well.
Since we didn’t have any actual pilgrim characters, I settled on a Playmobil knight, and covered his silver armor with black construction paper and made him a little hat.
I sprinkled a tiny bit of cinnamon across the seeds and added a few of our clear plastic pumpkins from our earlier fall sensory bin.
The kids could NOT wait to get their hands on it!
I loved watching them recreate parts of the Thanksgiving story that we’ve talked about.
I also loved how the colored rice swirled with the pumpkin seeds, and at some point plastic dishes were involved as they dished up quite a colorful Thanksgiving feast.
This simple Thanksgiving sensory is the perfect use for some of those leftover pumpkin seeds.
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Nicole says
That’s so neat! I’m just getting started with sensory play with my infant but I love your idea here for the bigger kids and pretend play with the sensory bin. Thank you for posting!
Blessings,
Nicole
WorkingKansasHomemaker.com
OneMommy says
I wish I had gotten started with sensory play when mine were both babies. So fun! 🙂
Donna DM Yates says
Good idea. I can think of some pretty autumn pictures using those.
Chelsey says
Love the use of the pumpkin seeds in this sensory bin! Thanks so much for linking up to Discover & Explore!
Cerys @ Rainy Day Mum says
This is such a fantastic sensory bin I love how you have got some of the background about Thanksgiving in it as well.
Thank you for linking up to Tuesday Tots this week and just popping by to let you know that I will be featuring this over on Rainy Day Mum this week.
OneMommy says
Thank you so much for featuring it!
They’ve had fun playing with it off and on over the past week. 🙂