Name Bin

Objective: Uncover the letters of their name by sifting through the rice using their hands and/or sensory bin tools!

Benefits:

Created as a fun way to begin letter recognition! This bin builds concentration, focus, and confidence as she repeatedly retrieves the letters from the rice, and sets them aside to spell out the letters of her name! Grasping the small grains of rice is great for fine motor development and finger dexterity.

Basic Materials:

This bin consists of alphabet letters that spell out your little ones name, a tool to dig and scoop, and rainbow rice dyed with food coloring. A link here on how I made it! I have also linked both the felt and wooden letters used here from separate Etsy shops, however sponge or magnet letters work just the same!

How I Interact:

I demonstrate by uncovering a letter, pulling it out and then putting it back in and hiding it. I then handed her the tongs and let her dig. Yumi opted to use her hands for the majority instead and enjoyed sloshing the rice around to find the letters of her name. As she pulled each letter out I would say “Y, you found the Y”, and so on. Making sure to identify and repeat the name of each letter as she found them, before placing it down on the mat in proper spelling order.

She fully ran off before finding the last letter hidden in the bin and didn’t even bother pulling out the capital Y, which is a good indicator that she has lost interest and checked out. At this point, as with any bin I sign in ASL and say “all done” and begin to clean up.

For older kiddos I would make the added distinction between upper and lowercase letters, but at 16 months this merely serves as an introduction to building up letter recognition!