11 Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Ideas
I love to use sensory play with our kids, and what could be better than making these fun hot chocolate sensory bin ideas?! This post includes two brand new sensory bin ideas from Mom Money Kids and some other great hot cocoa bin ideas from some other great mom blogs.
Let’s jump in and get playing with some great sensory bin ideas!
Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you use my affiliate link. Full disclosure policy here
Who Is This Fun Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Idea Suitable For?
This sensory bin activity is suitable for children ages: Toddler, Preschool, Pre-K, and Kindergarten
It has a difficulty rating of Easy.
Learning Style Type: STEM, Sensory Play, Manipulatives
Sensory bins are just great at encouraging kids to use their imaginations and to dig in and get their hands dirty! It’s really tough to go wrong when using and setting up a sensory bin.
What Makes A Sensory Bin So Good For Learning?
Sensory bins are great for teaching children to:
- Use Their Imaginations
- Work With Their Hands
- Interact With Their Environments
- Build Spatial Awareness
- Develop Their Gross And Fine Motor Skills
We continue to integrate sensory bin play into our homeschooling program as we find them to be so good at the aforementioned development skills. I highly encourage parents to integrate sensory bins into their child’s educational programs.
Let’s move on to our first hot chocolate sensory bin design!
Hot Cocoa Sensory Bin Idea Number 1
This first hot cocoa sensory bin idea is a super cute edible mix of chocolate cocoa cereal flakes and brown sugar! We put in some mini marshmallows, Christmas tree figurines, a hot cocoa cup, and a candy cane garland.
We are using a white sensory bin tray to hold all of our items.
Supplies Needed For Hot Cocoa Sensory Bin Idea Number 1
- Cholocate Cocoa Cereal Flakes
- Brown Sugar
- Mini Marshmallows
- Christmas Tree Figurines
- Candy Cane Garland
- Hot Cocoa Cups With Lids
- Wooden Scooper Spoons
- Cinnamon Sticks
- White Sensory Bin Tray
How To Make The Hot Cocoa Sensory Bin Idea Number 1
This first hot cocoa sensory bin idea is very easy to put together.
Step 1: Pour your chocolate cocoa cereal flakes into the bin and push them to one side of the bin.
Step 2: Pour the brown sugar into the bin on the other side of the chocolate cereal.
Step 3: Add in your wooden scooper spoons.
Step 4: Add in your mini marshmallows.
Step 5: Add in your candy cane garland and cinnamon sticks.
Step 6: Place the Christmas tree figurines on the brown sugar.
Step 7: Let the kids play and enjoy!
Putting together this simple sensory bin takes less than 5 minutes to put together, and the kids are going to love it. You can also let your kids eat some of the bin depending on what you want them to do.
Overall, this is a really fun hot cocoa sensory bin idea!
Safety For Young Children
This sensory bin idea is pretty safe for young children. However, I always say that parents should always have some form of supervision on their kid’s play in order to avoid unforeseen things that might arise.
The trees are small items that may be put in young kid’s mouths. You are mostly watching for small items to be placed in the children’s mouths. You would also need to set some ground rules for how much of the cereal and marshmallows you’re going to allow them to eat.
How Messy Can This Get?
The worst thing in terms of mess would be cereal, brown sugar, and marshmallows getting all over the place. The nice thing about these ingredients is that you can mostly vacuum them and clean them up.
Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Idea Number 2
The second hot chocolate sensory bin idea we put together is similar to the first bin idea, but we filled the bin with chocolate flakes cereal throughout. We changed out the candy cane garland and added a gingerbread man garland, and added some additional craft foam gingerbread men items and Christmas-themed pom poms.
Supplies Needed For Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Idea Number 2
- Cholocate Cocoa Cereal Flakes
- Mini Marshmallows
- Christmas Tree Figurines
- Ginger Bread Man Garland
- Ho Ho Ho Christmas Hot Chocolate Cups With Lids
- Wooden Scooper Spoons
- Gingerbread men and women foam cutouts
- Red and Green Crafting Pom Poms
- Cinnamon Sticks
- White Sensory Bin Tray
How To Make The Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Idea Number 2
Step 1: Pour your chocolate cocoa cereal flakes into the bin and fill them completely.
Step 2: Add the gingerbread foam cutouts
Step 3: Add in your wooden scooper spoons.
Step 4: Add in your mini marshmallows.
Step 5: Add in your gingerbread man garland and cinnamon sticks.
Step 6: Place the Christmas tree figurines.
Step 7: Let the kids play and enjoy!
The second hot chocolate sensory bin idea is just a slightly modified version of the first hot cocoa sensory bin.
That is the real beauty of creating themed sensory bins. You can simply just change around the items or the base fillers in order to make a completely separate and new sensory bin idea! These bins are just too much fun.
Safety For Young Children
This sensory bin idea is pretty safe for young children. However, I always say that parents should always have some form of supervision on their kid’s play in order to avoid unforeseen things that might arise.
The trees are small items that may be put in young kid’s mouths. You are mostly watching for small items to be placed in the children’s mouths. You would also need to set some ground rules for how much of the cereal and marshmallows you’re going to allow them to eat.
How Messy Can This Get?
Again, the worse thing that can happen is that the kid’s get the cereal and marshmallows all over the floor. Nothing a good vacuum cleaner won’t be able to handle though.
How Can I Minimize The Mess With My Child’s Sensory Bin Play?
While it will be difficult to completely eliminate the mess for our kiddo’s sensory play bins, there are a couple of things we can do to reduce the mess.
- Have your kids play the sensory bin activity outside. Playing these sensory activities outside will help minimize messes inside the house. It will also help to reduce the amount of time it takes to clean up after play.
- Use a secondary container that is larger than the used sensory play bin to help catch items that might come out of the first bin during play.
- You could also lay down a larger towel, blanket, or even a tarp on the floor under the sensory bin to catch the items that end up coming out of the sensory bin.
- Try to have a good vacuum cleaner on hand to help clean up messes that might occur during sensory play.
Some additional things to keep in mind when cleaning up a sensory bin are:
- Don’t pour liquids from a sensory bin down the drain. These items might clog your plumbing drains. This is especially true if you’re playing with Orbeez or water beads. Try to throw away as much as you can in the garbage can first.
Some Tips To Make Your Hot Chocolate Sensory Bins Even Better?
- You could add some additional edible items to make these sensory bin trays even more fun. Try adding some real candy canes, or other edible candy.
- Parents could help make real hot chocolate and the kids could drink their hot chocolate while they’re playing with their bins.
- Change up some of the items in the bin and add different fillers or other hot chocolate-themed manipulatives.
- You could grab some small toys and make a fun Candyland game and play with your child.
Looking For Even More Fun Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Ideas?
Luckily we were able to find 5 additional hot chocolate sensory bin ideas for you to try with your kids. Dig into this list of interesting hot chocolate sensory bin ideas and give them a try!
Hot Chocolate Oobleck Sensory Bin Idea
This is a really cool sensory bin idea from Team Cartwright. You will first need to make some brown Oobleck for this sensory bin idea.
The tutorial on their page will walk you through how to make the brown Oobleck here.
Hot Chocolate Cloud Dough
This is a cute idea from Sugar Spice and Glitter. They took a large tub of hot chocolate and made it into a fun hot chocolate cloud dough sensory activity.
You can find the full tutorial here.
Use Canva for free to make digital assets, planners, schedules, and other fun printables!
Dyed Rice Hot Chocolate Bin
This is a cool idea from Team Cartwright. This idea uses rice that will need to be dyed brown using food coloring. The rice would need to be prepared the day before. This idea is similar to the two sensory bins we put in this post except you’re using dyed chocolate rice as the base filler for this sensory bin.
You can find the full tutorial on how to make this sensory bin idea here.
Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Activity
This is a nice hot chocolate sensory bin activity idea from Play & Learn Everyday. This idea utilizes beans, cotton balls, and cups.
You can find the tutorial on how to make this sensory bin here.
Cloud Dough Sensory Hot Chocolate Bin
This idea from Team Cartwright utilizes cloud dough as the filler material. Making cloud dough is pretty straightforward. You will need 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of oil, and some hot chocolate mix or food coloring.
This recipe is kid safe. You can find the full tutorial on how to make this sensory bin idea here.
How to Make Hot Chocolate Playdough
This is a really cool hot chocolate playdough sensory bin idea from Fireflies & Mud Pies. The entire contents of this hot chocolate cup sensory bin were made from playdough. They made their own playdough. That just looks amazing!
Find out how they made this super cute hot chocolate sensory bin activity idea here.
Find the perfect digital asset to make your own fun printables!
Reverse Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin
This sensory bin idea came from Team Cartwright. The idea here is that you would be flipping your hot chocolate filler items. Instead of cocoa flakes cereal, your main base filler would be marshmallows. Then you would put a small number of cocoa flakes cereal or chocolate candy on top.
This is definitely an interesting idea, but then it would be more like a cloud sensory bin than hot chocolate. Still worth trying though in my opinion.
You can find the full tutorial on how to make this sensory bin idea here.
How To Make Hot Chocolate Slime Sensory Bin Activity
I just really love slime activities, and this hot chocolate slime activity is so cool. This idea came from Fantastic Fun and Learning.
You can find their full tutorial here.
Learn how to start a digital printable business from home that can make you 6 figures!
Frozen Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin
This is a really interesting sensory bin idea also from Team Cartwright. For this frozen hot chocolate sensory bin, you are going to need to first make some chocolate snow using baking soda and conditioner.
To make the snow chocolate color you will need to add a little bit of brown food coloring to get the correct color. The interesting part of this sensory bin is that the chocolate snow actually turns out to be cold to the touch! Very interesting.
You can find the full tutorial on how to make this sensory bin idea here.
Here Are Some Of Our Other Christmas Themed Sensory Bins
Easy Christmas Sensory Play Toddler Activity
Hot Chocolate Sensory Bin Ideas – Conclusion
I hope that these hot chocolate sensory bin ideas have given you some inspiration to make your own sensory bins. This was such a fun activity to create and share with our kids.
Be on the lookout for future sensory bin post ideas from us as we’re always trying to create new, fun ideas for our kids to play with.
Also, be sure to subscribe to our email list for future posts and free downloads, and please Pin this post on Pinterest to save it for later and comment on our posts. Thank you!
Pin these images to Pinterest!!!
