Exciting Pirate Sensory Bin Using Chickpeas

Using a Pirate Sensory Bin in your Classroom

First and foremost.. if you don’t know, a sensory bin is a bin full of theme materials and trinkets that encourages sensory stimulating play while engaging a child’s senses. This pirate themed dyed chickpea sensory bin will have children pretending to be on the deep seas and exploring the life of a pirate. (Of course, very nice and polite buried treasure hunting pirates… not the international thief kind of pirates.) If your little pirate is anything like mine, they won’t want to stop thinking ocean and pirate after this pirate sensory bin! Check out these Easy Ocean Theme Preschool Lesson Plans for more exciting activities to tie in those swashbuckling pirates!

More Pirate-Themed Activities You’ll Love!

• Pirate Counting Mats 1-10
• Pirate Counting Mats 11-20
• Pirate Rounding to 10 Board Game

Materials You Will Need for Chickpea Pirate Sensory Bin:

• 3 16oz. bags of dry chickpeas
• 1 C measuring cup
• 4 sandwich-size zip-top bags
• Acrylic paint: light blue, dark blue, and gold
• Wax paper
• Cooking sheet
• Medium-sensory bin
• Tongs
• Spoons
• Tweezers
• Scoops
• Cups
• Gold Coins
• Pirate ship
• Treasure chest
• Play bead necklaces
• Mosaic stones
• Plastic sea animals

Step-by-Step Instructions for the Pirate Sensory Bin:

Step One:

The base of this pirate sensory bin is chickpeas, and we like to dye our chickpea base for this pirate-themed sensory bin! So the first step in this pirate bin is to gather all the supplies needed to color the chickpeas.

Step Two:

Place a piece of wax paper on the cookie sheet and set it aside. This will be where the chickpeas sit to dry.  Separate the three bags of chickpeas.  Leave 1 bag of chickpeas uncolored to use for “sand.”  Split the remaining two bags of dried chickpeas by placing 1 ¾ C (¾ of the bag) of dried beans into a sandwich ziplock baggie, and another 1 ¾ C (¾ of the bag) of dried beans into another sandwich bag.  That will leave ½ C of dried beans in the last sandwich baggie.

Teacher Tip: To make this easier- you can totally just do one color of chickpeas- and dye them blue for the ocean. But we love the contrast for play, as well as sorting and differentiating.

Step Three:

You’ll want to paint one bag of chickpeas at a time. Grab one of the fuller bags and add a squirt of light blue paint to one and dark blue paint to the other. To the smaller bag add gold acrylic paint. Seal each bag, roll, and shake the dried beans to get them coated with paint.  Continue until all 3 baggies of dried chickpeas are painted.

Step Four:

Carefully pour each bag of painted chickpeas into a single layer on the wax paper-covered cooking sheet.  You want the chickpeas to fully dry before you put them into a sensory bin, so we recommend allowing the painted dried chickpeas to air dry for about 3-4 hours.

Step Five:

Once the chickpeas are dry add the plain “sand” chickpeas to one end of the sensory bin and on the other side add a mixture of the two blue-painted chickpeas.  Scatter the gold chickpeas throughout the sensory bin. 

Step Six:

Add pirate-themed accessories to the sensory bin. If you decide to keep this bin and use it more than once, be sure to store this in an air tight bin or Ziplock bag!

Dyeing Chickpeas for Your Sensory Bin

Dyeing Chickpeas is an easy way to turn an ordinary material into something worthy of the most vivid imaginations. Regular chickpeas become the beach and ocean simply by dyeing them.

It is super simple to dye chickpeas for sensory play! If you don’t have chickpeas on hand you can always substitute what you do have. Head over to our step-by-step tutorial for how to dye pasta or our simple instructions for dyeing rice.

The beauty of sensory play is that it is customizable to whatever theme or supplies you have. It’s all about inspiring imagination,

Benefits of Sensory Play for Preschoolers

Sensory play is great because while it looks like all fun- it can actually bring so much more to children’s lives. It can help:

• Build foundational skills
• Give sensory input that helps with brain development
• Strengthen fine motor skills

As your child is playing with this sensory bin they are almost guaranteed to start asking questions about pirates and the ocean. One of the most fun things that comes from these bins is the information that they learn through very authentic questions. I was always so impressed with the incredible questions students will think of! To help answer their questions check out this National Geographic for Kid’s Ocean Website.

Build Foundational Skills

Sensory bins for preschoolers and kindergarteners create the building blocks that help them understand the world around them.

It’s a safe place for kids to learn cause and effect, explore a hypothesis (what happens when I pour the rice back into the sensory bin?), and explore any theme their heart desires.

Sensory Play Helps with Brain Development

Not only is sensory play loads of fun, it actually helps to build nerve connections within the brain as children explore the movement of their hands, weight of sensory materials and focus on details within the sensory bin.

Strengthen Fine Motor Skills

Before a child can learn to write properly, they need to build the muscles in their hands. Pinching small materials with fingers and tongs is a great way to work on those fine motor skills without kids suspecting that it is ‘work’.

How do I store the sensory bin?

Sensory bins are simple, reusable, inexpensive and easy to store! We prefer using plastic storage containers for our sensory bins so that we can put a lid on them and store them on a book shelf in between uses.

The kids love the ability to pick up their pretend play at a later time.

Ways to Use the Pirate Sensory Bin for Different Learning Needs

This sensory bin is easily adaptable for learners of all levels!

• Mix this Fun Ideas For A Fabulous Pirate Unit Study into rotation with the sensory bin!
• Add in addition or subtraction flash cards and use the chickpeas as counters to help little learners. We love these gold rock subtraction printables for a fun math center in kindergarten.
• Print out or hand-write some ocean or pirate vocabulary words (boat, sail, parrot, treasure, waves…) and have your child use the chickpeas to trace and write out the word.

More Ways to Explore Sensory Bins

• Simple Bee Sensory Bin with Rice
• Easy Space Sensory Bin with Dyed Chickpeas
• Easy DIY Lemonade Sensory Bin for Kids

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have questions? Let us know in the comments and we’ll be happy to help. These are some of the most commonly asked questions about preparing and using sensory bins.

Ocean Theme Preschool Activities

This pirate sensory bin coordinates perfectly with our Summer Preschool Math and Literacy Bundle. Grab it below to get all the math and literacy centers you need for the summer!

More Pirate Activities:

• Create Your Own Treasure Map
• Counting Gold Math Activity

Summer Sensory Activities You’ll Love:

Summer Themed Activities for Kids:

• Lemon Cloud Dough
• Lemon Sensory Bottle
• Ice Painting Bin
• Summer I Spy “Flip” Board Game