• About
  • contact
  • Advertise

Picklebums

Activities, recipes, free printables and life with four kids

  • Home
  • Activities for kids
  • family food
  • parenting
  • Printables
  • farm tales
  • shop

Beach Sensory Play – A no water salt tray idea.

Posted on June 4, 2013 7 Comments

This fun beach themed small world play is easy to set up and lots of fun!

There is no water in this beach sensory play set up so it’s a great, low-mess, sensory bin idea that is perfect for a beach or ocean themed learning activity, or just a fun beach themed activity for at home or in the classroom.

Whether you are learning about the beach, or just wishing you could visit, this beach salt tray imaginative play set up is sure to be a hit with your kids!

The Beach - coloured salt imaginative play scene

This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. Thanks.

When my preschooler was feeling left out of his older siblings play, I decided to try something new and set up some coloured salt sensory play. We decided on a beach themed sensory bin and it wasn’t long before the older kids wanted to join in too and everyone was playing together again!

This beach sensory salt tray idea was easy to set up and lots of fun to play with so I thought I’d share how we did it.

Table of Contents
  • At the Beach – Sensory Salt Tray
  • Supplies for Making a Beach Sensory Salt Tray.
  • How to Make Coloured Salt for Sensory Play.
  • How to Set up A Beach Sensory Play Tray.
  • More Sea and Beach Activities.
The Beach - coloured salt imaginative play scene

At the Beach – Sensory Salt Tray

There is no water involved in this beach sensory activity so it’s a low-mess option for beach or sea themed sensory play that you can leave out for a longer period of time, and play with it over and over.

The coloured salt offers a new sensory experience and it works well for setting up a small world scene for lots of awesome imaginative play.

Kids of all ages will enjoy the sensory play and the imaginative play offered by this simple beach sensory slat tray.

If your kids love beach and ocean themed activities they will love this ocean animal craft with free templates, and these fun, free printable, sea drawing prompts for kids.

The Beach - coloured salt imaginative play scene

Supplies for Making a Beach Sensory Salt Tray.

You’ll only need a handful of supplies to set up this beach themed sensory play activity.

  • large container/tub (we used an under bed storage container)
  • salt (approx 1kg for a large tub)
  • food colouring (blue and yellow)
  • 2 bowls for mixing the salt and colouring
  • 2 spoons
  • sea creature figurines (we used penguins and seals, but you could use any sea creatures you like)
  • assorted rocks, glass gems and sea shells.

Sensory Play Tip!

Plastic under bed storage containers make great sensory play tubs. They are large enough for a few children to play together, they are the perfect height to sit on a table with sides high enough to contain mess, and they have a lid so they are easy to pack away and save the play for another day. You can often find them for a good price at the dollar store.

2 seal figurines in a blue coloured salt tray

How to Make Coloured Salt for Sensory Play.

Making the coloured salt for this beach sensory play tub is a quick and easy process that the kids will love to help with.

Simply put the desired amount of salt into a bowl add a quite few drops of food colouring (the more you add the brighter the colour will be, but too much colour may mean it comes off onto hands) and mix with a spoon. It will take a bit of mixing to get the colour to disperse through the salt, so give each child a turn at mixing and add more food colouring along the way if needed.

Allowing the salt to completely dry before you play with it will reduce the amount of colour that comes off onto little fingers.

The Beach - coloured salt imaginative play scene

How to Set up A Beach Sensory Play Tray.

Once your coloured sensory salt has dried you can put it into your sensory tub. We did half yellow and half blue to represent the sand of the beach and the sea water.

Now your can collect your items and accessories to go into your beach small world. Get the kids involved by talking to them about what things they might see at the beach, and what sort of animals might be on the beach and what would be in the sea.

My kids choose some penguins and seals for an Antarctic beach scene!

We set up a line of rocks between the beach and the sea to try and keep the coloured salt from mixing too quickly, but we didn’t worry too much about this as little kids love mixing colours and seeing what happens.

The Beach - coloured salt imaginative play scene

The blue and yellow sensory salt will mix together to make green, which sparked my kids to come up with a whole new sea themed idea of the deep green stormy ocean!

This simple beach sensory play tub is a great activity for kids of all ages. It’s a fun imaginative play set up that works for kids of different ages to all play together.

The Beach - coloured salt imaginative play scene

More Sea and Beach Activities.

If you are working on a beach or sea learning theme, or your kids are interested in sea creatures, mermaids, or the ocean, these sea and beach activities are lots of fun!

Try this easy sand playdough recipe!

mermaid play dough mat and accessories

Make a mermaid with this free printable mermaid playdough mat.

ocean play dough mats

Find this ocean playdough mat set in our shop!

Printable shark puppets - song your own version of the baby shark song!

Make some free printable shark puppets!

printable sea drawing prompts with kids drawings

Try these sea drawing prompts

Polar Habitat Imaginative play - plus lots of books and craft ideas for the Arctic and Antarctic

Have fun with this polar habitat imaginative play.

113 shares
  • Share
  • Tweet

Filed Under: Activities for School Kids, dramatic play, Preschooler Fun, sensory play, Toddler Fun Tagged With: imaginative play

Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

  1. Caz says

    Love this post, the coloured salt looks great as water and sand! Had to smile that the kids all ended up playing together after all, so sweet.

    Reply
  2. Kate@LaughingKidsLearn says

    This is an adorable post Kate. I am the youngest of three sisters with a 8 year gap between me and my next eldest. I remember them often wanting me around but feeling shattered when they didn’t. Your darling little boy. What a wonderful way you went about not just making him feel better but bringing all your children together. Great post. Salt activities are awesome.

    Reply
  3. JDaniel4's Mom says

    This looks like so much fun! I love all the little details you added to your bin.

    Reply
  4. Jode@mummymusingsandmayhem says

    Loving all these clever and creative ideas with salt. So sweet how your activity brought them all together to play! Thanks so much for including our salt activity too x

    Reply
  5. Ness says

    How beautiful that everyone was engaged and working together – and no wonder! That tub is gorgeous. I want to play too! Thanks for including our salt painting in your round up.

    Reply
  6. Sam says

    I love that you used salt for your lovely imaginative play world. Such a great idea and so sweet to see all of the kids enjoying it together. When I make an imaginative play world for my son, I enjoy it just as much as he does.

    Reply
  7. Emma (My Little 3 and Me) says

    Oh this looks super. I love that the older ones still like imaginative and sensory play too.

    Reply

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Home » Beach Sensory Play – A no water salt tray idea.
welcome
pinterestfacebooktwitterinstagram

Search around a bit…

You might also like…

Five Cheeky Monkeys and a Crocodile! Free printable puppets

Five Cheeky Monkeys Printable Puppets… and a Crocodile too!

Free printable play dough mats - print all of our play dough mats for loads of play dough fun!

Fabulous Free Printable Play Dough Mats

Find our printable puppets here Find our easy art activities here find our easy dinner recipes here

Find Activities by Age

  • Baby play
  • Toddler Fun
  • Preschooler Fun
  • School Kids Fun
  • Fun for Everyone

Subscribe to our newsleter

We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, learn and live, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, and we pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Find posts by month

Browse all my crazy categories

Copyright © 2021 • Powered by WordPress
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Home
  • contact
  • advertise
  • Privacy Policy