Creative Ways to Use Large Activity Trays

Spring-Themed Ideas

Add a grass mat along with these Spring-Themed Small World Characters. Provide some small
world trees, animals and real or artificial flowers.
Create seven bowls of coloured rice or sand and arrange in a tray to look like a rainbow. Provide some
bowls, spoons, scoops, funnels and sieves for children to use as they explore the rainbow.
Create a planting-themed tray. Provide some soil, small flowerpots, spoons or scoops and real or artificial
flowers and plants. Alternatively, you could provide brown playdough for the soil, and pipe cleaners and
tissue paper flowers for children to plant.

Draw the outline of a large butterfly using chalk in the tray. Add petals, leaves, glass
beads, bottle tops and pom-poms for children to use to decorate the butterfly’s wings.

Make some yellow playdough and encourage children to explore moulding and shaping the dough to build
chicks. Add some extra enhancements, such as googly eyes, pipe cleaners, feathers and triangles of
orange card.
Use some herbs to create a sensory tray. Add some fresh herbs to the tray, such as mint, parsley, basil,
rosemary and thyme, along with children’s scissors, bowls and spoons. You could also provide some small
pestle and mortars for children to use to crush and explore the herbs and their scents.

Hide some small world chicks and plastic eggs in a tray of straw or shredded paper.
Provide some small bowls or boxes and encourage children to make nests for the chicks
and eggs.

Spread a shallow layer of yellow and/or green rice and sand in the tray. Provide some flower wands
(paintbrushes, cotton buds or lolly sticks with tissue paper flowers on the ends) for children to use to
explore mark making.
Line the tray with a grass mat and place some small world adult and baby animals around the tray, along
with small fences or boxes for homes for the different animals. This Adult and Baby Animal Connecting
Bricks Game could be created and also placed in the tray to encourage children to match the adult and
baby animals together.

visit twinkl.com
 Creative Ways to Use Large Activity Trays
Spring-Themed Ideas

Divide the tray into quarters using sticky tape or chalk. In each section, place small world toys about the
life cycle of a butterfly along with magnifying glasses and these Display Photos. To represent each stage
of the life cycle, try providing different types of pasta shapes, such as small grains for the eggs, twists
for the caterpillars, shells as the chrysalis and bow shapes for the butterflies.

Create a Five Little Speckled Frogs tray. Line the tray with blue shiny paper or
fabric, along with some blue and green glass beads. Add a wooden disk or small log,
five small world frogs and some percussion instruments. Encourage children to sing
the rhyme and count the frogs.

Place some plastic eggs into the tray on a grass mat. Use sticky tape to create a web effect over the top
of the tray. Provide children with some large tweezers or tongs to reach into the tray and rescue the eggs
and place them into small bowls or baskets as nests.

*To ensure the safety of the children in your setting, it is your responsibility to assess whether adult supervision or other appropriate safety measures are required when carrying out any of these
activities.

visit twinkl.com