Counting and Color Matching Pompom Ice Cream Hair Gel Sensory Bag

Inside: How to make this hair gel sensory bag with a cute ice cream twist! Use it to learn counting and color matching.

Riley (4yo) is all quiet in our learning room. My heart skipped a beat and I peeped in quickly.

There she is, eyes on the pompoms, little fingers pushing them around the bag.

I have this hair gel sensory bag to thank for these priceless ten minutes of focus.

It’s not hard to guess this is my children’s favorite activity from our ice cream theme shelf.

Fun sensory bag for toddlers and preschoolers — This is an amazing fine motor skill activity!

Related: Another brilliant clothespin ice cream activity that kids will love!

2 in 1 counting and color matching hair gel sensory bag

Let me be up front about this: I do not love using plastic Ziploc bags. But if I am going to use one for a good activity, I better make sure it gets played as long as possible.

That’s why I made this into a 2 in 1 activity. The same sensory bag becomes 2 different activities simply by switching out the activity cards. Refreshing the activity with this simple hack keeps children interested in this bag for a longer time.

Color matching with Pom Pom ice cream sensory bag — Activity 1: Matching colors of pompom ice cream scoops with the colors on the cones

Counting with pompom ice cream sensory bag — Activity 2: Counting pompoms ice cream scoops to match the number on the cones

Make this a travel activity

I attached the sensory bag onto a piece of cardboard to make it easy to carry around.

On our recent road trip, we brought this along and it worked brilliantly to engage my children (or distract them from asking “are we there yet?” for the 14364th time).

Materials

15 pompoms in 5 colors (I used blue, pink, yellow, orange and green.)
A bottle of hair gel (I got the cheapest bottle from The Dollar Store.)
A gallon Ziploc bag
A 12” by 12” square cardboard
Tape ( I used painter’s tape here.)
Ice Cream Cones Printable. This 2 in 1 activity sheet is in our subscribers-only Printable Page. Join my newsletter to receive the password to access all my printables.

Ice Cream Cones Printable is available on our Printable Page. Sign up here to access all our printables.

How to make this sensory bag with hair gel

Fun sensory bag for children to learn color matching

Watch this video tutorial or follow the steps below.

Empty the bottle of hair gel into the Ziploc bag.
Put all the pompoms into the Ziploc bag.
Squeeze out air from the Ziploc bag.
Secure the hair gel sensory bag onto the square cardboard with tape, leaving the top edge open.
Print out 2 copies of Ice Cream Cones printable.
Prepare the activity sheets: 1) Color the circles according to the colors of the pompoms you used (I used dot stickers here) and 2) write numbers 1 to 5 in the circles.

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