Cultivating Sensory Play

Have you ever smelled something and been flooded with memories of childhood?

Ever watched a movie or show, that brought you right back to that moment in time when you first laid eyes on it?

Ever taken a sip of a drink that took you back to a warm summers night at sunset?

From birth, children learn about the world around them through senses.

Its why babies and toddlers touch everything and put it in their mouths. Stimulating the senses sends signals to the brain that help to strengthen neural pathways.  This leads to the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks and is crucial to brain development. Children (and adults) ultimately learn, and need to experience, certain things with our own senses to comprehend them. We retain the most information when we engage our senses. By giving children the opportunity to explore different materials freely you are helping to develop cognitive, social and emotional, physical, creative and linguistic skill sets.  As they grow, senses are their most familiar, and basic, way to explore and process new information. This is why they dive hands first into exploring a new substance. It’s always interesting to see the creative, unique, and imaginative way each child approaches their play.

In order to develop and refine the use of senses, you can expose your children to sensory play.

Sensory play can be divided into five classifications that correspond to the senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. There are many sensory activities and they are beneficial to all children, even those without sensory issues. Sensory Play benefits include: developing and enhancing memory, calming an anxious or frustrated child, and learning sensory attributes. 

In our house we created a sensory bin, it’s filled with shelled corn, and a rotating list of objects that include, but not limited to, bugs (fake), measuring spoons, shovels, tongs, and utensils. Rice, dried beans, sand, pebbles, and oatmeal are all great (and inexpensive) bases for a sensory bin. I eventually plan to start swapping the contents, and themes of the bin. Just look at Pinterest, you’ll be surprised at all the interesting and inexpensive items you can put in a sensory bin.

I’ve highlighted some examples of easy, inexpensive ways to spend time engaging your kids in sensory play at home:

TOUCH

• Make use of stimulating textures or objects around the house- ice cubes, homemade play dough, yogurt paint, shaving cream, snow, pom poms, pipe cleaners
• Include your kids in chores that require using muscles- loading the laundry in a front loader, clean together (sweep, dust, wipe counters)
• Play engaging activities- tossing or catching, make an obstacle course, jump on a trampoline or the bed, march around the house, cuddle

SIGHT

• Explore with colors, colored rice, colored spaghetti, pom poms, water beads, painting in plastic ziplock bags
• Play catch, Do a dot Printables, play peekaboo or hide-and-seek
• Engage the outside world with a game of “I spy”  call out the truck driving by or objects on a walk

HEARING

• Engage your child’s musical side: play or listen to an instrument or sing songs.
• Play listening games: sit very quietly and try to guess the sounds you hear, talk about different animal sounds
• Experiment with volume: play with the stereo dial to investigate loud and soft sounds.

SMELL

• Include your kids cooking with strong smelling scents; garlic, cocoa, lemon, vanilla, mint
• Add essential oils & natural food coloring to playdough
• Make use of the great outdoors: go on a walk and smell the flowers, wet grass & dirt

TASTE

• Experiment with opposites: try frozen foods versus hot foods, salty versus sweet, crunchy versus soft, etc.
• Always keep a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables, foods that enhance children’s health, and, therefore, senses.
• Encourage children to cook with you and explore their tastes: sweet, salty, bitter and sour.

The ideas are really endless, and there is no wrong way, so hopefully these will help you out if you are ever in a rut with finding an idea to occupy your little ones. And when I don’t want to deal with the mess at home, or we need to get out of the house during the VT winter, we go to places like Wildflower Studios, and Champ Lane at the Echo Center.

I hope you see the value in sensory play and will find the urge to try some of these activities with your little ones!

How do you incorporate sensory play at home? Do you have any fun ideas for sensory play? I would love to hear some new ideas!