Sensory play is an excellent way for children to develop their understanding and reasoning. Through touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing, they will learn more about the world around them.
This month’s blog at Little Steps Day Care looks at the many types of sensory play children can experiment with.
Tactile Activities
There are many types of sensory play, but dry activities are the easiest to set up and least messy. These can be done with items such as sand, rice, chickpeas, lentils and more. Pasta, rice and other dry objects can also be cooked and cooled to provide youngsters with a new tactile sensation.
Sensory bins are put out, all with a mix of dry pasta, chickpeas and other items. Toddlers can then experiment with how the pieces feel. A great way to teach youngsters how to distinguish between the objects is to help sort them into different containers based on touch.
Dried items such as rice and pasta can also be used to make pictures. This is a great activity that also incorporates sight if there are several colours of materials available.
Sight & Sound
The senses explored in the different types of sensory play often overlap. For example, children might be encouraged to mix coloured paints with their fingers and create pictures with them, involving both sight and touch.
It is important that youngsters are able to experiment and try new things through sensory play. They develop decision-making skills while sorting coloured objects and learn more about the world around them in a scientific way.
Children can learn new sounds and differentiate between them with some activities. You can play a white noise machine or try out different animal sounds. This helps youngsters become more aware of their surroundings.
Benefits of Sensory Play
These activities encourage children to inspect the world around them with confidence in a scientific way. They will learn to hypothesise what an item might feel like or recognise patterns, helping them to experiment and make conclusions based on their findings.
The different types of sensory play help the youngster’s brain build nerve connections related to senses and learn how to filter this information. This means they will develop the skills needed to know which sounds are important, for example, and which aren’t.
Find Out More
Get in touch with our team at Little Steps Day Care in Renhold today for more information about the different types of sensory play. Call us on 01234 889518 or 07340 956 133 to chat with a team member or send us a message via the contact form.
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