Sensory Week

February 18, 2019 /

My kids have been showing more and more interest in pretend play – so this weekend I adjusted our toy bins to reflect that – removing the textured balls, sensory bottles, squeaky blocks and squishies and replacing them with things like toy phones/camera, glasses, dress up hats, baby care toys, play tools and doctor sets. With the lack of sensory play happening in our playroom I decided to focus all of our projects/activities around messy sensory play this week!

But why do I care so much about Sensory Play?

It is so important and good for your child’s development. Think about your own childhood or what brings back those memories? Is it the smell of your grandma’s perfume or a certain flower that grew on your street? That’s because their are a lot of connections in the brain built by information gathered with your senses. These help tremendously with memory and learning!

It’s very calming not just for kids but for adults too – ever find stress relief with one of those zen gardens? That’s what your child gets playing in the sand. In fact most of the time when I bring out sand or rice or squishies it’s the adults who find them so intoxicating long after the kids are done playing! If you’ve got a kid whose frustrated (hello toddlers?) it can provide that same relaxation.

It’s good for tolerance building too if you’ve got a kid who doesn’t like certain textures whether in play or in food. This makes it very helpful in working with picky eaters.

It helps with language development – all those words and attributes that become so important as we gain more independence – hot, cold, sticky (as in you may or may not want to touch that). Solid, dry, wet, hard – remember your early science classes?

Finally if you are like me and have more than one kid in the house – it’s a great chance to practice those social skills like sharing, turn taking and cooperation! With plenty of whatever sensory substance to go around no one’s getting frustrated about there only being one blue cup or green bubble wand…

Now that you’ve heard the why, let’s get into it!

Sensory Activities:

In our house we mostly sit at the table for these or we set up a specific spot on the floor for us all to sit – though if it was warm enough outside I’d give them some more freedom. I also continuously use the top of a veggie dip tray. Any bigger container you have for the mess – even a baking sheet will do, but I try to keep it consistent so when they see it they know it’s not something to eat.

Jello

This one was an absolute fail for me – side note I’ve never made jello (pudding girl here) before so it was a bit of a learning curve as to what jello would act like. I found these cute shiny chocolate balls (basically m&ms) and thought they would be fun to find and sort in the jello. Added some ping pong balls, old baby spoons for digging and a few plastic animals and thought it would be great. Well, it turns out that even when added to cold jello the balls sort of dissolved, and the ping pong balls floated. I thought it looked gross and wasn’t going to be nearly as much fun as I’d hoped – I almost decided not to try it, but am so glad we did! My kids LOVED it. I’m not sure they’ve ever had so much fun with sensory play. My daughter who is usually pretty opposed to mess was squishing it in her hand, digging up the animals and giggling constantly. My son worked on concepts like cold, slimey, slippery – noticed how it wiggled and practiced cutting with a play knife. They worked together to share the bin and imitated each other putting the balls into small cups. It was so worth the mess!

Next time I’m prepared avoid the chocolates and stick with small plastic toys plus more spoons and cups for scooping or building with. We also talked about letting them have at it in the tub or outside in the summertime so we could just hose them down in the sprinkler after!

Lotion

This is an easy one to do at a moments notice and was born of necessity during a cold and dry winter with lots of itchy skin. I used to do it often in play therapy with children who were very sensitive to sensory or mess and we would drive cars through the lotion or use animals to jump around in it. It’s great because clean up is as simple as rubbing it in so for kids who really don’t like to be messy it’s an easier learning experience than paint. My kids however are so in love with sensory play that all I have to do is put out a plate or tray of lotion and they dive in! They rub it on their arms, legs, bellies and help each other with their backs – learning lots of body parts along the way. We count dots, make different faces (emotions) or letters as we lay it out and push it around on the tray to draw shapes or trace letters practicing initials in our names. This is a great activity when you’ve got a little time to kill after bath or before bedtime!

Sand

We had some shells brought back from our recent beach trip and decided to let the kids have some (supervised) fun with their kinetic sand! I love the kinetic sand as it sticks together a little bit. Its less messy and easier to clean up than real sand. Plus I don’t find that it hides in their hair or on the floor to be found over and over again quite the way regular sand does.

My three have been really into everything Moana so this play tray was a huge hit. “JUST LIKE MOANA” was uttered at least ten times by my oldest two. Lots of hiding and digging up shells, building sand castles and decorating with the shells, using them to scoop the sand or using the waves in the shells as stamps! We just had a lot of fun letting the sand run through our fingers too.

Rice

If you’ve followed the blog you know this is not the first time we’ve done colored rice. It is so easy to make (see the full instructions from our Summer theme week) and I can just throw it into a cleaned out container when we are done and store it for use over and over again. Plus while it’s not great it’s not going to kill them if they taste a little making it a great one to try with younger toddlers/mouthers.

This time we decided to use some pieces of paper towel tubes and filled them then released all the rice in a fun little avalanche. We had a lot of fun and were able to practice our scooping without spilling off the spoons which is a skill I’m ready for my kids to perfect! Again we did lots of picking it up and letting it fall out of our fingers much like with the sand and generally just mixing it around. We even did some burying our hands in the rice which my son thought felt very cool.

Pasta

Dry pasta was the one thing I did give them a little more freedom with. It just didn’t feel as if it would be as impossible to clean up or find if they decided to carry it all over the kitchen. I know a lot of moms who dye it fun colors but I figured the hard dryness was enough of a deterrent from eating it and honestly thought it was just as fun this way. We’ve done it a few times at the table before with varying extras – hidden puzzle pieces, cups and spoons, penne with string, but I wanted to do something a little different and extend on their pretend play. Since they got a play kitchen it’s been 90% making pancakes or waffles and then feeding us. So I set up a small box of the pasta, a couple of pots and a serving spoon and let them play. There was lots of pasta making – pouring the pasta, washing dishes in the sink, putting some in a bowl in the fridge. Great skill practice for when we are ready for them to carry their own plates to the sink or pour their own drinks etc. Plus they had lots of fun just cooking like Mommy!

Snow

Whether inside or outside it wouldn’t be winter in New England if we didn’t do some playing in the snow! Just walking around in our snow gear or in deep snow is quite the experience for the little ones – but when it’s too cold or too exhausting to go out we love to bring the snow inside. It’s such a fun treat to play with and talk about how cold it is, see how it melts faster or slower when you separate some from the big pile – even just to scoop into bowls and have a pretend ice cream party! Add some food coloring or your favorite winter themed characters like Rudolph or Elsa to liven it up. My kids just love building mini-snowmen too. If you are in an area that doesn’t get snow fear not – scrape some ice out of your freezer or get your hands on this fake snow (though be more aware its not as taste safe) for plenty of winter fun.

We’ve had a great time with our sensory play this week, but if you just can’t stand the mess start slow – try water play which is just as much fun to dump and pour – or even let your kids clean their own toys which tends to be a big sensory hit with most kids I’ve worked with! If you are loving these keep experimenting and changing them up – add scents like cinnamon sticks or a few drops of vanilla extract, use your sensory rice or pasta to make musical instruments, try different textures together, try mixing different colors or even try some sensory play you can eat! There are so many different ways to explore, and you and your kids will get so much out of it.

Happy Mess Making!

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