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From birth to early childhood, children use their five senses to explore and try to make sense of the world around them. Learning through sensory exploration comes naturally to babies and young children, which makes sense when you consider that the skills they’ll come to rely on to build an understanding of objects, spaces, people and interactions are yet to be fully developed.
Sensory play is picking things up and feeling their texture is what people often associate with sensory play, but it’s about much more than touch. Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates a young child's senses of touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing, as well as anything which engages movement and balance. Sensory play is only really limited by your own imagination, with of course some common sense being used around the materials and types of play appropriate for your child’s age and ability.
- Sensory play for babies – watching bubbles float and feeling them land on their skin, or scrunching coloured paper to hear the noise, feel the contours and see the shapes change
- Sensory play for toddlers – observing light and shadow created by torch light on objects of different shapes or sizes, or watching the colours mix and the patterns form by finger painting or sponge painting.
- Sensory play for pre-school aged children – creating shapes and playing with kinetic sand, or playing with musical instruments and listening to the tone and pitch as they strike or blow through instruments softly or forcefully.
Probably the simplest way to help children engage their senses is by playing outside with nature, full of colours, movement, textures, sounds and smells. Sensory activities, in addition to being fun and interesting for babies and young children, encourage children to explore and investigate.
Furthermore, these activities support children to use the ‘scientific method’ of observing, forming a hypothesis, experimenting and making conclusions. Sensory activities also allow children to refine their thresholds for different sensory information, helping their brain to create stronger connections to sensory information and learn which are useful and which can be filtered out. Through sensory play, the child can learn to block out the noise which is not important and focus on the play which is occurring with their peer.
Other reasons sensory play is beneficial for children include: It helps to build nerve connections in the brain It encourages the development of motor skills It supports language development It encourages ‘scientific thinking’ and problem solving It can involve mindful activities which are beneficial for all children The desire to engage with sensory play comes naturally for children and should be encouraged and supported both at home and in early learning environments.