Let's talk about Sensory Play

What is Sensory Play?

Sensory play is any activity that engages your child’s senses: sight, sound, touch, taste,

smell, movement, and balance. You can adapt it to suit your child’s age and abilities. From toys with different fabrics and soothing music to cooking activities like mixing and pouring, sensory play can be as simple as playing with water, sand, and different textures using household items. You can also make homemade play dough, colored pasta, rainbow rice, slime, fake snow, ice paint, or sensory bins, FUN BINS!

You can make sensory play taste-safe with non-toxic, food-grade ingredients. Just remember, while these are safe to put in their mouths, they are not meant to be eaten! There's no need to give instructions. Open-ended play allows children to express their creativity freely. There's no “right” way to play! However, you might need to set up rules like no eating or throwing.

Tip: Play with a sensory bin after a meal! Hungry kids will most likely taste everything.

Encourage children to explore & create and learning will follow through hands-on play!

Benefits of Sensory Play

Creativity and Problem Solving

Sensory play encourages children to express themselves, think abstractly, and examine multiple perspectives to solve problems.

Emotional Development

It can help children feel calm and grounded, identify their emotions and develop self-soothing skills.

Motor Skills

Sensory play improves hand-eye coordination and develops fine motor skills when pouring,  grasping, stacking, transferring and exploring new textures.

Language Development

It helps children learn new words by counting, sorting, and describing what things look like and how they feel, expanding their vocabulary.

Memory and Focus

Children learn more effectively when they use multiple senses. Sensory play can help children learn to block out distractions.

How to make Sensory Bins?

If you're new to sensory bins, think of it as a process, like introducing solid foods, or weaning, for the first time. It will be messy and you need to stay close, but eventually, they will play more independently.

1. Set up the play area with bed sheets, towels or table covers under the sensory bin for an easier clean up and a visual boundary. 

2. Choose a container, tray or bucket. 

3. Add base materials like sand, rice, beans, pasta or pour water, ice, water beads or foam like base.

4. Add small objects like spoons, measuring cups, blocks, small toys, wooden tools, tongs, funnels, etc. Choose only a couple of these! 

Make sensory play suitable to your child’s age and abilities. For example: crushed cereal as a dry base to younger ones and kinetic sand for ages 3 and up.

Our favorite Bin Fillers 

• Colored dry bases (rice, pasta, beans)

• Homemade play dough (with added smell)

• Water & Ice

• Wooden tools (cups, scoops, clamps)

• Small toys