St Patrick's Day Sensory Play Activities (2024)

FAQs

What are the best practices for sensory play? ›

Sensory play encourages learning through exploration, curiosity, problem solving and creativity. It helps to build nerve connections in the brain and encourages the development of language and motor skills.

In this article, we'll give you some ideas to help early learners explore their sense of touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. While of course we know there are more than five senses, these are the easiest ones to set up inside a classroom. So we'll keep things simple and stick with those.

Sensory play has an important role in your child's development. Not only does it help your child engage their five senses—sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste—but it also boosts their language skills and motor skills. Sensory play also promotes exploration, creativity, curiosity, and problem-solving.

Sensory play supports scientific thinking which involves inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating encourages a child to use their senses to discover new aspects. It delivers on Outcome 4 of the Early Years Learning Framework.

Play With A Purpose

"It fosters the development of essential skills in all children, supporting their growth and learning. Sensory toys that offer tactile sensations, soothing sounds, and visual features can effectively promote relaxation and reduce anxiety in children."

When used repeatedly throughout a child's day and week, sensory inputs help to calm their lower brain systems and provide a foundation for social engagement (relate) and higher-level thinking (reason). Examples of sensory inputs include: weighted blankets and toys.

Is playdough a sensory activity? ›

Playdough is a great sensory and learning experience for children. Playing with playdough is good for creativity, muscle strength and fine motor skills.

For sensory play in the classroom, explore ways to carry this exploration home. Share handouts about the benefits of sensory play or ask students to journal their experience. You may also have students create their own 'I-Spy' sensory bag that they can take home to practice sight words or math problems.

According to this framework, there are four sensory processing patterns: registration, sensation seeking, sensory sensitivity, and sensation avoiding. Based on these four patterns, it is possible to interpret the child's behavior from a sensory point of view (19).

Treatment often happens in a place called a “sensory gym.” These gyms have things like swings, weighted vests, ball pits and “squeeze machines” that provide calming pressure. OTs might also do something called brushing. A common routine called the “Wilbarger protocol” involves using a soft brush in a specific way.

There are the ones we know – sight (visual), taste (gustatory), touch (tactile), hearing (auditory), and smell (olfactory). The three we're not so familiar with are vestibular (balance), proprioceptive (movement) and interoceptive (internal).

Conclusion: The Magic of Sensory Play

By engaging the senses, fostering sensory awareness, enhancing cognitive skills, nurturing emotional well-being, developing motor skills, and encouraging social interaction, sensory play paves the way for a rich and meaningful educational journey at Montessori Academy.