When adults think about teaching their young kids, they mostly imagine flashcards with numbers and letters, alphabet memorizing, and reading stories as everyday activities. Though these kinds of activities can be a great way to know the world, there is nothing better than sensory play for kids.
At Singapore International School, kids can participate in sensory activities as they have been around for a long time and provide many benefits. Sensory play is said to occur naturally in young children. But most parents are not aware of these kinds of plays and what benefits they provide to children. In this guide, you will learn around 43 sensory play activity ideas for preschoolers.
What is Sensory Play?
Sensory play or sensory play ideas are a type of play that can help activate or stimulate a child’s senses. Sensory play mostly focuses on stimulating sight, touch, and hearing, as these senses are the most accessible. When children are quite young, they often interact with the world mainly through the five senses, namely touching, tasting, hearing, seeing, and smelling.
Your toddler will also engage in this world with the help of balance and movement. But the five main senses are how they learn about this world and make sense of everything they experience daily. This is why you must opt for top sensory play ideas for preschoolers, especially for your kid.
Why is it Important to Play Sensory Activities?
The first three years of life are a time of rapid development and growth for your child. As your child grows from the infant stage to a toddler to a preschooler, they will take in a lot of information and turn it into a form of working knowledge.
Sensory play activities for kids can help your children get a unique opportunity to engage with the world in such a way it can help them grow and develop. Some of the benefits of these activities are as follows:
● It can help create connections in the brain that will allow for difficult thoughts and tasks.
● The best sensory play activities can also support language development and cognitive growth.
● It can help to develop gross motor skills and create social interaction and peer engagement.
● Sensory activities can also help children develop mindfulness skills.
● It can also help calm down a child who might be angry or anxious.
● Sensory activities for toddlers can also help build observational skills and abstract thinking.
● It can also help your child know the world around them and how to interact with things.
● These kinds of activities can also help encourage experimentation in your child.
Sensory Play Activities Ideas for Preschoolers/Babies/Toddlers
Sensory play can be quite a lot of fun and can also be a fairly simple thing to set up. But it might be tough for the parents to think of specific ideas to help their child take part in sensory activities. Before you send your preschooler or toddler to Montessori preschool, you can check out the list for the best children’s sensory play ideas.
Sensory Play Ideas for Smell
Some sensory play ideas for smell are as follows:
● Smell bottles
This activity includes gathering small cotton balls, plastic bottles, or other items for smelling. The items can also be linked to familiar spices, dried fruits, or beans. The children will sniff and name the smells.
● Good smells and bad smells
This is about drawing a chart with two halves labeled good and bad smells. You can share a book with children about smells, and for every smell listed in the book, challenge your kids to decide if the smell is good or bad.
● Go on a smell walk
This is about walking in the garden and focusing on how different things smell. The sensory stimulation from this activity can be considered one of the benefits of sensory activities.
● Smell and taste connection
It is about telling kids to close their eyes and use their sense of smell to guess the food you are serving. You can also ask them to taste the food to know the connection between smell and taste.
● Sense of smell arts and crafts
This is about offering smelly materials for children to use in their arts and crafts projects. Some options include scented markers/dotters, smelly playdough/slime, scented paint, and more.
● Homemade scratch and sniff
Children can spread glue lightly on heavy paper or cardboard and sprinkle gelatin at a time on the glue. After drying, they can scratch and sniff different areas to guess the smells.
● A collage of smells
You must assemble different items with smells and add cotton balls with essential oils or flavor extracts.
Sensory Play Ideas for Touch
Some of the best sensory play ideas for touch are as follows:
● Touch and feel box
It is about cutting a hole in the side or top of a box for a child’s hand to fit through. Place an object at a time for kids to feel and guess mystery items.
● Fingers and toes painting
With the use of child-safe finger paints, children paint with their hands on glossy finger-paint paper.
● Draw and guess game
A child draws a simple picture of an object on the other’s back and tries to guess the object by feeling the touch.
● Picture book
This is sharing a textured collage as a picture to see by touching the hands.
● Touch and feel collage
It is about offering various textured materials for children to glue onto a poster board background. Other details can be added if needed with markers and crayons.
● Fabric feelies game
This is about pasting different forms of textured fabrics onto index cards, and children touch the cards one at a time with their eyes closed. They can use words to explain different textures.
● Watch & Sing: “Hot and Cold on the Beach”
While listening to the song, discuss how to protect the skin from the elements.
Sensory Play Ideas for Sight
Some of the top sensory play ideas for sight are as follows:
● Read and Discuss: Arlo Needs Glasses
This interactive picture book can help provide practical topics of eye checkups and getting glasses to help with sight.
● Arts & Crafts: Design Glasses
After reading this, kids get a chance to design their own glasses.
● Read, Discuss and Experience: It Looked Like Spilt Milk
After reading this, kids will look for clouds in the sky.
● Art: Design a Class/Family Book
It can help kids design pages for a new book.
● Sing The Corner Grocery Store by Raffi
This song can help someone think about things to see if they have forgotten their glasses.
● Paying blindfold games
This helps kids to understand the importance of sight and other senses in everyday life.
● Playing see colors
This game is about collecting as many objects of the same color as possible.
Sensory Play Ideas for Taste
Some of the ideal sensory play ideas for taste are as follows:
● Cook together
This is an activity about cooking together.
● Taste learning
This is to learn different tastes.
● Edible Finger Painting
This is an activity to finger paint washed hands with any food to taste the paints.
● Edible Playdough or Slime
For this activity, recipes can be found online.
● Tasting Party
This is about children trying different foods
● Tony Baroni feast
Different cooked pasta can be offered for kids to try
● Build with Pretzels and Marshmallows
Here, children stick the pretzels into the marshmallows to connect and build.
Sensory Play Ideas for Balance
The top sensory play Ideas for balance are as follows:
● Monster Walking
This is about children pretending that they are friendly monsters toddling across uneven surfaces.
● Tightrope walking
It is about challenging kids to walk on specific lines or beams.
● Obstacle Course Stepping
It is about setting up obstacle courses indoors and outdoors.
● Crab Walking
● Therapy/Exercise Ball Sitting
These are exercises to enhance balance in children.
● One-Legged Bunny Hopping
● Hopscotch Jumping
Sensory Play Ideas for Hearing
The top sensory play ideas for hearing are as follows:
● Learn about sign language
This book teaches kids the signs for different words and ideas.
● Learn about Hearing aids
● Go on a Hearing Hike
● Noise Detectives
● Loud and soft
● Drum Parade
● Dance to the Beat
This is about showing children how to listen to different music clips and move in a matching fashion.
List Of Best Sensory Play Activities for Kids
The two best sensory play activities for kids are as follows:
● Playing with food
This is about allowing your little one to play with food.
● Sound tubes
This is about creating a sound tube for your child and connecting them with the world.
Fun Sensory Play Activities
Some of the fun-filled play activities are:
● Play dough
This is about different recipes to make your own dough using household supplies.
● Balance beam
This is a kind of activity done at local parks.
Messy Sensory Activities
A messy sensory activity is one where things can get messy, like playing with food.
Non-Messy Sensory Activities
This is another kind of sensory activity that does not get messy such as sound tubes.
Benefits of Sensory Play Activities
There is great importance of sensory play activities, and they have many benefits:
● It helps to create nerve connections in the brain
● It is fun and interesting for babies and young children
● It can help develop motor skills
● It helps develop your child’s language
● It involves mindful activities that can benefit your child
● It can help to solve problems
● It encourages scientific thinking.
See Also – How To Develop Critical Thinking in Child?
FAQs:
1. Is coloring a sensory activity for early years?
Yes, coloring offers sensory output and is a good sensory activity for early years.
2. What are sensory materials?
These are materials that childs play with that help stimulate the five senses.
3. What is the favorite sensory activity of toddlers?
Sensory bins, water play, and messy play are some of the best sensory activities for toddlers.
4. What is a small motor activity?
These are activities that can help improve a child’s fine motor skills.
5. When should you introduce sensory play?
These activities should be introduced in preschools.
6. What is sensory learning?
This is an activity that helps stimulate the five senses of children.
7. What is the Latest Sensory Activity for Toddlers?
There are many latest sensory activities for toddlers, like playing with food, playing with dough, using sound tubes, and much more.
