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Create a sensory bin with a variety of items like beans, rice, or water beads. It allows children to explore different textures and sensations, promoting tactile exploration and fine motor skills. Ensure the materials are safe and appropriate for your child's age and needs.

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To make the bubble paints mixed water and paint (1:1 ratio) in a bowl and squirted in a bit of washing up liquid. Playing with bubbles provides many opportunities for the development of speech, hearing and language.

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Use pillows, cushions, blankets – whatever you can find.

As well as the five senses, we also interact with the world through body awareness, movement and balance

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Engage your child in making and playing with homemade play dough. It's a fantastic way to develop muscle strength, improve hand-eye coordination, and stimulate sense of touch. Add natural scents like lavender or peppermint for an added sensory experience.

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Introduce your child to visual sensory play by creating a calm environment with sensory lights. LED light strands, lava lamps, or fibre optic lights can be intriguing and soothing. They help in reducing stress and improving visual tracking skills.

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Fill bottles with different materials such as beads, rice, or water to create varying sounds. This auditory sensory activity encourages listening skills, auditory discrimination, and can have a calming effect on children.

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Create scented sensory bags using zip-lock bags filled with items like scented gel, herbs, or spices. It's a safe and mess-free way to explore smells, supporting the development of smell differentiation and memory.

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Design a walking path in your garden or a room with different textures such as grass, sandpaper, or foam. Walking barefoot on these surfaces can enhance body awareness, balance, and sensory integration in children.

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Some great ideas here from the BBC Tiny Happy People 

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Some great ideas here from the BBC Tiny Happy People 

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Sensory Play Activities for Children with Special Needs

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Sensory Play Activities for Children with Special Needs

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This blog has been written with the help of our industry expert, Georgina Durrant, a former teacher/Special Educational Needs Coordinator and founder of The SEN Resources Blog. She shares with us her favourite sensory play activities for children with special needs which are guaranteed to stimulate the senses, keep children engaged and ignite their creativity and imagination.
Sensory play is wonderful and a firm favourite activity for many children! It's not only enjoyable for lots of children but it can also be really beneficial to their development. Sensory play is simply an activity that enables children to use their senses. This could be their sense of touch, smell, taste (safely), sight or hearing. It could be playing with sand, splashing water, finger painting, experimenting with reflective surfaces or listening to musical instruments. The possibilities are almost endless. Sensory play is often calming and fun. It can also help with communication skills, creativity and fine motor skills.

Sensory play activities are important for all young children but especially so for some children with Special Educational Needs, for whom sensory play can help them to develop key skills and sometimes regulate their emotions. I'm a former teacher SENDCO and now tutor for children with Special Educational Needs and in my book, '100 Ways Your Child Can Learn Through Play (fun activities for children with SEN)', I've dedicated a whole chapter to sensory play activities- for this very reason.

7 SEN Sensory Play Activities to Try at Home or in Your Setting

My Favourite Sensory Play Activities:

Play Dough/Soft Dough

A firm favourite of mine! Cutting, squishing and kneading play dough/ soft dough is wonderful for stimulating a child's sense of touch. Children can also develop a range of other skills including creativity and fine motor skills whilst manipulating the dough.

Water Play

Whether it be pouring, scooping, splashing or playing with bubbles - water play is an exciting and well-loved sensory play activity. It's low cost and easy to set up and you can keep enriching a child's water play by adding new equipment (containers, scoops, spoons, beakers etc) or changing the colour of the water.

Home Made Pretend Snow

We don't get enough snow days in the U.K so why not let your child have a snow day, whenever they want by creating your very own fake snow. All you need is 8 cups of cornflour and 1 cup of vegetable oil. Mix them together and ta dar! Children will love the soft crunch of their fake snow in their hands...and they'll be even happier when they discover it's not as cold as real snow!

Mud Pies

Rustle up some fabulous muddy treats together and enjoy the sensory experience of the range of different textures of mud from sticky and gloopy to dry and hard. Add to their fun by providing various different containers and equipment.

Kinetic Sand

I adore this resource. It's honestly like magic. One minute you can roll it into a ball, the next it's falling from your hand like sand... incredible and very well loved by children. It's a great sensory play activity if you're (like many of us!) wary of making too much mess. It's amazing seeing how mesmerised children can become whilst playing with kinetic sand.

Light Table Play

Light tables are a really popular resource and fantastic for sensory play that stimulates the sight sense. Children can use them to do a range of activities on, from counting, drawing, sorting or even sand play.

Make a sensory Den

Sensory dens and tunnels are fantastic for so many children. They can even help some children relax when feeling overstimulated. There are wonderful ones you can buy but you can also have a go at making your own together with your child. You could add mirrors, lights, bubble tubes, soft blankets and cushions. All to add to the sensory experience.

For more activities visit The SEN Resources Blog and preorder my book: 100 Ways Your Child Can Learn Through Play - Fun Activities for Young Children with SEN. We have an amazing collection of sensory play resources and toys for you to choose from - including mesmerising sensory lights, fidgets toys to sensory building blocks and sound balls. Shop our top sensory play resources below! ﻿

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Sensory Play Activities for Children with Special Needs | Early Years Resources

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Sensory play is amazing for children, especially those with special needs. Try our top 7 sensory play activities. They're guaranteed to ignite imaginations!

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sensory play ideas and summer activities for kids with autism

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Fun Summer DIY sensory games that will help improve motor skills

As the temperature rises and kids head home for the summer, parents begin looking for activities to fill the days. Here are 10 projects that incorporate new textures, colors, smells and sounds that will give your children a great new sensory experience and help improve motor skills!

For even more sensory play ideas, check out our Autism Speaks Pinterest boards!

Note: Autism Speaks does not endorse any of these activities, we are simply sharing recommendations from our community. Before taking part in any activity, please make sure all materials are safe for your child. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share below! Happy playing!

10 Sensory Activities for Autism

The secret to these brightly-colored beans? A mix of regular food coloring and neon food coloring!

This mom got THREE DAYS of play time out of this ice tower!

You only need 3 items to make this fabulous, fun slime!

This "glowing" water is actually made out of ground-up vitamin pills and glows under a black light!

This fun game involves balancing on a "web" while gathering letter tiles to spell words.

A simple to make board that will provide hours of entertainment for young ones!

This site actually includes 30 interesting methods to stamp paint: from using fruit and veggies, to water balloons, to toilet paper rolls!

This is the perfect activity for a hot, summer day! Find out how to make this magic, "melting" snowman!

These are perfect for bath time!

Just add toy cars, and it's a rainbow car wash!

Check out our Pinterest page for more GREAT sensory play ideas!

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10 Sensory Activities for Autism | Autism Speaks

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Click here for 10 fun DIY sensory activities and games that will give children great new sensory experiences and improve motor skills!

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Sensory bags are a great 'no mess' sensory exploration activity. You can squeeze any liquid such as oil or washing up liquid into a zip lock bag, adding glitter, sequins or paint of your choosing. Seal the bag securely and push the contents around. This activity promotes fine motor skills and children's communication skills when requesting their contents choices.

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Sensory bins allow your children to explore and play while keeping the sensory material of choice in one place! There are some great ideas here!

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A whole month of fabulous sensory play ideas that kids of all ages will love.
I've previously shared the enormous benefits of sensory play to brain development, and these experiences are not just important for babies and toddlers. Children of all ages benefit from sensory play. Beyond the positive impact upon the brain, sensory play also aids the development of thinking skills and fine and gross motor skills, and it can also act as a great stress reliever.

I personally love sensory play activities as they are simple to set up, generally requiring just a handful of items you'll most probably already have in your home. Yes, some sensory play ideas are messy but by putting in place simple measures to limit your child's play space, the mess can generally be restricted.

For example, try setting the activity up as a sensory bin so that it is contained within a large plastic tub/bin, set up on a mess mat on the floor (we've even used a small blow up pool as a rice play pit), or take it outdoors where the mess won't matter quite so much. Have clean up tools such as a dustpan and brush or wet wipes nearby before you begin to make clean up easier too.

Today I'm sharing 31 Days of Sensory Play Ideas. These ideas are great for days at home or as after school activities. I've sorted the ideas according to which of the five senses is the main focus of the activity (though they, of course, mostly engage all of the senses!). You could work through the list in order, or mix up the days to explore a different type of sensory activity each day. Enjoy!

Sensory Play Ideas for Touch

1. Frozen Dinosaur Eggs

2. Texture Balloon Sensory Play

3. Beach Sensory Play

4. Farm Sensory Play

5. Fluffy Slime

6. Jungle Slime
Related: 5 Games That Develop the Sense of Touch
7. Bubble Bin Sensory Play

8. Digging for Worms Sensory Play

9. Make Silly Putty

10. Rainbow Slime

11. Sparkling Flower Water Play

12. Shaving Cream & Bubble Wrap Play

Sensory Play Ideas for Sight

13. Fizzy Cloud Dough

14. I Spy Sensory Play

15. Slow Motion Sensory Bottle

16. Mermaid Fabric Sensory Board

17. Water Beads Sensory Window Bags

18. Rainbow Chickpeas

19. Exploring Magnet Sensory Play

Sensory Play Ideas for Smell

20. Scented Sensory Bottle

21. Rosemary Rice Sensory Tub

22. Lavender Sensory Rice

23. Scented Rainbow Sensory Science

24. BEST Ever Scented Playdough Recipe

25. Scented Snowflake Soup Sensory Play

Sensory Play Ideas for Sound

26. Don't Ring the Bells! Obstacle Course

27. Rainstick Sensory Bottle (check out the video below for instructions)

28. Exploring Sound Treasure Basket

Taste-Safe Sensory Play Ideas

29. Stuck in the Mud Sensory Activity

30. Edible Glitter Finger Paint

31. Hot Chocolate Cloud Dough

And, if after all of that you are looking for more sensory play-spiration, you might like this collection of the Best Sensory Toys for Kids and 15 Ways to Have Fun with Mud.

Christie Burnett is an early childhood teacher, presenter, writer and the editor of Childhood 101. More importantly, she is a Mum who believes wholeheartedly in the value of children learning through play, the importance of quality early education, and the togetherness of family.

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31 Days of Sensory Play Ideas. Kid Approved! - Childhood101

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A whole month of fabulous sensory play ideas that kids of all ages will love. I've previously shared the enormous benefits of sensory play to brain development, and these experiences are not just important for babies and toddlers. Children of all ages benefit from sensory play.

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Treasure baskets provide a multi-sensory approach to learning. Click on the link for treasure baskets ideas.

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Treasure baskets can be filled with everyday objects which then become a treasure trove to ignite and spark imaginations and learning. Becky includes a rich diversity of items in her baskets to evoke different responses. Here she tells us about their appeal, both for herself and her children.

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To make cloud dough only uses two ingredients and allows your child to engage in fine and gross motor skill activities.

Mix cornflour and hair conditioner together to get a soft, playdough like consistency.

Use food colouring to get the cloud dough to be different colours and try using scented conditioner for an extra sensory experience!

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Fill a bowl or bucket from around the house with something dry from your cupboards such as lentils, rice, pasta or cereal.

Add some different sized bowls, jugs and spoons and encourage your children to scoop and pour the ingredients.

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It may look messy but it's really simple to make and lots of fun! Just mix cornflour and water (around 2 parts flour to one part water) and enjoy! The mixture will behave like a solid when squeezed, pressed or rolled but once you relax your hands it will behave like a liquid. Once finished, it will wipe straight up with water or if you leave it to dry you can simply sweep it up.

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Especially good for a hot day, just give your child a cup of water and a paintbrush and let them "paint" outside. Pavements, patios and wooden fences are particularly good for this and of course as the water dries, you can paint again and again! If you want to add a challenge, see if they can draw pictures, trace lines or write letters with their paintbrush. You could even get involved and draw outlines for them to "colour in" or pictures for them to copy.