Sensory Play Ideas for Children at The Orchards by The Orchards

Tactile Sensory Bins

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:27:50 UTC

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.

Homemade Play Dough

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:27:51 UTC

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.

Visual Sensory Lights

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:27:52 UTC

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.

Sound Sensory Bottles

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:27:53 UTC

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.

Scented Sensory Bags

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:27:54 UTC

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.

Textured Walking Path

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:27:55 UTC

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.

Some great ideas here from the BBC Tiny Happy People

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:51:25 UTC

Sensory Play Activities for Children with Special Needs

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 19:58:15 UTC

Sensory play ideas for ASD learners

hobrien48 — 2024-03-18 20:01:24 UTC

10 sensory activity ideas

egardiner18 — 2024-03-19 08:04:18 UTC

Sensory Bags

slane137 — 2024-03-19 08:09:30 UTC

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.

Sensory Bins

eirlam — 2024-03-19 09:43:29 UTC

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!

Bubbles

gmarshall48 — 2024-03-19 09:53:28 UTC

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.

Treasure baskets

eirlam — 2024-03-19 09:53:50 UTC

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

Indoor obstacle course

gmarshall48 — 2024-03-19 11:08:23 UTC

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

Home made cloud dough

atatton1 — 2024-03-20 11:40:44 UTC

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!

Scooping and pouring

atatton1 — 2024-03-20 11:43:32 UTC

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.

nanderson150 — 2024-03-20 11:57:06 UTC

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.

nanderson150 — 2024-03-20 11:59:25 UTC

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.

Easter ideas ...

hobrien48 — 2024-03-20 17:33:37 UTC