Sensory play ideas

Sensory play is such a crucial part of children's development.  According to Rudolf Steiner, the development of the lower senses (sight, taste, touch, sound, smell, and balance) affects the development of the higher senses.  The lower senses are developed during the early years, so it is important that we provide children with lots of different sensory experiences. 

 Water play. 

This was a water play activity that I set up today.  A selection of containers (large and small, tall and shallow), syringes, eye droppers, sponges, and icecube trays.  A couple of tubs filled with coloured water - blue, yellow, red.  I like to use primary colours with young children, so children can see the effect of using these colours and the multitude of colours that children can create using them.

One of the children started using the syringe and dropping coloured water into the icecube trays. By gradually mixing colours they were able to create a beautiful range of colours in their tray.  The child even said "Look at my beautiful colours that I'm making". They worked carefully and purposefully, to create colours and to explore what colours they could create.  One comment from the children was "We are doing science experiments". 

This was a popular table throughout the day, and to prevent the floor getting soaking wet and slippery, I brought the table outside. 

Lavender Scented Water Beads
I bought the water crystals at the $2 shop, and soaked them at home in water with a few drops of pure lavender oil.  The beads soaked up the the oil and had a really strong scent of lavender. I chose lavender because of its calming, soothing effect. You could also use roman chamomile, or a blend of calming essential oils.  I poured the lavender beads into the sensory tub at school, along with scoops, spoons and jars, and the children filled up the jars and then emptied them out, sometimes from one jar to another, or sometimes pouring them straight into the tub.  This was popular throughout the day.  You do need to watch out for water beads and crystals getting spilt on the floor, as it does make it slippery. We did it on the vinyl floor, and kept a dustpan and brush handy to sweep up the spills, and children also helped to pick up their beads that they dropped.


Bubble Blowing
A really simple but fun activity we did this week was simply containers of tap water with dishwashing liquid in it, and straws. The children blew through the straws to try to create bubbles.  And it was awesome! The bubbles rose really high and children tried to connect their containers of bubbles to other containers of bubbles.  Bubbles were all over the table, and you could actually see the water drip off the bubbles onto the floor, which looked really cool.  I put a towel down on the floor to catch the water.  Children worked together, and one bowl had 3 children blowing bubbles all at the same time, which created great big bubbles rising up over the top.  You do have to remind children to blow, not suck.  I get them to practice blowing first before giving them a tub of water.

Sand Play

 I mixed a tub of sand with cornflour, and provided a variety of containers, scoops (the scoops from tins of Baby Formula are great), tweezers, shells, pebbles and acorns.  I love mixing cornflour with sand, as it gives the sand a really light, fine texture and feels nice running through the fingers. This table was really popular throughout the week, and you do need to keep the dustpan and brush handy!

Flour and Glitter

 

I used a combination of flour and glitter, and strawberry-lime herbal tea to make it smell lovely. The herbal tea was about to be thrown out, so I grabbed it to utilise in our sensory play.  I added scoops, tweezers, containers, trays and dishes to fill up.

At the end of the week, I added warm water to give a completely different sensory experience. 

Rice 

 This was rice mixed with strawberry-lime tea, and filled with treasure.  Children were given tweezers and trays to fill with their treasure (The treasure was a mix of buttons, broken jewellery, pebbles, wooden bits, stars, beads, glass nuggets, and pom-poms).   One day the rice was filled with alphabet magnets and children found the letters of their names.  The strawberry-lime herbal tea added a really nice dimension to this as you could smell it every time you sat down at the table.

Oh, Lovely Mud!

This was a Mrs Wishy Washy provocation to allow children to retell the story themselves - I modelled using the tubs at mat time as I told the story (I adapted it slightly using the farm animals that we had), and then kept it at the sensory table for the children to play and engage with.  I filled the tub with a mix of bark and dirt from the garden and a bit of water.  I added farm animals, a tub of warm soapy water and an apron for children to wear and pretend to be Mrs Wishy Washy.  This table even got the most resistant, unwilling and unsettled child to engage and begin to enjoy themselves.

Cornflour Playdough

I really like using cornflour to make play dough with, as it is a pure white colour and is able to take other colours easily. I find when making playdough with flour, it is a creamy-grey colour, and  if you add red colouring, it goes pink, and black playdough turns grey.  But somehow the playdough made from cornflour allows the colours to keep its true colour - black playdough is black, and red is red.  

I wear gloves when making this so that I don't scold my hands, and the gloves also help prevent my hands changing colours when I add the colouring.

Cornflour dough also has a neutral smell, so it is perfect for adding herbal teas, scents, spices or essential oils to.  Playdough made with flour has a really strong smell that I find is quite overpowering when trying to add other scents - it doesn't work so nicely.

Ingredients:

3 cups Cornflour

1 - 1 1/2 cups Salt (experiment a bit to find out your preference)

3 teaspoons Cream of Tartar

about 2-3 Tablespoons oil

2 cups boiling water

Put all ingredients in a bowl.

Mix together.

Tip out onto table.

Knead and mix thoroughly with your hands - this takes time.  Knead, push, roll, pull, drop onto the table like making bread. You may want to add 1/2 cup more water - just add a little at a time.  

Add colouring and scents and knead through again.

When making playdough with flour, I find one cup of water to one cup of flour is perfect, as the flour absorbs the water, but the cornflour reacts differently, so experiment a bit to find out what works.  With the cornflour dough, you might need to add water during the week as it does start to dry out.  

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