Coming up with fun activities to stimulate learning may sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. Especially when you’re momming 24/7 and trying to do all the things. That’s why I’ve gathered some of the best fun sensory play ideas, so you don’t have to keep searching the internet and Pinterest. Who needs that when you’re busy enough already? In this post, you’ll learn about the benefits of sensory play and get 10 easy activities your child will love.
- What Is Sensory Play?
- Benefits of Sensory Play
- Why Is Sensory Play Important?
- Sensory Play Ideas
- 10 Easy Sensory Play Activities
- 1. Textured Balloons // Little Bins For Little Hands
- 2. Digging For Worms // Learning 4 Kids
- 3. Fizzy Cloud Dough Experiment // Powerful Mothering
- 4. Glitter Jars // Preschool Inspirations
- 5. Rainbow Beans // Fun At Home With Kids
- 6. Salt Painting // Hands On As We Grow
- 7. Dinosaur Ice Excavation // Sweet Lil You
- 8. Alphabet Car Wash // Parenting Chaos
- 9. Rainbow Rice // Eating Richly
- 10. Giant Water Bead Sensory Bin // Busy Toddler
- Shaving Cream Play
- Sensory Water Play
- How do you encourage sensory play?
- Is painting a sensory activity?
- What age should you start sensory play?
- Sensory Play Quotes
- Final Thoughts About Messy Sensory Play Learning
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What Is Sensory Play?
Young kids learn best by using their senses. Sensory play inspires the use of smell, sight, hearing, fine motor muscles, and gross motor skills.
Kids’ brain development can be stimulated through sensory experiences. There’s a difference between sensory activities and other types of play.
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Benefits of Sensory Play
This type of play helps prepare children for life. Sensory experiences have benefits for brain development. It’s doable (and easy) to create sensory activities for your children.
In an environment with little expectation, sensory activities can help children with touch, smell, and playing with textures. Texture helps build positive pathways in the brain as the child learns to understand what they’re experiencing.
Plus, it helps develop the brain’s ability to identify objects and explore the world by sending signals to the brain. Differentiating between a variety of textures is an important learning step.
Why Is Sensory Play Important?
All kids need these rich experiences to learn how their bodies work. It’s also an important part of helping them learn to process and interpret the world around them.
Children are free to explore. They need to be exposed to a variety of perspectives and thought processes casually and playfully.
These experiences can help prepare your child for life.
Combining the senses of vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell helps build cognitive skills and language development.
A child uses sensory exploration to make sense of the world. It’s good to provide them with plenty of opportunities to play.
Here’s a quick video about sensory bins that you can easily create with some affordable Dollar Tree items.
Sensory Play Ideas
There are lots of hands-on ideas for kids. Some of the most popular ones include sensory bins, bottles, bags, and recipes. Some of the best ones incorporate a few of the 5 senses at once.
For example, scented edible cloud dough integrates sight, smell, touch, and taste.
This list of 10 easy activities provides hours of fun…just when you thought you’d ran out of ideas.
10 Easy Sensory Play Activities
Sometimes it can seem difficult to come up with fun ideas, but I’ve gotcha covered! Your toddler or preschoolers will love the ideas below.
1. Textured Balloons // Little Bins For Little Hands
2. Digging For Worms // Learning 4 Kids
3. Fizzy Cloud Dough Experiment // Powerful Mothering
4. Glitter Jars // Preschool Inspirations
5. Rainbow Beans // Fun At Home With Kids
6. Salt Painting // Hands On As We Grow
7. Dinosaur Ice Excavation // Sweet Lil You
8. Alphabet Car Wash // Parenting Chaos
9. Rainbow Rice // Eating Richly
10. Giant Water Bead Sensory Bin // Busy Toddler
Shaving Cream Play
Children enjoy playing and discovering with shaving cream. That pleasant scent and creamy appearance and feel is a delight to the senses.
Here are some fun hands-on shaving cream activities that utilize the senses.
Sensory Water Play
You can use bottles, bins, a sandbox, and more for fun water activities.
Water has a calming effect, so it’s that perfect thing when your child is having one of those days.
Whether you’re doing homeschool preschool or simply want to help your child get ready for kindergarten, sensory learning is essential.
Related: 80+ Super Fun Hands-On Preschool Learning Activities
How do you encourage sensory play?
The easiest way is by giving your child plenty of opportunities to explore their senses. Encourage curiosity and exploration.
Keep things light and stay open to questions. Because we know how inquisitive children can be, amirite?
As long as the activity is safe and age-appropriate, there are no “right or wrong” answers. Just plenty of exploration using all of the senses.
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Is painting a sensory activity?
Absolutely. There are so many ways your child can learn from painting. They can finger paint, paint with a big or small paintbrush, create a nature painting, or use smelly paints (just to name a few).
Painting allows the child creative opportunities while practicing fine motor skills and engaging their senses.
What age should you start sensory play?
As long as the activities are safe, closely monitored, and age-appropriate sensory experiences can start at a very young age. Babies as young as 6 months old can enjoy fun sensory activities.
Sensory Play Quotes
- “The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.” – Maria Montessori
- “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” – Diane Ackerman
- “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “Children learn as they play. More importantly, in play, children learn how to learn.” – O. Fred Donaldson
- “Children’s brains are quite literally restructured by the sensory input they recieve and the motor impulses they put out. The combination of those two physical experiences allows children to learn to walk and talk, to tie their shoes and ride bikes, to write their names and have conversations with friends. There’s no learning experience that children have that is not a physical interaction with the world.” – Jarrod Green
- “Play is the wrok of a child.” – Maria Montessori
- “Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.” – Abraham Maslow
- “Play is the highest expression in human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.” – Fridrich Froebel
- “There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.” – Walt Streightiff
- “Play gives children the chance to practice what they are learning.” – Fred Rogers
Final Thoughts About Messy Sensory Play Learning
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog post about the value of sensory play!
The first 3 years of life are a time of growth and development. As children get older, they can take in a lot of information and turn it into knowledge about the world around them.
They’re able to engage with the world through sensory play. And this helps them develop and develop.
Visit our Thrive Berry Etsy shop for more preschool learning activities (and plenty of health and wellness printables for moms too!)
What are your child’s favorite sensory play activities?
