Author: admin

Sensory activities provide children with a meaningful avenue for learning by facilitating exploration and naturally encouraging children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate, and explore. From infancy, children have learned about the world around them by touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing. Because children learn best by having “hands on” experiences with materials, sensory experiences are vital to young children’s learning. 

Learning and retention improve when our senses are engaged. As children experiment with different sized containers in cornmeal or sand, they develop math skills such as size, conservation, counting, timing (how long it takes the sand to sift verses dirt), matching (finding the objects that match the chart or matching buttons, etc.), and classifying and sorting. As children manipulate the materials, they learn to understand concepts such as more/less, full/empty, and sink/float. Science concepts such as cause and effect, gravity, and solid to liquid can also explored. 

Even before children can speak, they are developing an understanding of things in their environment by actively exploring them with all their senses. As they become more verbal, children can describe similarities and differences in what they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. Children develop pre-writing skills as they pour, spoon, grasp, and work on eye-hand coordination tasks as they use the materials. 

Self-discovery occurs as children become eager scientists. They practice making predictions, observations, and respond to their findings. In addition, children learn to cooperate and work together around a sensory table. As the children work together or side-by-side, they learn to understand someone else’s viewpoint. The children also have the opportunity to express themselves and become confident in sharing their ideas with others. 

Children reinforce and practice their small motor skills while pouring, measuring, stirring, whisking, and manipulating the materials. They learn to control their movements and give their bodies directions to accomplish tasks as they explore. Gross motor skills are refined as children run through the sprinkler, paint with large paint brushes on the side of the building, and explore various mediums with their feet. 

Sensory experiences provide open-ended opportunities where the process is more important than the product. Howchildren use the materials is much more important than what they make with them. Using creative thinking skills and expressing one’s creativity are important skills to nurture. Providing sensory experiences in a comfortable, accommodating environment can offer infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children lots of new, exciting, and beneficial opportunities. Taking into consideration children’s individual needs can really make them feel at ease and allow children to follow their interests!

Materials
Blocks (we used square orange blocks)
Flat surface

Directions
Place blocks onto a hard surface. Encourage your child to build towers with the blocks.  How high can you build a tower?  How many blocks were used? What made for a successful tall tower? Introduce words such as balance, vertical, bottom, top, tall, tallest.  Count the blocks.

Materials
Red and yellow tempera paint
Zip-loc Baggie (1 or 2 gallon-size)
Clear duct tape 

Directions
Pour a small amount of red and yellow tempera paints into a large Zip-loc baggie. Close and reinforce all sides with clear duct tape. Invite your child to use his fingers to mix the two colors together.  What new color did your child make? Encourage your child to make lines, circles, letters, words, etc. in the paint.

Materials
Pumpkin
Scoop
Knife
Seeds and pulp from a pumpkin
Large Zip-loc Baggie
Magnifying glass (optional)

Directions
Cut the top off of the pumpkin and scoop out the insides.  Invite your child to help with the scooping if she doesn’t mind touching the pulp.  Place some of the pulp and seeds in a gallon-size Zip-loc bag and close. Allow your child to explore the seeds and pulp through the baggie. We placed our baggie on the light table, but any hard surface will work. Provide a magnifying glass for closer observation. What words can be used to describe the pulp and seeds? Try counting the seeds, or separate the seeds from the pulp. Have fun exploring and observing!

Materials
Sand table, box, or large container of sand
Construction vehicles – loader, backhoe, bulldozer, dump truck, etc.)
Shovels, buckets, construction cones
Rocks
Water

Directions
Place materials in the sand. Invite your child to explore in the sand, pretending to be a construction worker at a site. Add water to the sand as a new element to explore. Support your child’s learning by providing books about construction vehicles, construction sites, and the workers. 

Ingredients

Materials
Small pumpkin
Child’s play hammer
Package of golf tees
Gallon size Ziploc bag for storing the activity
Sharpie Marker

Ingredients

Materials
Small Paint rollers
Tempera Paint – Orange
Large Paper to cover table top
Easel paper cut into pumpkin shapes
Masking Tape
Tray for paint