Happy Thursday everyone! I hope you're having a great, short week!
As I’ve previously highlighted, sensory play is any activity that helps to stimulate the five senses (touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing). Sensory development is extremely important since we use our five senses to observe and learn. It can be an instrumental component to early development.
I typically try to offer L diverse sensory-type exploration each week. This is an opportunity for her to touch, smell, taste, see or hear something new. I recently realized that the majority of the sensory activities I created focused on her using her sense of touch (via her hands). Last week, I shared an “outside of the box” sensory activity I created for L that helped to stimulate her sense of smell. This inspired me to get a little bit more creative with sensory play for my little learner.
So, this week we checked out a sensory activity that was different and exciting! It still stimulated her sense of touch, but instead of primarily using her hands to explore, she got to use her… FEET! Remember, the sense of touch is not limited to hands alone.
I took several distinctive textures we had laying around the house (including bubble wrap, packaging/shipping wrap, tissue paper, glittery craft paper, rough sandpaper, aluminum foil, wax paper, shelf liner grip, etc.) and taped it to the floor using painter’s tape. She was very inquisitive about this setup. She immediately took her shoes right off and ran across the different textures! Some textures made her giggle (like the shelf liner grip). Other textures she couldn’t seem to figure out (like the aluminum foil- was it a mirror?). She did eventually get down on her hands and knees to closely examine the materials with her hands. She investigated the textures using different parts of her body (feet, hands, knees) for quite a while! It was such a simple activity to put together, and she seemed to really love it!
It got me thinking about other textures she could explore with her feet. So we took some shaving cream and made a trail for her to sit in and investigate. At first, she was very skeptical. Eventually, she warmed up to it and LOVED every moment.
A couple of things to keep in mind for this activity:
1. Shaving cream is slippery- my original thought was to have her run through the trail, but I tested it first (luckily!) and that idea was very unsafe.
2. I first put down a toss-away plastic tablecloth (purchased from the Dollar Tree - I just love that place), which made cleaning up extremely easy! When she was done, I wrapped up the mess and tossed it into the garbage. It would’ve been total chaos otherwise.
What “outside of the box” sensory activities have your little learners loved? I’m always looking for new, engaging ideas!
Thanks for reading! I hope you continue to follow along to find (and share!) inspiration, information, and innovation! :-)
Comments