Benefits of Sensory Play

Squish, splash, bang, lick, scoop, drop, toss, and ooze—children, especially young toddlers, learn so much about the world around them by exploring it through their senses. Sensory play is important to your child’s growth and development. It helps build nerve connections in their brain that can help them be able to complete more complex learning tasks as they grow older.

 What is Sensory Play?

Sensory play is play that engages your child’s senses—touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste. But sensory play also includes movement. When a child is born, their senses are not fully developed. Their senses mature as they explore the world through their senses. Each new experience they have with a different sense builds nerve connections that help develop their brain and strengthen the connections they have already established.

Activities that provide different textures, sounds, smells, or movements are all part of sensory play. Children, and even adults, learn best and retain the most information when they use their senses. Many of our memories are associated with our senses. For instance, the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking can cause our brain to trigger a flashback memory of us with our grandma baking together at her kitchen counter.

5 Benefits of Sensory Play

1.       Encourages children to naturally use the scientific process to problem solve. It’s an important life skill to be able to observe, form a hypothesis, experiment, and draw a conclusion. This may seem basic to us as adults, but this is a skill that children need to discover and learn. Your toddler being able to identify the difference between hot and cold can help them gain important knowledge as they turn 2 years old and older.

2.       Develop fine and gross motor skills. Playing with sensory items requires the use of a lot of small muscles and even big muscles. These muscles will get stronger and become more coordinated the more they are used to squish playdough or kick a ball.

3.       Develop cognitive growth. Through playing and experimenting your 1 year old will learn to associate sensory experiences—if the ice was cold the last time they played with it, then ice in a drink will probably be cold too.

4.       Learn new vocabulary. Your 1 year old will begin to learn how to describe the things they want or need by learning new vocabulary through fun activities, such as cold, hot, soft, red, etc.

5.       They will gain a better sense of self. As your toddler explores, they will begin to learn things they like or dislike. Do they like their hands to get messy, do they not like the feel of squishy spaghetti, these things help develop a stronger sense of self.

Types of Sensory Play

1.       Taste. Allowing your child to play, try, and taste different foods helps them to determine their likes and dislikes when it comes to food. For those with picky eaters, experimenting with different foods might allow your child to find a new food they like.

2.       Touch or Tactile. This is probably the sense you think about when you think about sensory play. Tactile play allows your child to play with their hands. They can explore new textures, temperatures, vibrations, pressures, etc.

3.       Smell. Before baby’s eyesight fully develops they often learn to identify their parents by their scent. Children can help strengthen their sense of smell by doing fun activities that involve smelling.

4.       Hearing or Auditory. Playing with sounds allows your child to learn that different items make different sounds or that some objects make loud sounds while other objects make soft sounds.

5.       Sight. Introducing your child to colors, light and shadows, reflections, or shiny things is a great way to engage their sense of sight.

6.       Vestibular. This involves balance and movement. Play that allows your toddler to practice balance, coordination, and movement allows them to gain confidence in their abilities to climb, jump, run, etc.

7.       Proprioceptive. This is known as body awareness. Children learn about their spatial awareness and how to move their hands, arms, legs, and feet as it relates to the rest of their body.

Next week, I am releasing a brand-new activity book just for 1 year olds! It is a book full of 100 sensory play activities to help you support your toddler’s growth in a fun way. I can’t wait to show you the different kinds of sensory play activities that are included.