Let’s have some messy fun!
Sensory play is an extremely hands-on activity, which lets kids engage with their senses through the exploration of different materials and textures through play. So you will never be short of ideas! There is a wide range of sensory play activities, which allow you to create a fun and flexible learning space in your early years setting.
Sensory play is suitable for children of all ages including babies, toddlers, nursery children and children in preschool.
In this blog post, we go over the best sensory play activities & ideas for toddlers and children!
What is sensory play?
Sensory play refers to the type of play that stimulates children through the five senses. These include touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. Children interact with the world through their senses and it is what they use to make sense of the world around them as well as future experiences.
Learn more about sensory play by reading our blog which covers what sensory play is.
What are the benefits of sensory play?
Sensory play helps with the development of the senses and helps children make better sense of the world around them. Sensory play improves brain connections for more complex thoughts and tasks and improves language development, cognitive growth, motor skills and ability to socially interact. For some children, sensory play can actually be calming and relieve stress.
Sensory play encourages children to be curious about the world around them, and better understand cause and effect.
Sensory Play Activities & Ideas
Water Play
Water play involves children using tools such as buckets, toys and containers to splash, spray and create waves.
For this, all you have to do is fill a container up with water and let your children get creative with how they play with water. If you want, you can even provide them with household items for them to dump and move around in the water!
All you need to get started with water play is a container full of water and resources your children love. Simply add these resources to the water and let your children explore freely.
Some great resources to put into your sensory water bins are pom poms, natural resources and even water balloons!
Frozen / Ice Sensory Play
Frozen and ice sensory play is great for introducing children and toddlers to hot and cold sensations and teaching them about different temperatures. Ice-based sensory play is also perfect for those summer months to let your children cool down.
To get started with frozen and ice sensory play freeze toys, craft resources or loose parts into ice. Then let your children manipulate the ice with their hands. There are so many fun things children can freeze in ice including pom poms, flowers and even wooden alphabet letters.
One activity children particularly love is creating rainbow ice cubes. For this use water and add food colouring! For the children that love putting things in their mouth, substitute water and food colouring with different coloured fruit juices. Adding flavours to the ice cubes provides children with both a tactile and gustatory sensory experience.
Another activity that children will love to do is painting with ice. For this, all you’ll need is water, red, yellow, green and blue food colouring, lolly sticks (optional), ice trays and a piece of paper. Just fill the ice cube tray with water and add a few drops of food colouring, then stick some lolly sticks and let it freeze. Then let your children grab the ice cube lollies and paint over some paper, or let them navigate the ice cubes on the paper with their bare hands to create colourful masterpieces!
Rainbow Sensory Play
Rainbow-themed sensory play keeps children happy and feeling positive whilst providing a colourful and tactile sensory experience. Super easy to set up, rainbow sensory play is great for celebrating St. Patrick’s day or Pride month!
One great activity children will love is creating rainbow sensory bottles. For this, all you need is a plastic water bottle, hair gel, liquid watercolour and a couple of plastic cups. To create these rainbow sensory bottles simply mix ⅓ of a cup and add a bit of liquid water colour. Then take each individual coloured hair gel solution and squeeze it into the bottom of the bottle. Repeat until all the colours have been used. After some time, the colours will all start to blend together, which opens a discussion about the colour-changing process!
Some edible options for rainbow sensory play activities include making rainbow oats, spaghetti and rice. To colour in food resources just get some food colouring, water, and a container, tray or tub. Put your cooked food resources in the tub and add a few drops of food colouring. Then let your children mix these together to create the colours of the rainbow. Your children can even mix different coloured food resources together into one bin to create rainbow sensory bins!
Natural Sensory Play
Natural sensory play combines the best of both nature and sensory play together! Playing with natural resources in nature helps to support emotional regulation and self-regulation. Nature-based activities are also a great activity to allow children to calm down.
The possibilities for natural sensory play are endless! Start by getting your children to adventure outdoors in the garden and collect natural resources. Then get them to wash their items off with soapy water and let them dry.
One great activity for children is creating sensory boards. For this let your children put some glue onto a poster board and stick natural items and natural hessian as they wish. This is great for introducing children to nature-related vocabulary and getting them acquainted with new textures in nature.
Or why not let them take their natural resources and implement them into some ice sensory play? Just stick some small natural resources into an ice cube tray, fill it with water and let it freeze overnight. Children will love investigating these ice cubes, using warm water to melt them to reveal the resources inside or picking them up with tongs!
Another great idea is creating natural play dough. Let children create dough as they usually would with salt, flour, water and oil and add in some fresh lemon juice, herbs grown in the garden and some spices. Some great natural resources to incorporate into dough include rosemary, lavender, blueberries, wholegrain and seeds, porridge oats, oranges and lemons.
Edible Sensory Play
Including edible sensory play activities in your learning setting is essential for catering for babies who are still putting things in their mouths. Food sensory activities provide a completely safe way for them to experience all the senses.
All you need to start with edible sensory play is a container or tray and some edible resources. Some great trays to use for edible sensory play include tuff trays or art trays.
Create edible mud with flour, cocoa powder, oil and water and let your children incorporate their small-world animal figures for farm role-play or jumbo jungle animals for jungle role-play.. Or create the ultimate sensory bin using rice, fruits, jell, oats or pasta.
You can even make an edible sand play or fake snow by blending crackers or cheerios in a food processor. This is great for children to add their construction small-world toys and role-play with friends.
Garden Sensory Play
Similar to natural sensory play, garden sensory play is a great way to get children outdoors whilst experiencing different sensations. Getting children outdoors has a lot of benefits, especially for those with neurological conditions. Activities such as flower planting, outdoor walks and cultivating gardens can help improve mood and act as a calming activity for children.
All you need for garden sensory play is a garden and some natural resources. Create gardening tuff spots and sensory bins using soil and provide your kids with a couple of gardening tools to plant seeds, plants or pretend gardening toys to create their own unique gardens. Don’t have any soil at hand? Substitute soil with black turtle beans, rice or aquarium rocks to give the activity the same feel.
Or why not create a sensory walk in your garden? Just fill a couple of large trays with sensory materials and line them up to create a path. Some great sensory materials to use for this include sand, flour, leaves, bubble wrap and shaving cream. As children walk along this path they will experience different tactical sensations with their feet.
Pasta Sensory Play
Your children will love playing with spaghetti and exploring the different colours and textures they see and feel. Spaghetti sensory play is also easy to get started with, is inexpensive and is completely edible. By squishing and playing with spaghetti children develop their fine motor skills, creativity and imagination as they investigate all the ways of playing with spaghetti.
To start with spaghetti sensory play all you need is spaghetti, resealable bags, food colouring, water, a colander and a container to mix the spaghetti together. Start off by cooking the spaghetti, draining it then rinsing it in a colander. Put the spaghetti into a resealable bag, add food colouring and a few drops of water, and then mix well. For muli-coloured spaghetti, you’ll want to divide spaghetti into ¼ into separate bags with different food colourings. Once this is done pour the coloured spaghetti into the colander and rinse under the tap, this will get rid of any leftover food dye that hasn’t set into the spaghetti.
The possibilities with spaghetti sensory play are limitless. Make Halloween-themed spaghetti using black food dye, rainbow spaghetti or even ocean-themed spaghetti sensory bins.
If you don’t have time to cook the pasta, just fill the container with dry pasta noodles. Provide your children with measuring instruments and let them measure, pour and scoop up pasta from their dry pasta sensory bin. This is also a suitable activity to do indoors at home as it is easy to clean up after!
Sensory Bins
Sensory bins are the ultimate sensory play activity as they allow children to freely explore multiple senses at a time including sound, touch, smell and sight. Children will be kept entertained for hours as they pour, scoop and scrunch random materials in their sensory bins together. This is also a great way for children to develop their motor skills. These sensory bins can also be customised to however your children want and are great for creating various themes for holidays, seasons and events. They help children develop language and social skills by encouraging them to gather around with their friends and play!
One of the best types of sensory bins for children is edible and food-based sensory bins. These are ideal for children who are still putting objects in their mouths. For these, you can incorporate a range of resources including oatmeal, noodles, cereals, dried beans, rice and ice and add a bit of food colouring for extra visual sensory stimulation. You can even add in toys such as toy diggers and trucks for scooping, driving and digging up these food resources.
Your children can add themed resources and experiment with a variety of colours to try and create Christmas, summer, spring, space, jungle, fairy, book-themed and beach sensory bins as well!
FAQs about the sensory play
What are the 5 sensory experiences?
The 5 main sensory experiences experienced by children through sensory play include sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.
How do you introduce sensory play?
- Sit with your child
- Encourage your child – support your child as they begin to engage with sensory materials
- Continue encouragement during play – continue to encourage and congratulate your children as they play with sensory resources and engage in sensory play activities.
- Reinforce sensory items to stay in their containers
We’d love to see how you get on with these sensational sensory play ideas and activities. Share your experiences with us on social media by tagging us or using the hashtag #ExploreWithEYR!
Sensory play is vital for a child’s development and learning process! Discover the key benefits of sensory play for children in our article on the Importance of Sensory Play for Early Yearsand get your kids engaged in sensory play today!
Want to know about sensory play for SEN children? Read our blog post which covers sensory play activities for children with special needs.
