Sensory Play Guide: A Must in Early Childhood Development.

Many parents look into a variety of Early Childhood Education and Daycare providers to help their children have fun and socialize with other children following their age group.  But did you know that the type of play experience you provide can also enhance your child’s cognitive and social development? You might have heard a lot about the term “Sensory Play” But what does this term mean and how it benefits Early Education, let us explore:

What is sensory play?

Sensory play, also known as hands-on learning, can be a fun and creative way to help kids learn while exploring different textures, colors and shapes. As a daycare provider, it is important to provide a variety of activities that will engage your pupils. One way to achieve this is through sensory play where we can offer the experiences to the children for sensory exploration. These sensory experiences tend to help sharpen these senses:

  • Visual Sense (Sight)
  • Auditory Sense (Hearing)
  • Olfactory Sense (Smell)
  • Gustatory Sense (Taste)
  • Tactile Sense & Stereognosis (Touch & Recognize by hands)

What are the benefits of sensory play?

Providing sensory input to children is an important part of their development. The sense of touch, hearing, sight, taste and smell, help build new neurological pathways. Sensory play can also encourage children to use their fine motor skills as well as stimulate their senses. 

Sensory play is crucial to childhood development because it helps build:

  • Concentration
  • Motor Skills 
  • Sensory Stimulation
  • Self-confidence
  • Creativity
  • Problem-solving 
  • Spatial relations
  • Measuring at a distance
  • Weight & Height estimation
  • Textures, temperature explorations etc.

Early childhood educators should always provide a safe environment for children to explore materials.

Examples of Sensory Play:

For the Early years of a child’s life, Sensory Play builds observational skills and abstract thinking and encourages experimentation. Daycares can plan two types of sensory activities:

  1. Montessori Sensorial Activities
  2. Sensory Experiments 

Montessori Sensorial Activities:

These activities can be performed through the Montessori Material only. The “Sensorial Material” of Montessori Education is specifically designed for typical sensory activities. Some examples are:

  • The Pink Tower
  • Broad/Brown Stairs
  • Geometric Solids
  • Mystery Bags
  • Fabric Box
  • Rough & Smooth Boards
  • Salt Trays
  • Taste Bottles
  • Sound Bells
  • Long & Red Rods
  • Knobbed & Knobbles Cylinders
  • Binomial Cubes
  • Color Tablets 
The Pink Tower is probably one of the most iconic Montessori materials.

Sensory Experiments: 

Daycares can also use other materials from the environment to provide the child with numerous activities to explore the materials present in the world around us. The children can explore these materials with their senses and can create their imagination and creativity through free-play, guided activities and project-based experiments (like the STEM & STEAM projects) depending on the age group of the children. Here are some examples of different sensory activities:

 

  • Play Dough Fun
  • Sensory Bins Creation
  • Sensory Pouches
  • Food Related Activities
  • Sound Experiments
  • Sensory Art Projects
  • Environmental Sensory Activities

 

All these activities cater to the child’s sensory calls, heighten the senses and sharpen them to investigate these materials through hands-on explorations.

Sensory bins may incorporate a variety of senses: touch, sight, sounds, taste, and smell for children to learn and explore.

 

Safety First!

To make Sensory Play safe for children these precautions must be kept in mind:

  1. Ensure that the daycare activities are equipped with the best and most purposeful outcomes.
  2. Sensory Play should be designed to create a safe and enjoyable environment for the children.
  3. The material for the Sensory Play should be presented to the child under strict adult supervision to avoid any choking hazards. 

FAQs

Why add Sensory Play in a daycare?

Childcare providers rely on lots of different tools to help them care for their preschoolers. With so many new technologies available, it is possible to benefit the early formative years in children and parents with guided outlines of the benefits of sensory play and how incorporating it into your daycare will benefit your children inside and outside the classroom. 

Why should I use daycare software?

Daycare software can make it easier for parents and providers to communicate about the child's development, and the daycare app can help with this. The daycare software also helps track and manage each child's schedule. The best part about daycare software is that it saves time! Instead of doing everything manually, daycare providers need just to enter information into their tablets or computers.

How does it help me as a daycare provider? 

Childcare providers can use this guide to plan sensory play activities. This is important as early childhood development should be a priority. The childcare app helps daycare providers communicate with parents and allows you to store all necessary information on the software to have it at your fingertips. The preschool app also provides children with an environment that fosters child development while at daycare.

Wrapping things up

To get the best through Sensory Play ideas, our Preschool App is designed to make running a daycare easier, more efficient, and more professional. It helps parents to find the perfect daycare solutions for their child and enables Daycare providers to create an online profile of the children showing what, how and how much the children learn to elevate their sensory experience with the best possible, innovative, and competitive opportunities for Early Education.


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The Kidvy Team
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