What is sensory play and why is it important?

08/15/2014

Written by: Val Johnstone

Sensory play is important because it is what kids naturally are drawn to. When kids engage in messy sensory play, their senses are stimulated. When their senses are stimulated, they are learning.  Kids learn best by doing. Sensory play is completely child directed and it has no final product. Sensory play encourages creativity and imagination.

When children spend time engaged in sensory play, mixing and pouring, scooping and digging, they are indeed “playing” and having fun but these activities help them develop cognitively, physically, linguistically, socially, emotionally, creatively and physically. By picking up a grain of rice or a bean from a bin, they are working on their fine motor skills, but they are also learning about shape and space of objects. When they mix in a bin of goop (my favourite) or water they learn about density of liquids. When objects in a sensory bin are different colours, shapes and sizes, their brains learn to distinguish between these things and as they sort out like objects they learn about sorting and classifying. Things such as these are a part of the mathematical side of their brains and skills which we as parents and educators want kids to be learning from such an early age.

Sensory play allows children the freedom to explore using their creativity for endless possibilities. One of the easiest and manageable ways to contain sensory play is in a sensory bin.

What is a sensory bin?

A sensory bin is a container which engages your senses. It can contain anything, most often textures which encourage creative play. Items in a bin can be dry ingredients (rice, pasta, coffee, flour, beans) or wet (clean mud, goop, water beads). Often there is a combination of ingredients which create an altogether new texture or material.

Sensory bins engage all your senses. Textures can stimulate exploration with appeal to your feeling senses. Colourful bins and the variety of colour appeal to children’s visual sense. When items such as beans and rice are scooped and played with they are audibly appealing. Some bins because of the ingredients can have a scent and stimulate the sense of smell.

Sensory bins encourage children to explore in different ways using different senses. Sensory play expands a child’s experience and helps to develop their brain in new ways. Sensory bins help children to become more creative. They can pour and scoop, mix and get messy.

While there is an incredible amount of fun and discovery that happens in sensory bin play, there is also a great deal of learning which can help develop skills such as:

Fine motor skills (picking up objects)

• Counting
• Patterning
• Sorting and Classifying
• Matching
• Transferring
• Specific skill recognition

Children often find certain bins incredibly soothing and are drawn to some more than others. Bins have been known to prevent meltdowns and can redirect energy in a positive way. Pouring and scooping is not only entertaining for most little ones, it is also soothing. Children who have a short attention span have been known to attend for an extraordinary amount of time playing in a sensory bin.

For those who may be hesitant to start but want to try sensory messy activities at home, here are a few tips:

• Start small – create one bin at a time.  Rice or beans are an easy place to start.
• Tell yourself that this kind of mess is okay.  Lay out a blanket on your kitchen floor and let them discover.
• Use this creative sensory play as an opportunity to teach boundaries.  For example you can say to your kids, ” I would like you to keep the rice in the bin. If a little spills out, that is okay.  If a lot spills out or you dump it out, I will have to put it away”.
• Introduce sensory play on a day you know you will clean the floor.  If the weather is summer-like, take it outside.  There is not such a worry about things all over your floor.
• Encourage your child to discover, play, imagine and create.  Try to find out which texture they most like; dry (such as beans, rice, popcorn kernels, coffee beans), goopy/messy (goop, clean mud, pudding), or wet (water, water beads, snow).
• Get together with other friends and try a sensory playdate!

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