Pediatric Stimulus Reward Switch Toys, Sensory And Motor Skills Development, Special Needs Toys

What is Sensory Play?

Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates a child’s senses, which are sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell. Sensory toys and activities naturally encourage a child to explore and use scientific processes while playing, investigating, creating, and exploring. Time spent stimulating a child’s senses helps to develop language, cognition, social and emotional skills as well as being physical and creative. And, a child learns best and retains the most information when engaging the senses.

A child cannot define parts of language until experiencing the true meaning of the word. It can be frustrating for a child to attempt to say something without the proper words to do so. Sensory play encourages a child to use expressive and descriptive language and to find meaning behind essentially meaningless words. For example, the word “slimy” can be explained by what it means with different adjectives, but until a child experiences something slimy firsthand, that is all it will be—words. A child can develop prewriting skills while pouring, grasping, spooning, and working on hand-eye coordination tasks using various toys and items.

Cognitive skills are sharpened by sensory play with decision making and problem solving. When presenting children with a problem and a variety of materials with which to find a solution, the connections in their brain begin to work. In addition, a child can build math skills such as comparing sizes, counting by matching numbers to objects, matching sizes and shapes, and sorting or classifying items like buttons or toys. A child can build science skills such as cause and effect, gravity, and states of matter like melting ice. Without realizing it, a child is learning and analyzing during playtime.

Certain sensory play options allow children to be in complete control of their actions and experiences. This can boost a child’s confidence in decision making, and inspire eagerness to learn and experiment. Sensory play can also teach a child about collaboration and cooperation. As a child works with someone else during playtime, he or she learns to understand other ways of looking at things. A child can become confident in sharing ideas with others, also.

Fine motor skills are defined as the coordination of small muscle movements which most often involved hand-eye coordination. This enables a child to perform a variety of tasks. These tasks may include turning the pages of a book, tying shoes, and zipping zippers. Gross motor skills involve the larger muscles of the body. Activities which use these muscles include running, walking, pushing, pulling, and throwing a ball. Some examples of sensory play that benefit the development of fine motor skills are encouraging a child to push buttons, turn knobs, stack small items, play small instruments, and fit shapes together. Examples that help develop gross motor skills are exploring surfaces, lifting, rolling, throwing, and water play.

Prompting a child to think creatively in order to solve problems or engage in make-believe helps build self-esteem and express creativity. Sensory experiences provide open-ended opportunities where the process is more important than the actual toy. How a child uses items is much more important than what is made with them.

Exposing a child to sensory play can help develop and refine the use of the five senses, which are touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. There are many ways to spend time with a child and engage in sensory play. Play games or engage in activities that require the use of different muscles in the legs and arms. Make use of stimulating objects or textures that are on different toys. Experiment with lighted toys, explore with colorful toys, and test the sense of light by playing with activation toys. Engage a child’s musical side by playing or listening to instruments, singing songs along with the music, or experiment with volume by playing with a stereo dial to investigate loud and soft sounds. Read scratch and sniff books with a child. Experiment with opposite food types, such as sweet versus salty, crunchy versus soft, or cold versus hot foods. Crunchy and chewy foods can also help increase a child’s alertness.

Hulet Smith, OT
Rehabmart Co-Founder & CEO

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