5 Ways Sensory Play Can Help Your Child
It can help discover a talent …
From the sound of it, sensory play might seem like a novel concept. The truth, however, is that sensory play is how our children should have been playing all along. It is the type of play that has been around for ages when Baby Boomers and Gen X was growing up and to some extent, millennials. But, with the overuse of technology today, sensory play is scarce.
As parents, we have begun to fear mess, playing in the mud and found substitutes for activities like painting or playing with sand and water by handing our children glossy devices to keep them engaged. Sensory play is play that actively evokes the five basic senses of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. In addition, it also creates awareness about other movements like balance, pressure, and body awareness.
At this point, you might be tempted to wonder how sensory play is contributing to your child’s growth. Maybe you’ve even tried an activity or two at home, and you’re still unsure how playing with playdough or hearing the sound of crumpling paper or getting hands dirty in a mud pit, is helping your child. In this article, I will explain the benefits of sensory play with examples. Once you’ve read those, the advantages will become immensely clear.
1. Leads to Observation, Learning, and Forming Conclusions:
Think from a child’s point of view, for a second. He or she has no idea what soapy water feels like or what happens when you mix blue and yellow colours or what ice feels like on their tongues or their skin. When a child is engaging with everyday objects, he or she understands what those objects do.
A child learns to observe on their own. This can help them create various hypotheses in their minds. “What will happen if I throw water on paper?” “What will happen if I colour with two crayons at the same time instead of one.” “What if I put this mud on my arms or what if I taste a tinge of it?” Based on these answers, a child will deduce that ice can be held for only a couple of seconds or mud is not so pleasant to tase.
These are some of the essential experiences a child should have in order to make sense of the world around them. You can only encourage sensory play experiences at home if you believe that children are curious, smart and creative individuals. If you feel the need to withdraw everything from them for the fear of getting hurt, you are depriving a child of the ability to employ his or her mind and imagination to understand and think for themselves.
2. Encourages Problem Solving:
We all want our children to learn to solve problems. If we handhold them through and deny them to experience and learn for themselves, it will come at a heavy price. They will not be able to problem-solve and may always look to others for the right answer. This is a dangerous proposition. We want children who are able to think for themselves and know right from wrong.
With sensory play activities, you are giving a child the autonomy to decide what they want to do with the material you provide. This helps the child feel confident in solving problems. For example, an entangled ball of rubber bands might not seem like the kind of problem-solving that leads to future results but for a child, this can be a great accomplishment, which instils independence.
Learning how to blow bubbles with soapy liquid when the soap has run out, will help the child’s brain understand what it feels like to do something on their own. This learning can stay the entire lifetime of the child and build a sense of confidence in them.
As PetitJourney explains, “Sensory play for babies helps developing brains bridge nerve connections. But it isn’t just good for the little ones as brain development continues into adulthood. New and frequent experiences create connections that improve a child’s ability to do more complex learning activities.”
3. Can Help Discover a Talent:
Only when you allow your child to explore the various avenues of expressing themselves openly will you give them an opportunity to discover what they are good at. A child might develop an affinity towards exploring sound further when playing with it. Another child might want to dig deeper while engaging with art materials at home.
When your child is stacking paper towel cylinders one on top of the other, he or she is learning about balance and weights. Similarly, while moving to music, as we often do at Learning Matters, children find out that dance helps him/her feel calm. This is not possible with an iPad or smartphone screen where the child is not directly engaging but only watching others who are engaging.
4. Facilitates Memory and Language Development:
Through sensory experiences, a child will remember an incident and its associations better since they are learning by doing. Think back to some of your fondest memories. They will most likely involve one of the five senses. By smelling a jasmine or rose flower, a child will associate its fragrance with something pleasant. Or while petting a cat, they will remember the feel of the fur or the sound of its purring.
Find a word that you don’t know and try to remember its meaning. Now link this word to an experience in your life, and you’ll notice that remembering its meaning is a super simple task. The same goes for children. When engaging in sensory play activity with your child, ask them questions about their experiences — what does dry flour feel like on their skin, how do their hands feel when playing with slime, how does scented playdough make them feel.
Also, help them gather the words to describe their sensory feelings by saying the adjectives out loud and enacting them: look how fluffy this cat feels, this bubble feels wet on my skin. You can add to THeir vocabulary by adding the verb to what they are doing. I notice you are pinching the clay or rolling the car etc.
These associations and how often you repeat them will build a child’s language skills.
5. Builds Motor Skills:
Sensory play requires children to use their hand-eye coordination, place things on top of each other, throw, stretch etc. These experiences are remarkable for building motor skills as the child is using their limbs frequently.
Similarly, by running with or coming together with other children to play, the child is building their gross motor skills. Very often when young children are immersed in sensory play, they are using their core muscles. It is these core muscles that will help them to sit up straight while writing in the later years. When children are using their hands, they are building the fine motor skills that again they will need for writing.
Conclusion:
The importance of sensory play in your child’s early life is immense. All children will naturally engage in sensory explorations. All you need to do is not stop them. While the above benefits may not be immediately visible, you will definitely support your child’s growth and development if you allow for them to play and use all their senses.
It is important for you to find a preschool where your child is encouraged and supported to enjoy myriad sensory experiences. At Learning Matters, our early childhood program keeps play at the heart of the program. Children engage all their senses when they play. We know our belief and commitment to children is based on evidence about how young children truly learn and thrive.
