Sensory Play in The Early Years | Early Years Resources (2023)

This article has been written by early years consultant, Anne Rodgers, from ATR Consultancy.

What is sensory play?

Sensory play includes activities that stimulate children’s senses such as sight, sound, smell, taste or touch. By providing this type of activity children will learn more about the world around them in a natural way, through their senses. Such activities contribute to brain development by stimulating the neurons in the brain to make connections and help with development in all areas of learning.

For example, as children explore sensory materials they develop their sense of touch. This lays the foundation for learning other skills, such as identifying objects by touch and using fine and gross motor skills. These motor skills can be refined through moulding, scooping, splashing and shaping objects.

As children become more verbal, they will learn to describe similarities and differences in objects that they see, hear, taste, smell or touch. Social skills can develop through the sharing of materials and seeing how others interpret objects and share ideas and discoveries, therefore building relationships.

Sensory experiences can be calming and therapeutic for young children and help them work through their emotions, anxieties and frustrations. They can release pent-up energy and allow children to master new skill sets.

All children will benefit from sensory experiences and allowances should be made for accessibility. For instance, young babies will enjoy treasure baskets and messy play in trays or baskets on the floor, whereas older children may like to sit or stand at a table to explore activities.

Why is sensory play important?

Sensory play is important in helping children make sense of the world around them through experiencing texture and materials. It encourages discovery and independent thinking, whilst inspiring imagination and creativity.

Sensory play also has a host of benefits for children’s development including:

• Brain Development
• Language Development
• Fine and Gross Motor skills
• Problem-Solving Skills
• Cognitive Growth
• Social Interaction
• Awareness
• Comforting
• Adaptability

To learn more in-depth about the importance of sensory play and exactly how sensory play improves each of these areas of development, read our blog which covers the benefits and importance of sensory play.

Why do we need to plan for sensory play experiences?

Planning for sensory experiences is important it ensures that all areas of the curriculum can be met through purposeful play experiences. Planning ahead will ensure that all of the necessary risk assessments are in place and materials sourced, to allow the activity to be presented well. Planning will also allow practitioners to provide for children’s next steps in learning and development depending on the child’s likes and dislikes and what the child learns from the activity. The child may find different ways of exploring the activity that the adult has not thought of.

Sight

The most commonly stimulated sense for young children is sight. From birth, babies are given brightly coloured and patterned toys to look at and play with.

Exposing young children to new and interesting experiences will keep them curious about the world around them. Visually stimulating activities will enable children to use the sense of sight to discover colours, shapes, brightness, form and structure. They will discover how things move and develop visual memory as to how things work.

Sound

Many toys for young children feature music and other various sounds. Music is extremely important for children and many learn best when a concept is set to music. Music can encourage motor skills development as children learn to dance and to keep a beat. Singing songs, listening to stories and talking about what they are doing all help children with sound and listening skills. Wind chimes, music boxes, shakers, objects to bang and music to listen and move to will all enhance this area of learning and development.

Smell

The sense of smell helps children to identify scents they like or don’t like and can be incorporated into planning in many ways. Try adding an array of fragrances into your treasure box, such as coffee, mint, lemon and lavender. Providing these different smells allows the children to differentiate between new scents and build on their learning through their sense of smell.

Taste

Through the sense of taste children will get to explore new foods, fruits and vegetables and decide which ones they like and do not like. Finger foods are a good way to encourage independence for toddlers so that they can feed themselves. Cooking activities will encourage children to join in the process of making meals and treats. They are more likely to try new things if they are involved in making and preparing them.

Touch

The sense of touch can be best explored through textures and messy play. Young babies like to snuggle in with soft blankets and investigate treasure baskets, older babies and toddlers will enjoy messy play activities to explore new textures. Going on a ‘touch’ walk will encourage children to touch new items for texture such as rough and smooth, wet puddles, tree bark and some plants.

Linking requirements of the EYFS with your practice

Maths

0-11 months

Babies’ early awareness of shape, space and measure grows from their sensory awareness and opportunities to observe objects and their movements, and to play and explore.

Physical Development

8-20 months

Enjoys the sensory experience of making marks in damp sand, paste or paint.

Expressive Art and Design

8-20 months

Explores and experiments with a range of media through sensory exploration, and using whole body.

Characteristics of effective learning

Playing and Exploring – (engagement)

Finding out and exploring:

• Using their senses to explore the world around them
• Participating in open ended activities
• Showing particular interests
• Engaging in outdoor learning.

Being willing to ‘have a go’:

• Initiating activities
• Seeking challenge
• Showing a ‘can do’ attitude
• Taking a risk, engaging in new experiences, and learning by trial and error

Learn more about how important it is to take risks during EYFS play by reading our blog which covers the importance of risky play.

Active Learning (motivation)

Being involved and concentrating:

• Maintaining focus on their activity for a period of time
• Showing high levels of energy, fascination

Creating and Thinking Critically (thinking)

Having their own ideas:

• Thinking of ideas
• Finding ways to solve problems
• Finding new ways to do things

Making links:

• Testing their ideas

Choosing ways to do things:

• Changing strategy as needed

Sensory activities, in addition to being fun and interesting for young children; encourages them to explore and investigate. These activities support children to use the ‘scientific method’ of observing, forming a hypothesis, experimenting and making conclusions.

Sensory Play Activities And Ideas

There are endless sensory play activities you can incorporate in your early years setting. Some great activities to implement in the classroom include:

• Painting Homemade Salt Dough
• Mark Making With Play Dough
• Playing With Kinetic Sand
• Creating Shadow Puppets
• Making Pretend Snow
• Making Mud Pies

Why not add some edible sensory play into the mix? These activities are great for providing a different angle to sensory play for a first birthday party or for messy play sessions in your early years setting. Children up 18 months will still be putting things in their mouths, so it is important to provide them with a safe way to get messy. These include:

• Coloured spaghetti
• Making Jelly
• Making a chocolate cake
• Using edible paint
• Juicing Fruits

Or why not combine maths and sensory play together? Combining the two can encourage children to enjoy maths, find it less intimidating and help them apply mathematics to real life.

• Make illuminated numbers with a light table.
• Freeze numbers in water to create numbered ice cubes and ask them to order them before they melt.
• Get active and get your children to hopscotch on number liquid tiles.
• Play with tactile numbers and help children develop correct numeral formation.

To learn more about all of these activities read our blog posts which cover general sensory play activities, edible sensory play activities and maths sensory play activities.

Activities For Special Needs Children

Introducing sensory play for children with special needs is great for improving cognitive growth, motor skills and problem-solving skills. Before implementing sensory play for children with special needs it is important to consider what they will learn and how they will experience it to understand what activities make sense for each child. For example, a child with visual impairments will experience sense’s differently from a child who is deaf or hard of hearing, has physical limitations or has sensory processing issues.

Some examples of activities/resources that are great for SEN children are:

• Mud Pies
• Kinetic Sand Play
• Sensory Dens
• Waterplay
• Play Dough

Want some inspiration on sensory activities for SEN children? Browse our blog post which covers potential sensory play activities for special needs children.

Activities For Babies

Getting babies to engage in messy play is important as it helps to build fine motor control, and problem-solving skills, develop knowledge of scientific concepts, improve collaboration skills and develop social-emotional skills. Some great sensory activities to do with children include.

• Porridge sensory bins
• Finger painting
• Jelly sensory bins
• Shaving cream colour mixing bags
• Dry pasta sensory bins
• Flour sensory bins
• Shaving cream sensory bins
• Glitter sensory bottles
• Edible chocolate mud

To learn more about the types of resources you need for each of these activities, have a read of our messy play ideas for babies blog!

Creating Sensory Gardens

Creating a sensory garden is an easy way to enhance sensory development in children.Sensory gardens are spaces created using plants, flowers, light and natural sound to stimulate and indulge all five senses.

Sensory gardens encourage children to explore plant life cycles, learn about different seasons and develop a curiosity about wildlife.

They are also super beneficial for children with autism or sensory processing disorders. For pupils hyper-sensitive to sensory stimuli, the garden can be calming and give them a better sense of control. For children under-reactive the garden can help them experience the five senses in a positive way.

When creating a sensory garden consider:

• Position of the sun through the day,
• Quiet and away from traffic noises and distractions.
• Maintenance requirements
• Growing plants that are safe for children to interact with.

To learn more about how a sensory garden satisfies the five senses and how to make one, read the blog which goes through how to create a sensory garden.

Taken from Sensory Play in the Early Years by Anne Rodgers.ISBN: 978-0-9930782-2-4.

About Anne Rodgers

Anne Rodgers is an Early Years Consultant (ATR Consultancy) and Writer. Anne has 36 years’ experience of working in the childcare and education sector – including training practitioners, managing numerous settings over the years and writing articles for Early Years Educator and the CACHE Alumni website.