Now that I'm the mom of a toddler and baby, I am finding out how important sensory play really is. Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates a young child's senses of touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing, as well as anything which engages movement and balance. Sensory activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate and explore.
Enter a few sensory play essentials:
- Splat Mat because I am Type A and so is my toddler.
- Kinetic Sand (scented is really fun)
- Cookie cutters
We had a lot of fun with these color coded cookie cutters I found on Amazon. The colors correspond to the holidays, so we tried to focus on yellow for Easter/Spring, but of course Violet was into every single one! And we needed to go through them all. We practice flattening the kinetic sand and pressing the cookie cutters in to make shapes. Then we decorated some of the shapes with more kinetic sand rolled into snakes or balls.
I also picked up some sand tools that were fun to incorporate to make bigger balls, tweezers to pick up small pieces, and little melon-baller type tools for some fine motor skills work.
Check out some pictures from our experience below. Also, we were sequestered in the bedroom while the baby napped - hence the Splat Mat! (I think it is meant for under the high chair, but neither of my kids have been too messy while eating and it is perfect for crafting anywhere without a mess!
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