"What are sensory activities good for?"Everyone knows that we have five senses. Five senses being: taste, touch, smell, sound and sight. In the special needs community, we've come to accept eight senses as needing input. One being vestibular and another being proprioception. Vestibular input relates to the position of the head, being in many positions like swinging, and jumping. This sense has to do with balance and the workings of the inner ear. The proprioception sense is more for the body and the limbs attached. Pushing and pulling are heavy impact activities that would fall under proprioception. Babies and children, especially sensory sensitive children, need to work their senses to learn about their world. Babies love sensory activities because it helps their minds understand how their world works, how things sound or what textures feel like. Many mainstream baby toys are sensory toys! However, as children get older, the toys become less and less about learning. Older children, sensory processing disorder and autistic children, need more sensory activities because of their body needs to connect with the world around them. It can be soothing. It can be therapy, if they have avoidance behaviors. It can be fun while being informative! 1. Rainbow soap foam2 Tbsp of dish soap, such as Dawn. 1/4 cup water (note: if your tap water is especially hard or soft, you will need to substitute bottled water so that the soap will bubble well) A hand mixer food coloring or Colorations Liquid Watercolors ** In a bowl, add 2 Tbsp of dish soap and 1/4 cup of water. Add food coloring to the mix if desired. Mix on the highest possible setting for 1-2 minutes. Your foam should be able to form stiff peaks that hold their shape. Scoop it out into your container and repeat as necessary until you have the desired amount of foam! (If your child has sensitive skin, you can substitute whatever bubble bath they use for the dish soap in the recipe above.) I do not recommend this activity for very young children who may put the soap in their mouths or eyes. The soap is not meant to be ingested and will sting if rubbed into eyes. **Note: we used liquid watercolors and had no staining as liquid watercolors are washable. If you use food coloring, you are very likely to have some staining as food coloring is not washable.** 2. Sensory BinsThis is a personal favorite in our house! We have plastic containers filled with items that are different textures and smells to encourage more acceptance from different sensory items. For example, we have a sensory bin full of flour. Hilo uses the bin in the bathtub (easy cleanup), just mushes it in his hands, and puts his toys in it. It's a great thing to explore in! Another sensory bin we have is dried rice. I placed all sorts of colored beads in the rice to have Hilo search through and find all the pieces of a certain color. It's a more engaged activity to include another person for like social reasons (my son has autism; he needs to learn interactions with others). These bins were VERY cheap to put together. I bought the big plastic containers from the dollar store, the beads, and the flour. The dried rice was bought at the grocery store for like $2-$4 depending on the store. So at the most, this is a $10 sensory bin activity. Other ideas for the bins
3. Weighted Lap Pad
There are TWO ways that you can make a weighted lap pad. It depends on your sewing skills or time available. 4. Smelly Slime
Fill the empty glue bottle with liquid starch. Add almost all of the liquid starch to the bowl of glue. Add as much glitter to the mix as you want. You could also substitute food coloring if glitter isn’t your thing. Add a few drops of essential oils or extracts to your slime. (Add enough so that it is nicely scented, but not so much as to overwhelm your child. Depending on the strength of the essential oil, usually a drop or two is all you need.) We used lavender essential oil, peppermint essential oil, orange essential oil, tea tree oil, mint extract, and vanilla extract in our slime.
I can literally feel some parents pulling away from this list saying something like: "That sounds like it'll just be a mess for me." OR "There is no way my kiddo will do that." Me too. I've got an energetic kiddo who never sits down. So, why make them sit down? 5. Laundry Basket racesSo you know those half filled laundry baskets near your bed that aren't folded? No? Oh weird. Well I've got a few, and an active kiddo who never gives me a second to put anything away. Never the less, an activity emerged to get him to burn off all that energy and sensory seeking with a not-so-constructive game using my washed clothes. Races!! We have a laundry basket filled with things like clothes or heavier items like books or toys, and set a track. Sometimes its back and forth, sometimes it's all around. But what we do is have a start/finish line. We'll run through the house and have Hilo race after us with a filled basket. He's getting all the sensory input he needs while burning off all that energy that is often put into destructive behavior. Usually, we do this after supper time, but before "pre" bedtime so that he has time to calm down yet. If you've got more than one kid, you can encourage their competitiveness and have them race each other and the winner gets something simple like their favorite bedtime story read first. It's so simple but enough to urge them to play along and push harder. 6. lacingFor fine motor development, this is a great activity. Cut down a peg board (like the ones used in craft rooms or workshops) and use this as a board to lace yarn, rope, and strings through. It's like weaving or sewing, yet safe and easier for little ones! Tie a knot on the end so it catches and doesn't pull through, and lace it through back and forth. Change up the colors or textures for more fun! This is the starting step to lacing and tying shoes. It'll be easier for a child's fingers to understand the motions when starting big then moving smaller. Hopefully this was a good start for your family and the fun that can come from sensory activities! We always keep some on hand just in case we need a quick go-to one day. The sensory bins are great for keeping. Just make sure you keep them out of the way! I had a kid spill dried rice and flour all over my carpet which did my vacuum in, and I had to get a new one!
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AuthorGabrielle Rae is a special needs, stay at home mommy of two boys. She enjoys reading and writing novels in her spare time. @onbothfrontsArchives
August 2018
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