Benefits of Sensory Play
How exploring the world through touch, taste, sound, and smell builds the foundation for lifelong learning.
The Importance of Sensory Play in the Early Years
From the moment they are born, children start using their senses to help them explore and understand the world around them. As they grow and develop over the next months and years, their senses play an increasingly important role as they interact with their environment.
In this guide, we look at how sensory play stimulates children in their early years, the incredible developmental benefits it provides, and how you can encourage it both at home and in the nursery.
What is sensory play?
Sensory play is essentially any kind of play activity that stimulates one or more of the senses and encourages little ones to be curious. Using several senses at once helps children fully engage with their environment. It is highly inclusive and beneficial for all children in their early years, including those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND).
🧠 The 3 Major Benefits of Sensory Play
Sensory play is not just about getting messy. It assists in three vital areas of early childhood development:
Brain Development
Experiencing new textures and sounds helps build new neural connections in the brain. It builds a strong foundation for problem-solving skills and greatly improves language comprehension as they learn descriptive words like “soft”, “rough”, or “sweet”.
Physical Development
Using touch helps develop gross and fine motor skills. As little ones navigate towards an object to squeeze, pull, mould, or shape it, they develop stronger hand muscles. This also assists with developing full-body balance and coordination.
Emotional Development
Engaging several senses at once allows children to become fully absorbed in their play. Repetitive sensory activities, such as rolling dough or painting, are incredibly therapeutic and help children self-regulate their emotions and relieve anxiety.
🏠 Sensory Activities to Try at Home
There are lots of fun sensory activities that you can set up easily at home using everyday household items:
Sensory Cups
Fill paper or plastic cups with tactile materials like dry rice, pasta, or water beads. You can provide empty containers made from different materials (like pans or cardboard boxes) so they can pour the rice and hear the different sounds they make.
Water Play
Best done outside on a warm day or in an empty bath. Fill containers with water and add a couple of drops of food colouring. Make some water lukewarm and some cold to help your child learn about different temperatures.
Mess-Free Paint Mixing
Squeeze a few different coloured blobs of paint into a clear, sealable plastic food bag and tape it to the table. Your child can squish and mix the colours together with their fingers without any mess.
Textured Walking Course
Place a variety of flat, textured materials on the floor for your little one to walk or crawl over barefoot. Try using a towel, bubble wrap, a cushion, and the underside of a waterproof picnic blanket.
🏫 Sensory Play at Kids Planet Nurseries
At Kids Planet, every pre-school and nursery setting has its own range of sensory activities designed to help little ones grow and learn in a stimulating environment:
A fundamental part of our outdoor play and learning. Being creative with mud, water, leaves, and pine cones stimulates sight, smell, and touch while keeping little ones physically active.
Our messy play areas encourage pouring, squeezing, scooping, and smearing using sand, water, clay, and putty. These movements are essential for developing hand-eye coordination. Find out more about the benefits of messy play here.
While there are many benefits to reading to children, we make it highly engaging by incorporating sensory props. Children can “feel” the story as well as hear it, linking tangible objects to the narrative.
Experience Sensory Learning
We understand how sensory play acts as a great learning and development tool for every child. Come and see our messy play zones and mud kitchens in action.
