Letters, flashcards, numbers, and alphabets usually come to our minds when we hear the word teaching. ROYBI is a smart educational toy, and as a company in the education industry, it becomes our goal to educate and create awareness on better educational tools. In this article, we will be looking at Sensory Activities for toddlers. It is one of the most creative and beneficial forms of learning until a certain age. Children need to touch, see, hear, and interact with materials to activate the brain's sensory regions.
Sensory activities have been around for children forever, but there are usually confusions regarding what sensory play is and how it can benefit the child.
What is a Sensory activity/ Sensory play?
It is a type of play that stimulates and activates children's senses. It evokes the child's sense of touch, sight, and hearing. When young, a child's interaction with the world is primarily through senses; they smell, hear, see and touch things to understand and comprehend the surrounding. They learn about the world and make sense of things on their own terms. As they transition to a toddler phase from the infant phase, they start playing; everything around them is a potential toy, and through this, they grow.
Benefits of sensory play
As children grow into toddlers, they can take vast amounts of information into working knowledge about the surroundings. Sensory activities offer an opportunity to engage with the surroundings. Sensory play is a type of active play that helps the child create connections in the brain that enable increasingly complex thoughts, tasks, and activities. It supports cognitive growth, language development, gross motor skills, and social interaction. Anxious and angry children find sensory play useful to calm them.
Here are a few sensory plays that can help children connect better with their surroundings-
Playing with food
Do not mistake this for food play or food wastage. Food is a safe way for children to explore texture, smell, and taste. And it doesn't get wasted because it eventually goes in their mouths. Yes, it is messy, but you must allow little ones to experiment with the food in their hands. A 2017 study showed that preschoolers who participated in sensory play with fruits and vegetables were more likely to try the foods in the experiment and other new foods.
Play Dough
There are enough recipes online on making your own dough using supplies at home. You can add colors and essential oils for smell too. You can also use pre-made dough if you cannot make your own dough. The dough is squishy and soft, thus ensuring that the child will enjoy hours of slicing, rolling, and chopping as they engage with it.
Taste Test challenge
This is a fun activity for a preschooler. You can ask the child to close their eyes and offer them different food or fruits they enjoy. As they taste each fruit, they will have fun guessing its name.
Frozen toys
This is an ideal outdoor- summer day play. You can simply freeze some of their toys and let them manipulate the ice until the objects are free from ice. Some kid-friendly tools can be used to chip the ice. Warm water is also another tool that can help in melting the ice.
Rhymes that rhyme
Rhymes are groovy. When your child listens to rhymes, their attention increases as it is rhyming, creating a certain musical effect to hear. ROYBI is an exciting tool to find rhymes and songs so that your child's auditory senses can sharpen.
Sensory play activities have to be fun and not complicated; often, they only require a few items that you probably already have around the house.
It can get messy, but when your child engages with the senses, it will give them a chance to grow and interact with the world around them. The mess will be worth it.
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