Benefits of Sensory Play

Lets explore the benefits of Sensory Play for Children

Children completely love exploring their world through using their senses. Sensory Play is a form of play which stimulates any or all of children's senses. It builds cognitive skills and has a dramatic influence with how your child learns about their world.

Their exploration of everyday life

While this can sometimes (or possibly always) be begrimed, children absolutely love exploring their world through their senses. Whether they're shaking, spinning, spraying, splashing, squeezing, squishing, pushing, dropping or banging things all over the house, these are all forms of Sensory Play. Sensory Play which stimulates the child's senses plays a fundamental part in a child's health and personal development.

So what exactly is Sensory Play?

Well, in a nutshell, Sensory Play is a form of play which activates any of your child's senses. And of course, these senses include sound, smell, touch, taste and sight. However, Sensory Play also responds to balance and awareness. Children's senses aren't completely developed at child birth. Children's senses mature over time as they grow through stages in life from babies to pre-schoolers, whilst they dive in and explore their world before them during this time. The individual experiences they go through build nerve connections which develop the framework and architecture of their brain.

Sensory Play Benefits in General

Sensory Play stimulates learning and education through exploration, interest, solving problems and being creative. It assists in building nerve connections in the brain and facilitates development of language and motor skills. There are so many further benefits of Sensory Play such as the learning and development of the ability to focus and block out distractions.

Other than Nature, which is a perfect and timeless landscape in providing the framework for Sensory Play, Fidgets and Sensory Toys provide a different form of Sensory Play.

Characteristics

There are quite a few different characteristics when it comes to Sensory Play, such as, but not limited to:

1. Tactile Play
2. Vestibular Sensory Play
3. Proprioception Sensory Play
4. Auditory Sensory Play
5. Visual Sensory Play
6. Olfactory and Taste Sensory Play

Tactile Play - is arguably the type of play you're most likely to imagine when talking about Sensory Play. When children are playing with or exploring objects with their hands, they're exercising Tactile Play. With Tactile Play, children can learn many various things like feeling of pressure, vibrations, temperature, and so many others.

Vestibular Play - relates to children jumping, rolling around, swinging and hanging, all forms of which contribute to children's balance development, as the senses of balance and movement originate from the Vestibular system located in the inner ear. Children clowning around and moving their heads in many different positions helps strengthen the Vestibular system by activation of several receptors in the ear.

Proprioception Sensory Play - we all move our legs and arms freely, without having to look at them or forcibly convince them to move - welcome to Proprioception. Pulling, jumping and pushing are all motions that assist in the development of spatial awareness of children's bodies. In exercising Proprioception, children learn where they are and belong physically, and how their arms and legs relate and work with the rest of their body.

Auditory Sensory Play - it's fair to assume that all Mums and Dads have heard their children banging, dropping, smashing and making a noisy mess of things around the home. Well, that's known as Auditory Sensory Play for children. This form of play guides your children in differentiating sounds and develops their hearing, and above all, THEY LOVE MAKING A RACKET! On a quieter note, Fidget toys and POP ITS are an equally perfect solution for your child's Auditory Sensory Play.

Visual Sensory Play - the Visual system is adjacent and very closely connected to the Auditory and Vestibular systems. Visual Sensory Play assists with the development of your child's sight and vision. From watching a plane zoom across the sky, or staring at the dog running around the back yard, from playing with colourful objects and identifying different colours and patterns - all of these motions and objects are a fun way to stimulate Visual Sensory Play.

Olfactory and Taste Sensory Play - Olfactory relates to the sense of smell and it's also directly related to the sense of taste. It's often difficult to establish when a child is utilizing their sense of smell and taste, but perhaps sneezing after smelling a strong perfume or cologne, or the smelling of strong-noted flowers, or having a taste of the back yard's soil system may provide evidence as to their taste and smell senses. Children will develop these senses through activities in which they are tasked, or sneaky activities of their own!

 

Thank you for taking the time to read and learn about Sensory Play. Visit our store for fantastic Sensory products.