Sensory kid activities are not only extremely fun for the littles ones but they’re great for their development. Children don’t learn by sitting down and being told what to do; they learn by using their five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
By stimulating your child’s senses through play, you are helping them develop their brain, their creativity, their emotions and social skills. They are able to learn cognitively, linguistically and physically all through simple play.
Research has shown that sensory play helps build nerve connections in your child’s brain. This helps your kid to learn how to complete more complex tasks. It also helps teach your child how to stay focused and develops their gross and fine motor skills.
There are only benefits to sensory play and the best part is that most activities are very affordable and can be made with things you have around your home.
We have spent countless of dollars in toys, but nothing beats the sensory play activities. Our children absolutely love them and when it comes to these activities they are able to spend so much time doing them that it gives mama a break.
Once your start making sensory play activities with your children you’ll realize it’s easy to customize them to a theme or a holiday. We always do some fun sensory activity around every holiday and throughout the year we based them on theme the kids are interested in.
If you have more than one child, these should be your go-to activities because you can use a bin big enough to promote group play or you can make them in smaller bins to promote independent play.
When my second child was a baby, I made all of her activities taste-safe by using food so keep this in mind if you have to make activities for kids with a big age gap.
Best Sensory Kids Activities for Any Occasion
Before we jump into the instructions, click here to check out this TV segment from Good Morning Washington where I show you how easy it is to make our four favorite sensory kid activities.
- A large plastic bin
- Small plastic bins
- Stainless steel bowls
- Scoopers
- Water beads
- TOOB toys
- Glitter
- Craft foam
- Decorations: Craft gems, beads, sequins, tiny butterflies or any other small craft decoration you have at home
Our friends over at Safari LTD, the creators of the TOOB toys we use for all our sensory bins, saw the segment and offered me a discount code for all my readers. You can get 15% off on any purchase made before October, 31st, 2017. Click here to visit their use and use code “GOODMORNING” at checkout.
You might have to get other items to complete each activity but those are the base of most of the sensory activities we make at home. Keep in mind that these tutorials use a specific theme, but you can make any of these activites and just customzie them with the toys and decorations your kids prefer.
Click on each image below and it will take you to the post with instructions.
Sensory bag:
You can make these with hand soap, hair gel, shaving cream or whipping cream. Add to the bag glitter, sequins, and shapes made out of craft foam.
Click on the image to get instructions for each bag:
Calm Down (Sensory) Bottle:
Spaghetti sensory play:
Water Bead Sensory Bin:
I don’t have a tutorial for this activity yet but it is very simple to make.
All you need is:
- plastic bin
- Water beads
- scoopers or measuring spoons, cups and small jars you have at home
- TOOB toys (with a theme your child will love)
To make it:
Add the water beads to the plastic bin. A little goes a long way so add about 2-3 tablespoons of water beads followed by a lot of water. You should fill up your bin half way with water.
Wait a few hours or leave them overnight. Once the beads have grown, drain the water, add the toys and let your kids have fun with it!
This is by far my kids’ favorite activity! When we make these water beads we play with them every day for a week before we let them dry out.
To dry them out, make sure there’s no water in the bin and leave the bin out of reach. The beads will eventually dry out and go back to their original shape. You can store them in a bag to reuse some other time.
So there you have it – four fun sensory kid activities you will find yourself doing over and over again because your kids will absolutely love them!
I hope you feel inspired to make these with your kids. Enjoy!
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