Benefits of Sensory Play
What are the benefits of sensory play?
Play is at the very core of a child’s overall development. Sensory play activities engage and activate all of your child’s senses to help them learn, grow, develop, and thrive. Sensory play helps build and establish nerve connections in their brain’s pathways to develop and learn from their environment to help them complete complex tasks. Sensory play activities enable children to enhance their cognitive growth, foster more meaningful social interactions, use their creative imaginations, and experiment with the world around them.
Activities focusing on engaging a child’s senses help all areas of development including the following:
• Language Skills: Communication skills grow leaps and bounds with sensory play! As children engage in sensory play, they learn to communicate their wants/needs, their emotions, and use social language skills with others. They learn new vocabulary, language concepts, and how to use more descriptive words to communicate with others.
They are given the opportunity to ask and answer questions, participate in pretend play, and create imaginative stories and play scenes.
• Social-Emotional: Sensory play has a calming effect and helps children learn to problem solve and interact with others around them as they share and communicate with others.
• Cognitive Growth: Sensory play helps your child ask questions, think about how things work, experiment with items, and problem solve with different experiences.
• Fine Motor Skills: Through tactile play with sensory bins, children enhance their ability to use small muscle groups and coordinate their movements. Activities such as scooping, squeezing, pouring, and pinching objects in play help them to improve their fine motor skills. These skills are important for daily life tasks such as feeding, tying their shoes, and getting dressed and for academic skills such as coloring, cutting with scissors, and writing.
Play is at the very core of a child’s overall development. Sensory play activities engage and activate all of your child’s senses to help them learn, grow, develop, and thrive. Sensory play helps build and establish nerve connections in their brain’s pathways to develop and learn from their environment to help them complete complex tasks. Sensory play activities enable children to enhance their cognitive growth, foster more meaningful social interactions, use their creative imaginations, and experiment with the world around them.
Activities focusing on engaging a child’s senses help all areas of development including the following:
• Language Skills: Communication skills grow leaps and bounds with sensory play! As children engage in sensory play, they learn to communicate their wants/needs, their emotions, and use social language skills with others. They learn new vocabulary, language concepts, and how to use more descriptive words to communicate with others.
They are given the opportunity to ask and answer questions, participate in pretend play, and create imaginative stories and play scenes.
• Social-Emotional: Sensory play has a calming effect and helps children learn to problem solve and interact with others around them as they share and communicate with others.
• Cognitive Growth: Sensory play helps your child ask questions, think about how things work, experiment with items, and problem solve with different experiences.
• Fine Motor Skills: Through tactile play with sensory bins, children enhance their ability to use small muscle groups and coordinate their movements. Activities such as scooping, squeezing, pouring, and pinching objects in play help them to improve their fine motor skills. These skills are important for daily life tasks such as feeding, tying their shoes, and getting dressed and for academic skills such as coloring, cutting with scissors, and writing.