Can anyone give me some ideas for a sensory activity for young children?

Question

It is in a nursery setting as part of my course I am doing. Sensory means to do with the 5 senses. I am struggling to come up with ideas.

Answer 1

Rice crispies in a bowl of milk

Sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. Only make sure the little darlings taste before they touch, LOL

Sometimes the simplest things are the easiest for nursery school age kids to learn by.

Answer 2

Hi there. you could:

Taste: different types of food, these could be fruit, cheese, sweets. You could also taste different foods from different countries which is a good way of incouraging knowledge about the world, or taste foods from the countries that are celebrating a certain festival or celebration.

touch: feely box - put a hole in the top and get them to guess what you or one of the other children have put inside (this couls have a veiwing bit for the others.

smell- again foods are a good one for this, they could smell the open jars

sight - counting objects - eg people walking, traffic going past such as busses, cars, lorrys.

hearing - you could listen to different sounds and get the group to guess what they are. there are the normal ones like animals, or you can get others like the toilet flushing (try looking for sound files / wav's)

hope these help, theres loads of preschool sites on the web thay may also help.

Answer 3

Get a lunch tray and fill it with shaving cream. Put a paint smock on the kids and let them play!

Answer 4

taste- guessing foods with blindfold on, tasting different foods and putting whether you like them or not, cooking and tasting your results

touch- messy play, anything that consists of small bits- lentil, sand (try putting washing up liquid in old sand), messy play with jelly, cornflour and water gloop, rice pudding etc, feely boxes, activity sorting hard. soft etc

hearing- guessing what noises are on a tape player, doing slow and fast rhtyhms, listening in the garden to what they can hear, using instruments

smell, smelly playdough using essential oils _CHECK THE ARE SAFE ONES FIRST, smelling different smells, nice/ nasty, using spices and herbs in cooking

Answer 5

The 5 senses are sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell.

Music, singing songs and rhymes (hearing).

Clay, shaving foam and very wet sand (touch).

Feely bags – encourages children to discuss the objects they can feel (shells, pine cones, flannel, etc) (touch).

Smelling objects – coffee, flowers, cheese (smell).

Creative play can be used to help all areas of development and to stimulate sensory awareness.

Materials for creative play can be divided into natural and manufactured materials.

Natural: Water, sand, malleable (clay and dough), foodstuffs (peas, pasta), plants and wood

Manufactured: Paint (use with fingers or tools), pencils, crayons and drawing materials, collage and construction.

Creative play involves children expressing themselves and dealing with what they are feeling and thinking. It is experimental and stimulates the senses, especially those of touch and sight, and the imagination.

Children are born explorers, they explore through their five senses and through their bodies.

Much of their exploring will be of play materials that the early years practitioners provide and the objects that the child will meet in their daily “play”, (e.g. - house bricks, stones, snails, spiders in their garden).  

Practitioners can plan to bring in the following so that children can look at, handle, manipulate and ask questions about

- Bulbs, seeds, plants, flowers, bark, conkers

- Small insects – spiders, snails, lady birds, butterflies

- Bells, clocks, taps, keys and locks, mirrors etc (display on a table entitled “discovery table”)

- Bird tables- provide winter food stuffs for birds

- Gardening activities – quick maturing vegetables which can once grown be eaten by the children.

Answer 6

Anything thats audio, visual or tactile.

eg.  different sounds,   lights colours,  or different textures, sand, cold water, warm water, frozen peas

Keep it simple with that age group.

Answer 7

treasure basket.... different materials on the floor... err guess the  item... various things like that... did cache diploma and passed it so must be doing sumthing right!!

Answer 8

corn flour and water

rice

pasta

fill bottles with things you found around the house

soup

Answer 9

upside down boxes with holes for hands in the top for touch..jelly, spaghetti, feathers...lots of fun and blindfold them for simple taste tests...fruit and cheese things that are in their diet...smelling things on tissues...lots of stuff...wish i was younger and in your class ..school is much more interesting nowadays ...good luck ...and enjoy...

Answer 10

This is a fun one- Put objects in brown paper bags. Give each child a bag and tell them they have to figure out what is inside of it. First, they can feel the outside of the bad. Next, they can shake it and put their ears up to it to hear the sounds it makes. Then, they can open the bag and without peeking...smell the object. After that let them have a small taste (make sure object is edible or non-toxic)... then have them reach into the bag and feel the object. Finally, allow them to remove the object from the bag and look at it. The whole time this is going on..after each sense is used have students discuss what they think the object is and why. You could even have a poll going and whoever guessed correctly or the closest is the winner.

Answer 11

Playing with clay or other oozy stuff.  Alternately blind touching things behind a curtain.

Smelling flowers.

Mixing swathes of colour - or bits of coloured paper & learning the colour wheel.

Listening to and usng chimes or milk bottles with varying amounts of water.

Answer 12

playdough with herbs added to it

cornflour and water

tealeaves with green glitter and plastic creepy crawlies in it

jelly

give raw pasta to play in one day and cooked the next

shaving foam with cars in it

straw

Answer 13

Smell - Get some real flavor extracts---get some baby food jars...put a different flavor on a cotton balls...put a different flavor in different baby jars...have the children smell each jar and name the flavor that they are smelling...ex... lemon, cinnomon, cherry, grape, strawberry, vanilla...etc..

Touch -- Have a bag full of various objects that the children should be able to recognize by touch...have them reach in the bag feel of an object and name it...then pull it out to see if they were correct...then let another child reach in the bag and feel of another object etc...

Hear -- Take the children outside...tell them that you want them to listen very carefully...to all of the sounds that they may hear outside...You as the teacher should model it by cupping your hand over your ear...and saying I hear something in the distance....I believe it is a/an.......Tell them not to say anything while they are outside, but when you return to the room you want to make a list of what they heard....

Seeing --I spy

Taste -- you can taste different fruits from different countries, you can select items that are sour, bitter, sweet, salty etc...and have them describe/discuss the differences