Sensory Trays

Sensory play is any play activity which engages the senses, sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell. These activities allow the child/ young person to experiment with the sensory experiences in a manageable way, exploring elements of their world at their own pace. No two experiences are the same and an activity that may be stimulating for someone maybe calming to others. But as a parent, it’s great to be able to have a bit of practical control by using a tray, as it just makes it easier to set up and tidy away again after.

I’ve made it a bit of a personal mission to explore a wide variety of sensory play activities with Laurie and I consider this list sort of a “Part 1” on our sensory tray journey.

I have found that Morrison’s sells children’s pasta in animal shapes and it lovely to talk about the animals we have found. We also used a magnetic board to organise the magnets making numbers and sums with what we have found.

Use with cups bowls and containers. Really lovely to experiment with tastes and sounds, by crushing the coco pops with cups.

To make the spooky rice I used gel food colouring to colour dry rice and used packs of googly eyes and rubber insects to add to the rice.

Another one exploring tastes. Add gel food colouring to cooked spaghetti and then use with scissors to build motor skills.

Mix up a pack of angel delight to use as the mud for plastic animals, and use another separate container with warm soapy water to wash the animals clean. Have a few tea towels to hand for drying.

Make chains by threading the weetos onto the pipe cleaners. Great fine motor exercise but also fun to experiment with taste.

Make little ghosts from a pack of dried butter beans by using a permenant marker to make little faces on the ghosts. Talk about the ghosts and their emotions as you go.

I was able to pick up this pack of dried Marrow Fat Peas for about 70p. Use as boulders with trucks and diggers and have fun moving the loads around.

This is just some of the Sensory trays we have experimented with over the last few months and I look forward to sharing more of this journey with you again soon.

F -x-