Children learn best when they have the opportunity to engage their different senses. Think about it – what are some of your favorite childhood memories? The smell of autumn leaves? The sticky gooiness of a campfire s’more? The Play Doh food you used to make in your imaginary restaurant?

 

Whatever your favorite memory, chances are your senses are involved. Sensory play works. What’s more important is that sensory play leads to more solid learning.

Retention improves when you can involve your child’s senses. Imagine how much more impactful learning is for a preschooler or early elementary child who holds a handful of snow inside a warm house to observe melting and get an introduction to different states of matter.

Sensory play can be as simple as dumping some flour or cornmeal in a pan and letting your child explore and dig for plastic dinosaurs. It can be as complex as mixing up some play dough from scratch and creating a dinosaur island for your kids to explore, while erupting a baking soda and vinegar volcano in the corner.

 

We set up sensory and imaginative playscapes in our homeschool often. It’s a great way to keep the preschooler and toddler engaged and occupied while I work with the big kids, and then a nice reward for the big kids to escape to when their work is done for the day.

Since many readers have asked about the sensory play ideas I’ve shared on Instagram, I figured it was time to post about our activities. You can pin or bookmark this page, as I’ll collect all of the posts here as I publish them.

 

Twelve Months of Sensory Dough

Since sensory doughs {cloud dough, play dough, snow dough, etc.} make such great bases for sensory play, I’m teaming up with some fabulous kid bloggers to bring you twelve months of sensory dough. Each month, we’ll tackle a different dough, and each put our own spin on it. Check back often for updated links.

January – Snow Dough

February – Scented Dough

March – Sparkle Dough

April – Clean Mud

May – Salt Dough

June – Fizzy Dough

July – Sand Dough

August – Playdough

September – Oobleck

October – Soda Dough

November – Cloud Dough

December – Edible Dough