The Importance of Sensory Play in Early Years

Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates your young child's senses: touch, smell, taste, movement, balance, sight, and hearing. From birth to early childhood, children use their senses to explore and try to make sense of the world around them.

Why is it so important?

Providing opportunities for children to actively use their senses as they explore their world through "sensory play" is crucial to brain development. It helps to build nerve connections in the brain's pathways, which lead to the child's ability to complete more complex learning tasks.

At Dazzling Ducklings, our sensory bins, water tables, and tactile art projects are deliberately designed to:

• Enhance Memory: Scent, in particular, is highly tied to memory. When a child learns while engaging their senses, they are much more likely to remember the lesson.
• Support Language Development: Experiencing new textures and tastes naturally prompts a child to use descriptive words like "squishy," "cold," "sweet," or "rough."
• Encourage Problem Solving: Playing with sensory materials allows children to experiment, hypothesize, and solve problems. "What happens if I mix sand and water?"

Sensory Play at Home

You don't need expensive toys to encourage sensory play at home! A simple bin of dry rice or beans with some measuring cups, or letting your child help wash safe plastic dishes in soapy water, can provide hours of beneficial sensory exploration.

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