Sensory Play…the Easy Way!

Hello, friends! In my last post, I talked about the benefits of sensory play and how it supports many different areas of development. I also touched on the fact that while elaborate sensory play experiences can be fun and look awesome on Pinterest, simple activities are just as effective and take much less time and money to prepare. Today I thought I would expand on this topic a bit by showing you an example of what our sensory play looked like one afternoon last week.

Sensory play at the Twodaloo house often takes place during the “witching hour,” which at our house is a dangerously grumpy time period after nap but before Daddy gets home from work. On this particular day, we decided to head out into the back yard and see what Mother Nature had to offer in the way of sensory play. As you will see, she did not disappoint us!

It’s been a pretty warm fall ’round these parts this year (I still have roses blooming and jalapenos in my garden!), but we’ve had enough cool nights for the leaves to begin turning and enough windy days for them to finally start falling from the trees. While the twins played in the sandbox, I quickly raked up a pile of leaves and then called them over to investigate.

To my delight, they dove right in! At first, they simply enjoyed running through the pile over and over again, giggling and squealing the whole time.

I love watching the twins become “little scientists” during sensory play activities…here Sydney is carefully inspecting a tiny leaf that she found in the pile. I took this opportunity to point out the different colors of leaves in our pile and do a little bit of color matching (i.e. “Look, this leaf is red, can you find another red one?”) before fading into the background to watch them play again.

Here Will is “stirring” the leaves with a stick. He really enjoyed the crunching sound the leaves made when he played with them. He would take turns holding them up to all of our ears and crumbling them and then screeching, “Ah HEE it! Ah HEE it, MaMA!” (I hear it, Mama!) at the top of his lungs.

They also loved sprinkling the leaves all over their own (and each other’s) heads. I think they liked the way the leaves felt on their little faces…they would giggle and squeal, “Ticka-ticka-ticka” (tickle, tickle, tickle) every time!

Here is Syd playing foreman with a sandbox toy. She would fill it up, drive it to the other side of the pile, and dump it out. Who said only boys could play with trucks?

Meanwhile, Will took the opportunity to roll around on an old picnic blanket I had spread under a nearby tree. He rolled, and rolled, and rolled…and then we looked up at the sky through the branches for awhile. We even saw a squirrel up high in the tree!

Before long, Syd joined us with a new sensory material she found in the garden. Remember how I said we still had roses blooming here in Texas? She took the opportunity to strip several handfuls of petals off the bushes and pile them on the blanket. I don’t mind…it is supposed to be winter, for Pete’s sake!

How sweet is that?

My little nature baby 😉

Exploring together. What more could I ask for?

You see friends, the point of this post is not just to show off how adorable my kids are. It is to demonstrate that some of the best, most engaging sensory activities are those that take little, or even zero, preparation at all! Look back through my post and you can see how this simple activity, planned and executed by Nature herself, engaged the twins’ senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, and movement. All I had to do was sit back and let them play.

Looking for ways to expand this activity? Here are a few ideas:

• Collect different “specimens” that you find in your leaf pile. Bring them inside and create a collage by glueing them to construction paper or pressing them to the sticky side of a piece of Contact paper.
• Use the various leaves you collected as stamps- dip them in paint and make prints on paper.
• Just add water (we actually did this a few days ago)! Give your children a container of water and let them add leaves and other treasures from the yard to make “soup.” Be sure to compliment the chef(s) on a job well done!
• Give your children a ball of play dough and let them decorate it with leaves, sticks, and rocks from your yard.

What are your favorite simple sensory play activities? I’d love to hear about them!

If you like this series of posts on sensory play, stay tuned! My next one will address a reader’s question about sensory play essentials for her 15 month-old.

*And here’s the link…Building a Sensory Stash from Scratch

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