Sensory Play and Toddler Development

Sensory play allows toddlers to reinforce their learning by stimulating their senses and encouraging them to explore the world around them.

Using their five senses is the most basic and familiar method toddlers can use to investigate and discover new information.

Activities which use touch, taste, seeing, smelling and hearing should be regularly encouraged.

Research has shown that nerve connections (neural pathways) are built in the brain’s pathways during sensory play and this level of growth is crucial to a toddler’s ability to complete increasingly more complex tasks.

This development supports cognitive growth, language development, gross and motor skills, problem solving and social interaction.

It can help in developing and enhancing memory and is also useful for calming an anxious or frustrated toddler.

Offering your toddler opportunities to explore and play with different types of sounds, smells, tastes, textures and objects will expand their imagination and curiosity about the surrounding environment.

Feeling, seeing and hearing helps them to understand in three dimensions.

Your toddler’s earliest memories of sounds will be of familiar voices, which now belong to the security of familiar faces of the people who provide reassuring cuddles.

Suddenly water is not only wet, it can be cold like ice, rough with waves or warm and bubbly in the bath.

Tasting brings hot and cold, sweet, sour, salty or bitter and suddenly your toddler’s world becomes absorbing, puzzling, but most of all stimulating and compelling.

Picking things up can be a puzzle too, hard, soft, smooth, rough and just when you think you’ve got the picking stuff up sorted… a handful of sand slips through your fingers!

But wow, isn’t every day fascinating, intriguing and such fun when you are a toddler!

If you do need a hand or have any questions, always feel free to comment below

and I will be more than happy to try and help you out…

sue@calmkoala.com

But Please Remember: This is a family friendly area and any inappropriate posts will be deleted!