Sensory Activities for Toddlers Support Early Development
For a curious toddler, exploring the world through their five senses is a delightful and new experience. However, so much more is happening behind the scenes. Research shows that hands-on, sensory activities for toddlers also light up their brains, strengthening neuroplasticity and cognitive function.
In fact, research reveals that 90% of a child's cognitive development happens within the first five years. If toddlers are eager to play, and we know how essential it is to their development, it's safe to say that play is just what your toddler needs to set the foundation for their success. This blog will uncover the many benefits of sensory activities for toddlers and how parents and early childhood educators can support their curiosity with sensory games!
Why Sensory Activities For Toddlers are Key to Early Brain Development
Sensory activities stimulate the early childhood brain and develop neural connections that support a child's motor skills, language development, and social-emotional learning. When toddlers interact with various textures, sounds, and sights and explore different taste profiles like salty, sweet, sour, etc., complex sensory pathways are being developed in the brain. Let's further explore the many developmental benefits toddlers gain when they interact with sensory activities.
1. Sensory Activities for Toddlers Support Cognitive Function
While toddlers engage in sensory play, they learn to solve problems and think critically to understand the cause and effect of their actions. Simple tasks like finding the perfect shape for a puzzle piece can do wonders for a developing brain as they repeatedly try to find the ideal match, making adjustments and using critical thinking to meet their goals.
2. Sensory Activities For Toddlers Develop Motor Skills
Whether is a gross motor skill game like Buddy Hop that helps develop children's coordination and muscle tone as they hop from buddy to buddy to build their memory skills. Or games like Share a Berry that strengthen toddlers' fine motor skills. Games that focus on hand-eye coordination and dexterity, like Pickles' Slide to Win, are also the perfect approach to training tiny hands while providing the mental stimulation needed to support a rapidly growing mind and body.
3. Sensory Activities for Toddlers Help Develop Early Language
Sensory play creates the foundation for a toddler's language development because it provides the perfect activity for parents and toddlers to use words to describe colors, texture, and the characters of an object.
4. Sensory Activities for Toddlers Support Social-Emotional Learning
Sensory activities are especially beneficial in helping toddlers regulate their emotions. Materials like sand, warm water, the plushness of puppets, or a favorite 'blanky' can help regulate a small child's nervous system and calm toddlers at the beginning stage of life when they are learning to communicate their emotions.
Sensory Activities for Toddlers and How to Interact With Them
Sensory Activities for Toddlers: Sensory Bins
Sensory bins are an excellent DIY toddler activity that uses objects you might already have in your home. Simply grab a plastic tub, and add different textures for toddlers to explore. A few essentials to have on hand are scoopers, paper cups, or other safe objects that allow toddlers to practice scooping and pouring objects like dried rice or beans. Using different-sized cups encourages toddlers to use fine motor skills and concentration to pour objects from one vessel to another.
Sensory Exploration with Play-dough
Play-dough is another fun sensory activity option for toddlers. Whether you make a simple homemade recipe using flour and water or purchase your own, toddlers will enjoy squishing, cookie-cutting, and molding this malleable texture as they strengthen their hand muscles and explore their creativity!
Sensory Water Bins or Water Tables for Toddler Play
Fill a shallow bathtub or plastic bin with warm water and add cups and toys that let toddlers splash, pour, and scoop water as they enjoy the calming, sensory effects of the experience.
Sensory Activities That Stimulate Sight
One of the easiest ways to help toddlers stimulate their sight senses is by exploring early childhood books, games, or even something as simple as taking a nature walk, which can help them identify the colors, shapes, and textures around them.
Sensory Activities That Encourage Exploration Through Sound
Rattles, instruments, and the sounds of different household items can all be beneficial for developing a toddler's concept of sound. Consider singing songs or exposing your child to different types of music featuring various instruments, and use simple words to describe the sounds they hear.
Even a simple activity of identifying different sounds together, like a purring cat, a car horn, or nail tapping, can help stimulate a child's early understanding of the world around them.
Exploring Taste With Edible Sensory Activities for Toddlers
Ever wonder why toddlers always put random objects in their mouths? As a parent, you may shriek at the idea of your little one being exposed to germs, but this form of exploration is important to a toddler's brain development. While we may not want to encourage toddlers to put inanimate objects in their mouths, we can create a sensory experience featuring samples of foods that stimulate the senses.
*Try this: Set up a tasting station with a parfait of bite-sized, age-appropriate flavors for your toddler to explore. Offer a small variety of sweet flavors like fruit, something crunchy like veggies, something soft like a bite of bread, something tart like a small piece of grapefruit, and so on. This exercise is also a great way to help toddlers expand their palate at a young age.
Sensory Activities That Encourages The Sense of Smell
Helping children explore scent is fairly easy, because scent is everywhere. Whether it's the smell of a citrus peel, a few pungent yet pleasant scents like cinnamon and cardamom, something floral like a rose, and any mild extracts you may use for cooking like vanilla bean extract, are all great ways to help stimulate the olfactory nerve of your toddler's brain.
SimplyFun Sensory Activities for Toddlers:
This three-in-one toddler sensory activity set makes exploration a feast for all the senses! Let's explore each game in the set!
My Fun Day
Explore the day with Tibbar Rabbit as toddlers use fine motor skills to adjust the wooden sliders and dials and reflect the time, season, day of the week, and more! Each day is brimming with learning opportunities for your little one, and this Montessori-inspired wooden activity board helps toddlers understand all the details of their day.
Every morning is a new day to learn. Ask your child to flip the pawn to represent the morning and adjust the day of the week, month, and time. Now, let's find the activity disks that illustrate what your little one will do next. Should they eat breakfast, or brush their teeth first? Uh oh, it looks like rain is in the forecast. Will your toddler need a raincoat? My Fun Day inspires toddlers to participate in planning their daily activities and make sense of the details of their day. All while supporting communication and collaboration.
My Fun Shapes
This toddler stacking game is a tactile delight as little ones use fine motor skills to explore colors, shapes, and the sensory sound of wooden blocks stacked in all sorts of fun ways.
*Extra Fun Ways to Play: The tumbling Tibbars add a fun challenge and encourage creative problem-solving when used as the base for stacking shapes. Use the activity disks to interact with your child and support memory development and critical thinking as they look for blocks that match the color and shape on the disk drawn.
My Fun Buddy Book
Toddlers explore textures with this cuddly cloth book that features an assortment of fuzzy friends, also known as the SimplyFun Buddies! This immersive toddler book helps little ones visually and tactilely explore concepts like top, middle, bottom, front, and back by mixing up the different sections of each buddy.
My Fun Buddy Book is also a great introduction to vocabulary as children learn the names of various buddy sections and encourage critical thinking and vocabulary to discuss the differences among the characters.
Sensory activities for toddlers do more than provide fun for your growing child; they also maximize their potential at a critical time in their development. By using all their five senses, your toddler can start to understand the world around them, develop their early creativity, and strengthen both gross and fine motor skills, which all work in tandem to support early childhood development.
Ready to introduce sensory activities to your toddler? It's easy as 1-2-3 with My Fun Set.
More on the Blog:
Build Awareness and Curiosity with My Fun Day