Five Senses Activities for Kids to Explore

The five senses include sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste. These senses help people learn about their surroundings. Even babies and young children actively engage in learning, and they accomplish this with the five senses. By providing engaging sensory activities for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, these youngsters can engage with their surroundings and learn about the world.

• Pre-Writing Activities for Kids: Straight Lines Sensory Bin - Gather items to make a sensory bin for youngsters that will introduce them to writing instruments and help them with fine motor skills.
• Sensory Activities: Birth Through 18 Months - Providing different fabric textures to a baby gives opportunities for sensory development, and blowing bubbles is enjoyable for toddlers.
• Nature Soup: Nature Water Play for Toddlers - Little kids love water play, so filling a shallow tub with rocks, leaves, flower petals, and more can provide hours of happy, supervised play.
• Activities for Babies: 0 to 6 Months - Sensory activities for babies include singing lullabies, dancing gently, watching reflection in a baby-safe mirror, and encouraging visual tracking with bright toys.
• 16 Sensory Activities for Kids at Home - Pointing out different objects with a flashlight in a dark room is one example of a simple sensory activity you can do with a toddler or preschooler.
• 20 Easy and Inexpensive Sensory Activities for Infants - Fill a shallow plastic bin with cotton balls and allow your baby to scoop them up in smaller cups.
• Sensory Play Ideas for Babies - A rice table can be an ideal sensory activity for preschoolers, as they can scoop and pour the rice to develop sense of touch.
• Sensory Baskets - Babies having tummy time might like to explore sensory baskets to keep them occupied. Fill a shallow basket with colorful items such as strings of beads or bouncy balls.
• Sensory Play Activities for Babies - Homemade edible finger paints are just one idea for a sensory activity that very young children would enjoy.
• Rice Sensory Bottle - Fill a clear plastic bottle with raw rice and a few colorful ingredients such as pompoms or glitter. Seal the bottle and allow youngsters to shake it.
• Dinosaur Rescue Sensory Bin - Hide some small plastic dinosaurs in a large bowl of rice and challenge kids to find them by feeling around in the rice with their hands.
• How to Dye Dried Chickpeas for Sensory Play - Dying chickpeas is a great way to make them bright and colorful, perfect for playing with and manipulating.
• Sensory Activities for Toddlers - Hopping from stepping stone to stepping stone can be a stimulating sensory activity that helps build gross motor skills.
• Water Scooping for Babies - Fill a shallow bowl with a few inches of water and provide a baby with a few small measuring cups for supervised play.
• 17 Sensational Sensory Activities for Toddlers - Toddlers usually love sand tables, water tables, and sensory trays with rice or flour for exploring.
• How to Throw a Splash Party - An outdoor splash party is an excellent way to cool off in the summer while exploring some sensory play.
• Simple Sensory Activities When You Only Have 10 Minutes - When you only have a few minutes, a baking sheet and shaving cream are the only things you'll need for fun sensory play.
• Sensory Table Ideas - Sensory tables can be stocked with many different types of materials, such as sand, water, rice, colored pompoms, marbles, water beads, and more.
• Making a Sensory Rainbow with Straws - Fill a shallow tray with shaving cream and provide pieces of colorful straws so kids can make rainbows.
• Sink or Float? - Fill a bin with water and provide kids with assorted small objects. Encourage them to predict whether each object will sink or float, and then they can test their predictions.

Additional Resources

• Why Sensory Play is Important for Development - Young children need to explore using their senses, because this helps with important brain development and helps them gain problem solving skills.
• Learning in the Baby to Preschool Years - Kids learn best when they're fully immersed in their learning by listening, observing, experimenting, and asking questions.
• Benefits of Sensory Play for Preschoolers - When kids use all of their senses to learn and explore, they develop cognitively, build nerve connections, strengthen their fine motor skills, and enhance new language skills.
• Babies and Their Senses - Babies intuitively use their senses to learn about their environment, and some children are more sensitive to external stimuli than others.
• What Screen Time and Screen Media Do To Your Child's Brain and Sensory Processing Ability - Excessive screen time can have a negative impact on children's development, causing sensory overload with too much stimulation.
• Exploring the Benefits of Sensory Play - Sensory play is all about holding things, feeling things, and having the other senses stimulated while engaging in activities.
• Why Sensory Play is Important - Kids need to explore with all of their senses, not just seeing and touching. Give children experiences with smells and scents, too.
• Cognitive Development and Sensory Play - Young children learn by using their senses simultaneously, so the more they are given opportunities to explore with the senses, the better they'll be at observing and solving problems.
• The Importance of Sensory Play for Early Years - Sensory play helps kids learn how to explore and use independent thinking skills.
• Exploring the Benefits of Sensory Play for Children - Kids usually love exploring their environment by getting messy as they splash, pound, throw, spray, and squish with a variety of different mediums.
• Top 5 Benefits of Sensory Play - Sensory play creates nerve connections in the brain, develops memory, and helps calm kids if they are over-stimulated.