Benefits of sensory play

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Sensory play and activities provides children with just another meaningful place for learning. Tubs rotating regularly with exquisite sensory materials and sensory tables are really worthwhile investment for our kids for helping them to learn, explore and have endless fun. As it has been studied that kids do learn best by having “hands on’ experiences with materials, hence sensory experiences through sensory play is most vital for the learning process of our young ones.

There are mainly two types of motor skills that the child develops as they grow up. The first among them is the fine motor skills and the other gross motor skills. The gross motor skills are those skills that deals with the coordination of our large muscle groups and are so responsible for activities such as walking, running, jumping and others.

The fine motor skills on the other hand are those skills that are required for refining the ability to coordinate and use small muscle groups. Fine motor skills are important for tasks like buttoning, writing, shoe-tying, zipping and others.

Sensory play are such activities that help in building up the fine motor skills of our children, which is done by pinching, pouring and lacing movements.

Here a few more benefits of sensory play and sensory activities that must be known by all of us for enhancing the growth and development of our kids.

Helps in cognitive development

As children learn to experiment with different sized containers they develop cognitive abilities like math skills, conversion skills, counting skills, timing, matching and classifying and sorting skills. While performing sensory activities kids gets the opportunities to work on decision making skills and problem solving aptitude.

Language development

For kids in order to develop their language skills, children needs to appreciate their experiences which are interesting enough to talk about. Sensory playing experiences helps children to develop their pre-writing skills as they spoon, grasp, pour and work on eye-hand coordination, while they use the materials they have with them during sensory playing activities.

Social and emotional development

Sensory playing activities helps the kids to find an opportunity to feel good about their decision making skills, which aids them in discovering their true-self. Sensory activities makes the kids take pride in their observations and predictions as the children learn to cooperate and work together around the sensory table.

Working together on the sensory table makes the kids also learn to understand some else’s viewpoint and gives them the opportunity to express themselves and thus find confidence in sharing their ideas with others.

Helps in physical development

While kids engage themselves on sensory playing activities, they start learning to control their bodies and so gives their body proper directions to accomplish tasks as they explore. This in turn refines the gross motor skills of the children as they learn to manipulate the materials on the sensory table.

Helps in creative development

Sensory playing experiences provides an open-ended opportunity for the kids to use their creative thinking skills and express their creativity, as in sensory play the process is more important than the products that they find on the sensory table.

Apart from the above stated facts, sensory play also provide comfort and calmness for cranky and irritated child.

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