Today's super fun and easy sensory activity comes from the lovely Kat at Creative Playhouse. If you haven't seen Kat's blog yet then you must go and have a look at all the great activities and ideas she shares. Enjoy! Debs :)
I'm so excited to be posting here at Learn with Play at Home. Debs is such an inspiration and its just fantastic to be able to share on her wonderful blog.
Sensory activities help children engage with learning and play in different and more intense ways. I love simple sensory play; using items you already have in the kitchen cupboard or are cheap and easy to buy. In the past we've used brown sugar as a sand substitute and made magic bath crystals from short grain rice! One of our favourite activities is to colour salt and play with it. Salt, without the colour is a lovely sensory material, if you add liquid food colouring, it goes a little damp and acts like sand thats good for sandcastle-ing. :)
Of course, adding the colouring is half the fun, and using the salt as a blank canvas you could drizzle pictures and patterns, or explore colour mixing.
The whole activity is open ended; you can mix the colours, pour the sand, stir and scoop it, mould it, draw in it... you could provide different tools for the sand; cups, pots, jugs, scales, spoons, sticks, more colours. You could also add smells to the salt too to increase the sensory engagement. Keep it as simple as you like or make it an entire sensory experience; either way salt is a great material, like sand it just makes you want to put your hands in it!
