Sensory play refers to the simple activities done with young children to enhance their skills of seeing, listening, smelling, balance, movement as well as other psychomotor skills. Sensory play aids the development of brain use to complete any given task. The first seven years are the most important foundational years for brain and motor skill development. Simple sensory play activities like clay modelling, drawing, solving puzzles can not only give an outlay to a child’s creativity, imagination and innovation while also encouraging their brain to think laterally. Here we discuss the ways in which sensory play can aid the overall development of a child in pivotal ways-
Language Development
Through sensory play, children earn to express themselves using words and sentences. As they interact with their surroundings and pick up words that label temperature, colour, time, place, they also start using these words in their play and their interactions with people around them. Sensory play enhances the vocabulary of the child and also helps the child understand the cultural context in which language is used.
Development of Problem-Solving Skills
Engaging in sensory play also helps children develop various problem-solving skills as well as boosts their imagination and creativity. Children learn how to think out of the box as well as overcome the obstacles they encounter in their tasks.
Cognitive Growth
As the child explores the world around them through their senses during sensory play, it develops their skills of identification, categorisation, interpretation and articulation. Through these skills the child is able to understand and interact with the world around them more effectively and efficiently.
Motor Skill Development
As sensory play also includes various physical activities, it helps children enhance and refine their motor skills. Children also learn skills such as eye-hand coordination and are able to interpret abstract concepts such as speed, distance and time. SNIS Boarding school in Bangalore has 60 acres of green and secure open campus where your child can explore their abilities to the fullest in a pristine environment.
Enhanced Memory
Sensory plays are found to have a huge positive impact on the memorisation and retention capabilities of the child. It encourages children to remember the rules and other components of the activity they are engaged in and retain this information for future use.