Sensory Play

My little guy is very sensitive to different textures, smells and temperatures. About a year ago I really started focusing on sensory activities. Here are some of our favorite.

These are sensory boxes filled with different textures and objects 

 Split peas

 Easter Grass

 Pom Poms

Oatmeal-We added lavender essential oil to this. 

Recently we switched the oats out with rice and kept everything else the same. He love the new texture. We put the rice in the cold garage before playing and this made for a cold, smooth texture

 Water Beads are another really fun sensory tool. My little guy tried eating them when he was two, so this had to be a very supervised activity. I do believe that you can make these out of food-Tapiocia maybe (I really did not look into that much) 

Boys will be boys! We set up several tubs-One with water and one with bubbles, and we had ourselves a car wash. He asks to do this every week. You could change out the cars for play food, dishes ect. 

Here is another activity with the smaller bins. Its just baking soda, colored vinegar and a dropper. This was smelly for him but he still loved it!

He hates getting messy so painting was not his first idea of fun. He did really get into it and now plays with the painting every day. He races his cars on it :) 

This one is really awesome but has a very strong smell. All you need is a bar of Ivory soap and a microwave. You place the soap in the microwave and watch. The soap turns into a big cloud. Its really fun to watch! Then we placed it in a bin and let him go to town. It turns into a powder more or less and once it gets into the air its a strong sent of ivory. When we do this again we will do it outside. 

Here is one of our most favorite things to do in the summer. We did this almost everyday. I take a big tub fill it with water and food coloring. Then I drop in some cheap toys I bought at the dollar store (Great place to buy sensory items) Then I put it in my deep freezer overnight. We take it out on the deck with buckets of hot water, salt, spoons, forks and he goes to two trying to get the toys out. 

Here is a cold activity to do indoors in the winter. We took two tubs outside and filled them with snow. I just let Annie play with it and I gave Connor salt and warm water so he got to experiment as well as "play" 

Another thing we have tried is Cloud dough. It's just flour and baby oil. This one smells really great and it is moldable. You could totally play with sand toys with this. I also really love letting them play with just flour! (This one gets messy-Its all worth it to see them so happy!)

A favorite sensory reward is either using Chapstick or essential oils as rewards. When he was potty training we would put a dab of Chapstick on his hand. He loved the scents and it was a reminder to him of what he did and also that he should go again! Much better than filling him with candy every time!