5 Activities To Challenge Your Child’s Senses

The senses are our child’s biggest asset and it will help with a lot more development of their general skills. It helps bring out a lot of confidence in children as well, leaning into their specific interests and needs.

At toddler age, sensory-based activities are great fun and will help them build up skills used throughout their lives. Here are 5 activities you can try out with your child at any time in the day.

1. A scavenger hunt

Heading out on a scavenger hunt can make things a lot more exciting for kids. Use it to your advantage by incorporating tasks that your child can use to test the main parts of their body. For example, ask them to smell the flowers, or grab onto some leaves and see how they feel. If you use the senses within the scavenger hunt you can reward them for their efforts.

2. Make a parts of the body diagram

Ask your child to draw a person, even if it’s them, and point out parts of the body. When they reach a part that is used for senses, ask your child what they have smelled, or touched, or heard in the past. Get them thinking exactly about what these parts of our body do that benefits our growth.

3. Make some Sense stations

This can be as simple as using some plastic tubs and filling them with different tools to indicate the senses. In a touch sensory bin you can add different textured toys or objects (so long as they are safe to interact with freely). A sound bin could have wind up instruments inside or small digital games.

4. Test your child in identifying salt vs sugar

It can be tricky at first to figure out which is salt and which is sugar, but you can easily figure it out as an adult. For children it will be about getting them to touch the sugar and the salt to figure out which it could be, smelling it and even tasting it! A great little sensory activity for young children to try out.

5. Get up close with a magnifying glass

Having a magnifying glass makes everything even more curious and exploratory for children. Try out a range of different objects viewed under the magnifying glass to see what else your child can point out to you. Make a habit of giving your child lots of different objects to see up close so they can really explore the finer details.

Sensory activities should feel fun and exciting, and they will most certainly pique your child’s interests. Just like this nursery in Streatham Hill, activities that engage the senses will develop young ones to help with their growth in the future.

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