The world celebrates International Creativity Month every January, and it’s a great time to have fun with your preschooler with sensory crafts. Here are five that we particularly enjoy.
ABC Sensory Table
This idea from Teaching 2 and 3-year-olds is great fun. Simply grab a sensory table or bin, fill it with multi-colored foam letters, containers, and scoops. That’s it. Your preschooler will enjoy filling the containers with letters using the scoops or their hands. While playing with them, you can begin early learning and memorization games, and you can make a separate table or bin for numbers. https://bit.ly/3mL22W2
Sand Table
While some toddlers do not enjoy walking on sand, almost all love playing in it. Fill a baking dish or similarly sized plastic container with craft store sand, or several with sand of varying colors. The feel and movement of the sand will fascinate younger children and they will love burying toys in it, while older kids can spell out letters and numbers. Learn more at Imagination Soup. https://bit.ly/3Jtj5FQ
Flour Sensory Trays
Flour has been a useful teaching tool for ages, certainly long before sensory crafts and their benefits became popular, and it’s so easy. Pour flour onto a cookie sheet or paper plate, set it down in an area where clean-up will be painless, and away they go. Children will love the soft, powdery texture of flour and will immediately create. See Hands On As We Grow for great ideas for using flour as a sensory development tool. https://bit.ly/3zcoEUa
Guess The Sound Jars
Children love sound games and this one is both fun and educational. Get a non-see-through container with a lid, soft butter, or margarine container that works well, and put items in it, bells, coins, rice, keys, beans, anything that makes noise. The idea is to put one item in at a time, shake the container, and have your child guess what’s inside. You can work on vocabulary, spelling, and sounding out words while playing as well. Visit the Calgary Public Library site for more great preschool sound sensory ideas. https://bit.ly/3pGYTZ0
Smelling Bottles
There are many fascinating ways to explore the sense of smell with children, and smelling bottles is one of the best. Gather several small plastic or glass bottles with lids, spice bottles work well. Clean them thoroughly to remove any lingering spice smell and then add various extracts or essential oils to cotton balls and insert them in the bottles. Open each bottle and ask your child to guess the smell. As with Sound Jars, this is another excellent way to work on vocabulary, sounding words, and spelling. Visit livingmontessorinow.com for other interesting smelling-bottle ideas. https://bit.ly/3ECp7QM
Enjoy International Creativity Month by helping your children discover the wonder of their senses.
