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Sensory games are very useful for child development. In this article, we have prepared examples of sensory games that are very easy to prepare, have lots of fun and have a great impact on child development. Let’s see, what are the sensory play benefits and how are they played? Let’s learn together!
What is sensory play?
sensory games; These are games that stimulate and develop the senses. These games are not skill-based games either. It is played only to understand and discover the material. In short, they are games that your child can easily play.
So , which skills do children develop through sensory games ?
sensory games;
- Academic
- pay attention, focus
- Distinguish between sounds-images-textures
- body awareness
- Hand-eye, eye-foot coordination
- Fine-coarse motor
- Building healthy relationships
- socialization
- language and speech
- They develop many skills such as self-confidence, self-esteem, self-preservation. In other words, they are extremely effective in the development of all the skills necessary for our lives.
You may be new to this concept, but if you grew up playing different games with your peers on the street, in the neighborhood or in the garden of the apartment, these games will sound very familiar to you.
Here are 9 sensory games that are useful and fun for your child and easy to apply!
1. Natural bracelet game
If you want to have a pleasant time outside with your child and get some fresh air in a wonderful weather, we recommend the natural bracelet game.
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
This game is one of the 2 year old sensory games ! You can easily play with your child who is 2 years old and older.
What do you need?
Adhesive tape is enough for you to play the duct tape game.
How is the game played?
- Before leaving the house, tie the cellophane to your child’s wrist like a bracelet. The only thing you have to be careful about is that the sticky part of the tape stays up. You can tie it to both wrists if you wish.
- Have your child collect natural materials for the bracelet you will make after you leave the house. Leaves, flowers, feathers, grass, grass and even tiny stones.
- Have your child glue all these sensory play materials onto the sticky part of the bracelet. Manual dexterity may not be enough. Don’t hold back your help.
- After completing the bracelet and returning home, stick it in a very visible place in the house.
What are the benefits of this game?
- Putting on the bracelet, touching its adhesive surface, touching all the different materials that can be pasted on it will help your child develop his/her sense of touch and feel different textures.
- Walking, talking, naming what you see supports language and speech development.
- Finding different, interesting natural materials to use in bracelet making, collecting and gluing them increases visual awareness, hand-eye coordination, and supports fine motor skill development.
2. Squirt Boatman
Unfortunately, many children today cannot spend much time with their peers and other people, and cannot establish physical contact. However, it is very important for the development of the child that we make contact with another child, hand in hand, knee to knee, eye to eye, elbow to elbow!
Here, the squeaky boatman, squeaky squeaky games serve exactly this purpose. Your child can play these games with pleasure with slightly older children. Not only children, but also adults around him can accompany him in these games.
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
You can play these games with your child from infancy. It is enough for your child to be able to sit. In some games, it may be good to get support for security reasons.
What do you need?
The best thing about these games is that they only need people.
How is the game played?
Squishy boatman: Have your kid sit on the floor. Open your legs in a V shape. You sit across from him in the same way. Take your hands and sing the gushing boatman song.
Plane: Lie down. Bend your knees slightly and lift your legs up. Hold your child up with the soles of the feet on the hips. Hold your hands with your hands too.
Tidyk tidyk: Work in position, keep your hands on the floor. If your child is small, ask someone else to put the child on their back. Carry your child on your back by saying ‘diggy’ gag and horse-walking.
What are the benefits of this game?
- Swinging rhythmically, trying to stay in balance, moving in different directions, tensing and relaxing the muscles improve spatial perception.
- Hugging tight and applying pressure to the joint develops the sense of touch and eye muscles.
- Holding someone in different positions, staying in balance, increases body awareness and muscle control. Holds the posture more securely.
- Playing these games with you or someone else your child trusts increases their self-confidence, socializes them, makes them feel emotionally secure and improves their learning skills .
3. Kite
Here is one of the most fun sensory activities suitable for a windy weather, kite! But this kite is not a classic kite, it is a kite made of plastic bag! You can play this game on a windy autumn day in the countryside or on a windy beach. The goal is to get your child to move.
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
We can count the kite-flying activity among the sensory games for 3 years old.
What do you need?
- Any nylon grocery bag. It would be nice if it was a little bigger.
- A long, medium-thick rope.
- Colorful ribbons, gramophone papers
- Scissors
- Staple
How is the game played?
- Cut the rope 2-3 meters long.
- Tie the nylon bag handles to each other and then to the string.
- Cut the ribbons and gramophone papers to about one meter long.
- Staple the ornaments on the other side, ie underneath, not the part of the nylon bag that is attached to the string. Now the tail of the kite is ready.
After that it’s easy! Your child will run and fill the wind in the plastic bag.
What are the benefits of this game?
- While running against the wind improves gross motor skills , it also increases muscle strength and improves coordination.
- Checking if the bag is filled with wind while running strengthens eyeball movements and eye muscles.
- Trying to fly the bag increases your child’s movement skills.
4. Shopping game
Contrary to popular belief, most children like heavy work. This is the shopping game, so we think your child will like it very much!
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
As of the age of 3, the child can play this game with pleasure.
What do you need?
- A solid washbasin. This will be your child’s shopping cart.
- Heavy fruits and vegetables that do not spoil quickly and are not crushed
- Box-packed products such as cereal
- Packaged beans, rice
- cat litter
- jar of coffee
- Heavy encyclopedias and books
- Coupons made of cardboard with pictures of all shopping items
Of course, let’s also mention that it is not necessary to just play with food and drink materials or books. The main thing is that you can give your child pictures of the materials you want to find and add to the basket!
How is the game played?
- Hide your shopping supplies in various parts of the room. For example, hide the packet of rice behind the pillow, the beans under the seat, and the coffee behind the curtain. In other words, let the shopping supplies be scattered throughout the room.
- Put heavy books, encyclopedias in it to make the laundry bag heavier.
- Give the coupons to your child one by one.
- Every time your child buys a coupon from you, find the shopping material related to the coupon and put it in the basket.
After trying this game at home for a few days, you can go shopping together. The only thing you need to do before shopping is to prepare coupons with the images of your needs list, just like you do at home. Your child can help you find the relevant product in the market, just like at home.
What are the benefits of this game?
- Pushing heavy loads increases body awareness, develops gross motor skills and strengthens the body.
- Trying to find hidden objects increases attention, increases skills such as focusing and spatial perception.
- Finding the object, throwing it in the basket and trying to find another; Develops sequential work, motor planning and organizational skills.
- Trying to find the picture by looking at the coupons and naming it also contributes to the development of language skills.
- Playing this game with another child improves communication and social skills .
- Performing similar transactions in the market makes him feel important and useful.
5. Music circle game
Competitive games are not very attractive to some children. A child whose organizational ability is not as developed or slow as others does not like this type of game. Therefore, we recommend that if there is more than one child in the environment, you should offer them non-competitive games. Our next sensory game suggestion is just such a game!
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
Children of all ages can play. If there are very young children, of course support is needed!
What do you need?
- Four or more children.
- One hula hoop for each child. If you can’t find a hula hoop or don’t have time to buy one, just draw circles with chalk on the floor.
- Musical Chair song with occasional pauses. If you can’t find this song, no problem. A tape recorder or computer that you can turn off and on will suffice.
How is the game played?
- Place hula hoops on the floor, one for each child, and forming a circle.
- Have the children stand by the hula hoops. When the music starts playing, ask them to move to the nearest hula hoops. Then stop the music. When the music stops, they get out of the hula hoops right away.
- Next time, subtract 1 hula hoop. Again, let the children start walking when the music plays. And when you turn the music off, some will have to share hula hoops. Let’s see how they will share?
- In the classic chair game, one child is left out at a time. But remember, this is not a race.
What are the benefits of this game?
- Paying attention to the start and stop of the music helps to distinguish sounds and increases auditory awareness.
- Estimating the distance between hula hoops and acting accordingly provides visual-spatial discrimination.
- Spinning around the circle improves balance and motor planning skills.
- Jumping inside the hula hoop improves two-way coordination skills.
- Playing non-competitive games improves your child’s social communication skills and makes them feel emotionally secure.
6. Pop the bubbles game
Pop the bubbles game, which is one of the easy and wonderful two-way coordination games, appeals to many emotions at the same time. Although it may seem like a very familiar and old-fashioned game for all of us, we strongly recommend that you play this game with your child.
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
You can play this game comfortably with your child over 2 years old.
What do you need?
- bubble tool
- A small seesaw
How is the game played?
- Have the child stand on the leg of the seesaw on the floor.
- You get right in front of him and start popping bubbles.
- Let your child try to both balance and pop the bubbles on the seesaw. He can also pop bubbles by clapping, punching, or forefinger.
- As an alternaive; You can also play this game with a big beach ball or balloon.
What are the benefits of this game?
- Following the bubbles, bringing the two hands together and popping them improves two-way coordination,
- Clapping improves balance, controls gross motor skills and provides motor planning.
- Focusing on moving bubbles improves visual perception and awareness.
7. Road game
road game; It’s a great sensory game to play with your kid at home when it’s cold and rainy! Moreover, it is very easy to apply.
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
You can safely play with your child aged 3 years and older.
What do you need?
- Carpets with different textures
- Velvet, chiffon, satin, twill
- Plush or post rug
- foam packaging
- Microfiber cleaning cloth
- Quilt, bedspread
- Pillows filled with various materials such as beads and beans
- Non-slip cloth
- Bubble nylon packaging
- Sandpaper
- wicker car seat cover
How is the game played?
- Make a circular path by combining all these materials of different textures.
- When doing this path, first put the materials very close to each other.
- If you have children, take off their shoes, slippers or socks.
- Have your child walk, roll, crawl, and feel all the different textures with their hands and feet, all the way barefoot, with a story that will engage their child.
- Then move the materials a little further from each other, help him realize the distance and pass over the materials by jumping and bouncing slightly.
- If your child is a little shy, you can support him by holding his hand, or you can crawl this way and make him cross on his knees.
What are the benefits of this game?
- The child’s feeling of different textures with his hands, feet and body enables the development of the sense of touch.
- Walking over objects, jumping, trying to reach other objects enable them to perceive their distance from each other. It improves attention, eyeball movements, visuospatial perception. It improves movement and balance, motor planning, muscle activities.
How can you play outside?
- It is possible to find the environment you set up at home with all the materials much easier outside. You went on vacation in the summer. There is a beach and a grass area right behind it. Wonderful!
- Draw a circle from the beach to the grass area.
- Take large and small stones from the beach. Throw it on the sand. If possible, make the big ones a group and the small ones a group.
- Put the pieces of wood you found on the beach in between.
- Add any other materials you can find in different textures, such as dry seaweed. Here is the way for you!
Just be careful, the stones are not sharp.
By the way, if you are going to a kid-friendly hotel, it is possible to find many sensory activities suitable for your child. Top 10 Baby-Friendly Hotel Recommendations for Families Going on Vacation with their Babies! You can get information about baby-friendly hotels from our article.
8. Kiss the mirror and go to sleep
Kiss the mirror, one of the most enjoyable and easiest games, will improve your child’s oral motor skills.
What developmental age is it appropriate for?
You can play this game comfortably with your child over 2 years old.
What do you need?
- A lipstick made for kids.
- Pier glass.
- Felt-tip pen.
How is the game played?
- Apply lipstick to your child and pass him in front of the mirror.
- Have your child kiss the mirror several times. Make your lips different shapes each time.
- Design using the lips with the felt-tip pen you have in your hand. For example, let the lip be the wings of a butterfly. Talk to your child about what else he can draw and make different figures together.
What are the benefits of this game?
- Shaping the lips from shape to shape develops your child’s mouth and cheek muscles. Why are these muscles important? Because these muscles work well, it is necessary for the child to make different sounds.
- Kissing the mirror allows to feel the pressure on the lip and improves the sense of touch.
- Making different figures based on the same figure improves the sense of sight and increases visual awareness.
