five senses

For our final 2015 sensory playtime, my coworker and I had to aim for a simple but fun session. We had a program scheduled for the next day, and we needed activities that we could easily clean up.

Our first station was peek-a-boo animal books. My coworker found this fabulous idea in a book, and we had our volunteers color and place material to make the books touch and feel. This were also great in that we saved them for our future Waddler and Walker Storytimes.

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Our second station was colorful pom-poms. We have two boards with different colorful tubes. We did have the option of separating the pom-poms into their respected colors, but we thought it made it more interesting for the children to try and put the colored pop-pom down its matching tube.

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Our third station was the egg carton walk. We taped down egg cartons to a cardboard for the kids to walk on. We also flipped them different ways for the kids to explore the different texture as they walked.

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Our fourth station was rhythm sticks. My coworker led this station. Parents could grab a rhythm stick for their child and follow my coworker as the kids tapped the sticks to different songs.

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Our final station was colorful fish. This was great for sight and taste. We got the colored goldfish.

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November was our second Sensory Playtime and boy, was it a blast! We once again had five stations, but we primarily focused on touch.

Our first station was shredded paper. This was very cost effective but messy! It was probably the favorite station. The kids would bury themselves in the paper, throw the paper up in the air, and make mounds with it.

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Our second station was a messy pile of leaves. The kids again had a blast throwing the leaves up in the air. We did provide a painting of a tree. This offered kids the opportunity to place the leaves on the tree if they wanted. However, they were way more interested in tossing the leaves up in the air.

Our third station was sound bottles. The kids were able to shake them and stack them up. We caught a few kids wondering around with a bottle, but hey, at least they were developing their senses!

Our fourth station was sticky paper. My coworker discovered this idea and we absolutely loved it. We talked about different kinds of tape to use and decided on contact paper. Duct tape seemed too harsh. We saw different ways our patrons interacted with this station. Young babies walked/crawled over it. Older kids would try and pick it up with their hands. We have tagged this one to do again, but maybe put out little items that the kids could stick and unstick stuff to the paper.

Our final station was ice cubes. I froze a bunch of toys into the ice, and the kids objective was to try and melt the ice to get to the toy. These are very cheap toys, so if a toy walks off with a child, it was not the end of the world. Surprisingly, this might have been the second favorite station. I had several of the older kids tell me about it.