Here are our top 10 sensory household items and ideas for ways to use them!
10. Washing Up Liquid
Bubbles are an all time favourite play item. Washing up liquid is a great way to create foamy, bubbly play opportunities.
Mix washing liquid and paint, blow with a straw and you'll get a huge colourful bubble ball! If you want you can print it onto paper and make lovely bubble art.
9. Shaving Foam
The great thing about shaving foam is that it leaves virtually no mess (and quite a pleasant and manly smell!). A quick pat down and it disappears, even on clothes.
Just putting foam out on a table and letting kids write, draw and explore with their fingers can provide lots of sensory feedback. You can use it to practise spelling or sums, hide objects in it or even add food colouring to make rainbow foam. Loads of fun!
8. Cornflour
Cornflour makes great gloop! Mix it with a little water and food colouring if you have it and you have a tactile, weird mixture for the kids to explore.
Your coloured gloop can also be used as chalk paint - easily washable and sticks to surfaces so you can draw in the street or in your bathroom and it should wash away easily.
7. Rice
Rice is lovely to run your fingers through, to watch pouring and to play at cooking with. It works as a good alternative to sand - you can use it with similar toys to pour, write in or sprinkle.
You can also sew a pouch of rice into a teddy or cushion (like a wee bean bag). It creates a good weight which can be comforting and you can microwave it to add heat if you like.
6. Pasta
Rice is nice, but pasta's fasta! Hopefully it's not in such high demand by now and there's spare in your cupboard (or at least in Asda).
Pasta makes fun play cooked or dry. It comes in loads of shapes which are fun to sort. You can snap it, snip it, thread it onto a necklace or glue it together it to make a picture. All lots of fun!
5. Ice Cubes
Ice is slippery and difficult to catch. You can freeze objects, numbers and letters into it. You can try to build an igloo. You can freeze juice to make flavoured ice.
Learning how water transforms through heat is an important part of science. See if your child can guess what will happen to the ice as you play with it or if they know why?
4. Baking
Ok, not really a household item! But it's very sensory and everyone loves it! Baking in class is the one sure way to get everyone's attention.
There are endless baking ideas available. BBC Goodfood has a section devoted to kid's baking recipes. You don't need to be Mary Berry to have fun baking - we bake every week in my class and I am awful at it!
Here's the Cookie Monster making cookies for a bit of inspiration!
Here's the Cookie Monster making cookies for a bit of inspiration!
3. Mud
Definitely a messy one, but also a classic. Playing in the mud is a part of everyone's childhood.
Mud pies, mud soup, digging for worms or for treasure or just having a good stomp about in wellies. There's a great bit about going through the mud in the "Bear Hunt" story that the kids love to act out.
If the real stuff's not for you - you could try Naomi's edible mud recipe! (I'm pretty sure it might be messy too!)
2. Boxes
You can build with them if you like, paint them, make them into a house or a rocket or a fire station.
There's no point in suggesting activities because the best fun you can have with a box is just leave it out and see what the kids do. Best toy ever!
1. Water
The weather has definitely been on our side the last few weeks. If you've got an outdoor space you've probably been out with a paddling pool already. If you don't have a garden or veranda, water play can happen in a bucket or the bath.
Here are some wee ideas to make bath time a bit more interesting...
Bath crayons - you can get these for a couple of pounds (or use cornflour and food dye!)
Glow sticks in the bath!
Water balloons in the bath!
Lego in the bath!
And so on.... Enjoy!