Tactile sensory stimulation involves the sensation of touch and texture. Exposing children to sensory play helps them develop and refine the use of their senses. Most importantly, sensory bins provide hours of imaginative small world play, fostering creativity, independence, and concentration. Pretend play can also be a form of imitation of the real adult world, which can promote child's development in many ways. Small world play has potentials for teaching children about themselves and the world around them by developing their cognitive, fine motor, and self-help skills. Moreover, through pretend play, children develop their speech and language skills by naming objects they play with: such as a tractor, a farm, harvest, etc., thus teaching them appropriate social and pragmatic skills. Children also use play to understand the world around them and are thus developing their social-emotional skills. Moreover, small world-play is a way for children to relive things that have happened to them, thus allowing them to increase understanding of their life events.
What you will need:
- we are using a wooden box to contain the filler: dried corn;
- Halloween pumpkins for scooping;
- pom poms and Halloween styrofoam covered balls for tonging; (see here 🍁Fall 👻Halloween Inspired Tongs Transferring, Montessori 🙌🏻 Practical Life);
- a sorting ice-making tray to transfer and sort retrieved items to;
- 🚜 tractors for small world play;
- are transferring tools (we are using tongs and spoons).
Adrian is ready for scooping, tonging and transferring with this 🌽 corn, Pom poms, and spooky 👻👁eyeballs sensory invitation to play! 🚜Tractors can pull the heavy load, while 👦🏼Adrian will do the rest.
Scooping and filling up a pumpkin requires concentration and precision.
Tonging is a great exercise to develop fine-motor control.
As a result of this sensory invitation to play:
- Adrian stimulated tactile sense of touch by feeling the texture of the 🌽 corn;
- he also exercised fine-motor skills by incorporating practical life activity such as scooping and tonging pop poms and styrofoam balls (more on tonging here);
- the visual sense of sight was also stimulated by having to find, shape-discriminate and sort pop poms and styrofoam balls;
- and most importantly, it was fun since Adrian loves the farm and tractors!
Small world play offers children an opportunity to take on the opposite role, which allows them to see things from another’s perspective. To feel a sense of control and power, children often take on an adult role, so that they can be us – the parents! In their play, they can independently drive a tractor, sow seeds or feed a cow … possibilities are endless! What we can do as adults is offer a safe, thoughtful and stimulating prepared environment.
We have collected some great books which enrich our small-world play:
- The Ultimate Construction Site Book (buy here) is packed with more than 60 tabbed moving parts to pull, lift, and explore; as well as the meticulous details of vehicles, buildings, and techniques.
- The Ultimate Book of Vehicles book (buy here) reveals supersized spreads, featuring marvelously detailed illustrations with lots of flaps, pop-ups, pull-tabs, and rotating wheels, bringing many vehicles to life.
Tractors My First Discoveries book (buy here) offers bright and colorful illustrations, some with clear over-lay pages which adds a new dimension to a traditional reading. We explored this book here in a "🌽 Corn Sensory Bin with 🔤 Alphabet Letters (🙌Sensorial + Language) & 🚜Tractors 📚Book" post.
This sensorial small world invitation to play was a true learning through play experience!
For more on sensory play, see here "Sensory Exploration with Hydro Gel ❤️️ Water Beads (Science 🔬⚗️⚖️ 101 🎥Series 🎇)," and here "✨The Universe 👋🏻Sensory Bin (🌌COSMOS Unit Study)."
For more on Autumn-themed activities, read here a roundup of all our activities we have done during the month of 🍂September and 🎃October: over 20 of them! arranged by the area of study in a post "🍂Fall & 🎃Halloween Inspired Homeschooling 101 Unit Study."
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