Touchy Feely (Sensory Play!)

Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates the senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing. Young children learn best and retain the most information when they engage their senses. Sensory-based activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play, create, investigate, and explore.

Spending time stimulating the senses helps children blossom across all developmental domains - cognitively, linguistically, socially, physically, and creatively. Curious how? Read on!

[Assorted translucent shape counters and metal circles set out on the light table support the development of early math skills such as classifying, sorting, attribute identification, and patterning.]

Cognitive Development The most obvious cognitive skills sharpened by sensory play are problem solving and decision making: simply present a child with a problem, and various materials with which to find a solution, and you can almost see the connections inside their brain. In addition, children build math skills such as comparing size (big versus small), counting, and one-to-one correspondence (matching numbers to objects), timing (does water or oil move faster?), matching (same sizes and shapes), sorting and classifying (buttons, beans, loose parts), science skills such as cause and effect (what happens when I add water to sand?), gravity (water slides down a funnel, not up) and states of matter (ice melts). Without realizing it, children grow into young scientists by making predictions, observations, and developing analytical skills.

[What happens when you squeeze liquid water color on top of baking soda?!]

Language Development

Sensory play encourages children to use descriptive and expressive language, and to find meaning behind new vocabulary. For example, children learn to understand the word “slimy” or "sticky" by experiencing something slimy and sticky firsthand.

[Dinosaurs in the "grass" invite conversation and dramatic role play, which fosters social development.]

Social-Emotional Development

Certain sensory play options, like sensory tables, trays, or bins, allow children to be in control of their actions and experiences, which boosts their confidence in decision making and inspires their eagerness to learn and experiment. Sensory play can also teach children about cooperation and collaboration. The children have the opportunity to express themselves, tell a story, and become confident in sharing their ideas with others. They also may begin to make observations about how a peer is approaching the sensory material in a different way, which helps to foster acceptance of other ideas or viewpoints.

[Exploring the concept of "resist painting." What happens to the paint when it travels on top of the dot sticker? I notice that my brush makes lines and my friend's brush makes splotches. What will happen to the paper after the paint dries and we peel off the stickers?"]

Physical Development

Sensory play benefits the development of fine motor skills by encouraging manipulation of materials, such as mixing, measuring, pouring and scooping. Gross motor skills are also developed through lifting, throwing, rolling, and constructing. Did you know that pinching a squeeze dropper directly supports the same finger muscles needed for pen control later?

[The whole body is incorporated when a child uses a honey stirring stick to "splatter" acrylic paint onto a collaborative piece of artwork.]

Creative Development

Sensory experiences provide open-ended opportunities where the process is more important than the product: simply put, how children use materials is more telling than what they make with them. Prompting children to think creatively in order to solve problems or engage in make-believe play helps them express their own creative potential and build self-esteem.

[An invitation to create with two primary paint colors and a blank canvas at the easel translates into limitless possibility. Creativity abounds!]

Gold In Your Pocket

Fall in New England is marvelous. Knees in the dirt, hands outstretched towards the sky...at CNS, we feel immeasurably fortunate for the opportunity to embrace this connection to nature on a daily basis.

Children are innately talented at engaging this connection. Grown-ups facilitate and support these explorations, but it is the children who lead them. Following, we invite you to take a tiny peek into the magical world of Community Nursery School under the backdrop of Autumn...

[A child's acorn collection brought in from home engages classmates with line & shape studies.]

[Fine motor muscles are strengthened and curiosity is piqued by hammering golf tees into an oversized pumpkin.]

[Leaves displayed the top of at the easel inspire creative masterpieces derived from fall's color palette.]

[Natural loose parts and cardboard circles set out as an invitation to create: fall pizza, anyone?!]

[An unassuming critter makes ten eager new friends in the garden studio. A bug house is promptly built to "keep him safe."]

["Leaf People" come to life via group foraging on the nature trail, sorting the found natural materials, sketching a plan, and, finally, constructing a representation.]

"Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons." [Jim Bishop]

Embracing Feelings

In early childhood education, fostering social-emotional development is the foundation of most curriculum. When students and teachers come together to form a classroom community, providing outlets to discuss, express, and share emotions is both important and necessary to support the ongoing creation of that community as a safe and inclusive space for all. In school and in life, we are are connected in our humanity. As humans, we feel things. This is the central thread that binds us all together.

How do CNS teachers support the social-emotional development of children?

A child’s self ­portrait reveals many things, including the development of fine motor, observation and focusing skills, and the child’s own perception of his or her self. By participating in this project several times over the course of the year, children are able to deepen the aforementioned skills at their own pace. As time passes, it is empowering for children to see how far they’ve come with their skills, and more importantly, to see how much they’ve grown inside and out.

Exploring emotions through tactile, sensory experiences allows children to express themselves in a way that makes sense to them. Angry? Squeezing play dough tightly can help to release tension. Anxious? Rolling small pieces of play dough into a smooth ball may help to calm nerves. Children are feelers. Allow them to feel things (literally!).

Children and teachers come together to share ideas and conversation during morning circle time. Providing children with the space to name and acknowledge their emotions helps foster a collective environment in which everybody's feelings are validated and accepted.

"Loose parts" are an integral element of the Reggio Emilia approach in large part because of their potential for creative self-expression. Here, children were invited to design a representation of self utilizing a variety of collected loose parts, such as popsicle sticks, gemstones, small rocks, buttons, and wood pieces. How does this representation make you feel? How do you think the child was feeling? What kind of conversation could come about while children are connecting with their feelings and each other's feelings in this way?

Feelings do not exist to be pushed aside or conquered. They exist to be engaged and expressed, and to deepen our understanding of other people and the world around us. At CNS, we celebrate humanity in its many forms. We celebrate childhood. We celebrate feelings.