29/02/2024
🤔 Why is sensory play so important for child development? 🤔
🧠 Cognitive development
Messy play supports children in exploring their environment and discovering new sensations, touch, and smells. These experiences allow children to develop their problem-solving and thinking skills and identify new patterns in their environment.
✂️ Fine motor skills
Sensory play allows children to use their hands and fingers to manipulate, squeeze, and roll different materials, working to build hand strength, precision and control, hand-eye coordination and dexterity. These essential skills build the foundation for children to write, draw and paint!
🧚♀️ Creativity and imagination
Messy play also helps to boost a child's imagination and creativity as they explore the environment in an open-ended and unstructured way. This form of play allows children to experiment with new and different textures, shapes and colours, creating unique and individualistic experiences.
🗣️ Language development
Sensory play exposes children to a range of new words and concepts as they learn to describe the materials they encounter, such as “sticky” or “smooth”. These experiences with messy materials also encourage children to engage and communicate with one another as they share their experiences with the materials.