Our Favorite Sensory Activities

Gerrit was a high-needs baby. He needed to have something occupying his attention almost all the time, and he got bored with toys fairly quickly. One way I found to keep him entertained was by making him “toys” and doing sensory activities with him.

Around the time Gerrit was 6 or 7 months old, I started noticing that he was really interested in sensory things. I think this may have been the age that he started seeming more interested in his touch-and-feel books, but I honestly can’t remember. I just know that this was around the time that I started busting out all my “teacher” activities, haha! I had been itching for Gerrit to get to the age when I could start doing some more interesting things with him, so I didn’t waste any time once he started sitting on his own and moving around a bit.

When we lived in England, I spent some time working at the child development center on the base we were stationed at. I worked in a few different classrooms, but all of them were the pre-toddler age group (12-24 months of age). It was not the age I wanted to work with initially, but I grew to love it. I even got to be the lead teacher in one of the classrooms, which was really fulfilling. I was sad to leave that job, that’s for sure! Anyway, we did a lot of different sensory activities with our kids, and I really got into planning fun things for the little ones to do and explore. Needless to say, I was eager for Gerrit to get closer to that pre-toddler age so I could start having some fun!

1. Boxes

I don’t know why, but kids love boxes. My mom tells me about one birthday or Christmas when I unwrapped a gift and gleefully exclaimed, “It’s a box!” I didn’t even care what was inside. I still love boxes. I have a bad habit of saving them to re-use. Usually they get used for shipping gifts to people, but now I’m always thinking of ways to use them for Gerrit.

Sensory Box
I already knew that Gerrit liked his touch-and-feel books, so I decided to expand on that and make him a sensory box.

It’s just a large-ish box that I wrapped in colorful wrapping paper. I covered all the edges and corners with packaging tape, since I knew they would get chewed on eventually! Then I just looked through the house for different textures. The ones you can see in picture above are the green mesh from a bag of limes we had purchased and some fine grit sandpaper. I’m pretty sure the side he’s playing with is bubble wrap — his favorite! The other three sides had a piece of felt, some rubbery material meant to help one open jars, and a plastic baggie filled with gel (aloe gel, although I was looking for hair gel). I ended up covering the entire plastic baggie with packaging tape since Gerrit loves to use those sharp little fingernails on everything.

Ribbon-Pulling Cause-and-Effect Box
I made this box before Gerrit really knew how to use it, just to have it ready for him. I think he (at nearly 10 months) started realizing that when he pulls one end, the other end gets shorter.

I have a pretty large supply of craft items on hand (including ribbon of various widths), so this was a fairly quick project. All I did was punch holes in the sides and top of the box with some sharp scissors and push the ribbons through. I used a crochet hook to help get them through on the opposite side, then knotted the ribbon as many times as I needed to to for it to not go all the way through no matter how hard I tugged on it. I made sure I varied the lengths of the ribbons to give some variety to the box. Then I taped the box closed and covered the edges and corners with packaging tape.

2. Finger Painting 

Mess-Free Painting
I think I found this idea on Pinterest. I was hoping it would encourage Gerrit to tolerate Tummy Time a bit longer, but it didn’t really work, haha.

This was simply a piece of paper with some dollops of finger paint placed inside a gallon size zipped plastic bag taped to the floor. He was mildly interested in this. Gerrit has always enjoyed standing, so I moved the bag to the window to see if he’d be more interested.

He was… for a few minutes. Eventually I just took it down and gave it to him to play with:

Like everything else, it ended up in his mouth. But that was fine, since everything was in a plastic bag. He enjoyed moving the bag around, hearing the plastic sound, and moving the paint around. Even though he crunched and squeezed the heck out of it, we still got a nice finished product:

It was the first piece of artwork to go on our fridge, and it was made at only 6 months old! I used to let Gerrit do this activity occasionally until he was about 9 months old, but that’s when he started losing interest.

Edible Finger Painting
I’ve seen several different recipes for edible finger paint, but the quickest and easiest for me was to use infant rice cereal. Plus we already had rice cereal on hand that Gerrit had no interest in eating, so I needed to figure out how to use it up!

Here’s what you need for this one: rice cereal, food coloring, water, container for paints (I used a muffin tin), and a cheap white plastic tablecloth.

I had the idea to use a plastic tablecloth because it wouldn’t get saturated like paper, Gerrit wouldn’t be able to tear it and eat it, and it would be an easy clean-up! In the picture above, I had taped it to the backside of a waterproof blanket for some padding for us to sit on and, again, easy clean-up.

The thing with rice cereal is that while it’s really not nutritionally significant, it’s also not bad for your baby to eat. I didn’t even know if Gerrit would want to eat it, since he wouldn’t eat it when I tried to feed it to him as cereal! But, of course, since it wasn’t presented as food, he needed to try it! The other thing with rice cereal is that you can change the consistency of it. Add as much or as little water as you’d like to get the thickness that you want.

This is obviously not a piece of artwork you’re going to keep and hang somewhere. But I do try to get a picture of the finished product just for the memories. 🙂

Regular Finger Painting

So once you trust your baby/toddler with regular finger paint, be prepared for things to get messy! But you can offer finger paint in a variety of ways:

• Sensory
  – Finger paint on wax paper
  – Finger paint on felt
  – Finger paint on aluminum foil
  – Finger paint on bubble wrap
  – Finger paint on sand paper
• With objects
  – animals/dinosaurs: let your child make footprints with their plastic toys on paper
  – sponges: kitchen sponges, sea sponges, make-up sponges, kitchen scrubbers, etc.
  – plastic shapes
  – fly swatter
  – cotton balls/pompoms
  – toy cars
  – balls (roll them within a high-sided container)

3. Sensory Bottles

Sensory bottles are great for a variety of ages. You can make them very simple for babies and tailor them to your child’s age as they grow. Gerrit’s first sensory bottle was just a half-full water bottle that I put a few drops of green food coloring in. He loved it!

The plastic was thin enough that he could squeeze and crinkle it for fun sounds. He could gnaw on the covered end. He could shake it, roll it on the floor, and tip it any which way. What an inexpensive and entertaining toy, huh?!

Since Gerrit enjoyed that green sensory bottle so much, I started thinking of new items to put in bottles for him. We took a trip to Michael’s for some craft items, and I got to work during nap time.

The things I used are beads, little rubber bands, pipe cleaners, pompoms, water, and some baby shampoo.

There’s baby shampoo in the bottle with the rainbow beads so when Gerrit shakes it, it gets bubbly.

Side note: Gerrit is currently 17 months old, and still really enjoys the bottle that has the baby shampoo in it. He brings it to me to shake up, and just loves all the bubbles it creates!

Gerrit’s favorites are still the bottles that are made of thin plastic, because he loves to squeeze them and hear them crunch and crinkle. I haven’t made any bottles in awhile, so that it probably going on my to-do list!

Other items that I have put in bottles (not pictured) are water with vegetable oil and food coloring and popcorn kernels (makes a fun shaker!). Basically the things that are great for infant sensory bottles are items you don’t want them to play with… things they can choke on, things that are messy, and things they could hurt themselves with (like pipe cleaners). At Gerrit’s age, I haven’t had to seal the bottles yet, but you really should close them securely with super glue or hot glue.

Not wanting to make sensory bottles? Just give your child empty bottles to play with!  I also wash out and remove labels from other containers for him to play with. His favorites are a plastic cornstarch container, a parmesan cheese container, and the container his puffs come in.

4. Fine Motor Activities

Now that Gerrit is older, I’ve come up with some fine motor activities that he really enjoys. The first one was

Large Bottle with Opening

All I did was cut a wide opening in the bottom of an apple juice bottle and cover it with duct tape. When Gerrit was younger, he would push pompoms through the top of the bottle. When he had that mastered, I gave him clothes pins to drop through the top opening. He always seems to enjoy a bit of a challenge.

Parmesan Cheese Container

I offered Gerrit a Parmesan cheese container and straws cut to about 3″ length. It’s great for dropping the straws into the holes, and they can shake out the straws from the other opening. Another idea is cut-up pipe cleaners, but they do have sharp ends to watch out for.

5. Large Bin Activities

“Sand” Play

When Gerrit was a baby, I did not want him playing with sand, only because I knew he would try to put handfuls of it in his mouth. An alternative? White corn flour. It’s very fine, so be careful about your baby’s eyes, but it’s a fun alternative to sand play.

Water Play

I think kids of all ages love water! When Gerrit was really young (like 6-8 months), I put water in a walled cookie sheet for him to play with with a few toys.

Once he was sitting on his own, I would put water in a bowl with toys or put him in an under-the-bed storage box filled with water as a tiny pool for him to splash and play in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noodle Play

Noodles are fun! They are squishy, edible, AND they hold food coloring! I’m sad to say I only did this with Gerrit once: I dyed elbow macaroni with food coloring and let him play with it with bowls, spoons, and measuring cups. He had so much fun with it!

 

I am sure I have more ideas, but I wanted to get this published sooner rather than later. I need to dig out more photos to add to this post, but just picture an adorable bald-headed boy having fun with a sensory activity. 🙂 I hope to follow this up soon with a Sensory Activities Part 2 Post!