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The trees are losing their leaves, the mornings are dark, damp and foggy so Autumn (or Fall!) is well and truly here.
Following on from the articles on sensory play, here are some ideas for touchy-feely, smelly, noisy, visual and tasty autumnal activities.
Explore the fallen leaves, go for a walk in the woods or a park with trees and look at leaves, watch them changing colours from green, to yellow, orange, red and brown. Stand and watch as they fall from the trees, spiraling in the breeze down to the ground.
Listen to the sounds of the leaves crunching under your feet, talk about the sounds this makes and what things make similar sounds; for example, rustling like a paper bag.
Pick the leaves up – what do they feel like, find wet mushy leaves and dry crisp ones. Feel the bumps of the leaf’s veins – you could collect some and take them home and do wax crayon rubbings or leaf printing with paint. To do leaf rubbings, put the leaf under a thin sheet of paper and rub gently using the side of a crayon, small children might find it easier if the leaf and the paper were attached to the work surface so that they don’t move whilst they are trying to colour. To make leaf prints simply dip your leaves into a plate of paint and then press onto the paper.
When out for your walk, encourage your children to sniff the air, can they smell the dampness of the autumn mist? Pick the leaves and smell those – do different types of leaves smell the same? What about the damp ones and the dry ones?
Collect together the seeds from the trees, conkers from horse chestnut trees, acorns from oak trees, ‘aeroplanes’ from sycamore trees, fir cones and any other seeds and seed pods you can find and examine them using your senses (don’t try tasting them unless you are certain that they are edible).
Feel the spiky conker outer cases and the smoothness of the inside and the conker itself, polish your conkers and watch them shine and reflect the light and smell the mustiness of them when they are a few days old.
Collect the helicopters from sycamore trees and watch them spinning as they fall to the ground, you can also use these with the leaves in your crayon rubbings. Examine a collection of fir cones, look at the different sizes, see the open and closed cones, feel the spikiness of them, you can roll the fir cones in paint to make prints too.
As for autumnal sensory play with taste, have fun tasting the fruits and vegetables of the season. Make pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins, butternut squash soup, taste apples – make apple crumble and even try different types of apple juice.
Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas of how to make this season a sensory learning experience. Remember, that seasonal sensory play is only limited by your imagination!
Great guest post with so many easy to try Autumn play-activities. Do you want to share your play-activities here in the blog or in the email? Contact me here.
Elaine trained as an Occupational Therapist before working with children with autism on home based early intervention programmes. Through her work in the home she helped parents to support their child’s learning, implemented behaviour plans and assisted with teaching self help skills for example toilet training, self-feeding and dressing. She has also had experience of supporting children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, adapting the curriculum to make it accessible to them. After the birth of her first child, Elaine started Littlesheep Learning – www.littlesheep-learning.co.uk – an online store with an ever-growing range of teaching and learning materials for everyone who wants to help their children reach their potential.
Here is the last in the current Sensory play series of articles written by the multi-talented Elaine, an Occupational therapist from littlesheeplearning.co.uk. Elaine also writes a blog that has news from Littlesheep Learning and the wider world of education and learning. She’s also featured in the free play-activities.com daily play activity emails.
Finally, we have the last part of this series of articles on sensory play; looking at play focussed on the sense of touch.
Touch is probably only second to sight when it comes to common stimulation and using the sense of touch in play is probably the most thought of part of sensory play. As outlined in the introduction, sensory play has become synonymous with messy play, however there is a lot more to touchy feely play than getting messy (although that happens sometimes too!); touch play is about exploring textures.
Babies enjoy touch very early on, they like to snuggle with soft blankets and investigate furry soft toys. As they grow older, they enjoy feeling different textures and the labels / tags on blankets become possible then, as a toddler, they can really start to experience the popular traditional messy play.
Soft play areas provide a location for full body touch sensory play. Children can experience burying themselves in ball pools, squeezing through tunnels, tumbling onto soft mats and being squeezed between rollers. These types of sensory play activities all help them develop motor and proprioceptive skills.
Go on a touchy feely walk, can you find the roughness of the house brick, a smooth pebble, a prickly holly leaf, some bumpy tree bark and a wet puddle. One way to help children visualise textures is to produce rubbings by colouring with the side of a wax crayon carefully.
Some sensory materials for dry texture play are cereals, dry rice and pasta, dried beans and peas, sugar, salt, dry sand, potato flakes, oats, cotton wool balls, beads and gravel. Place the materials in a sand tray and play with them using toys usually used with sand – scoops, spades, pots and sieves. Mix together materials to increase tactile input and use sieves to separate peas from flour and slotted spoons to separate beans from rice.
Finger and hand painting activities also give an opportunity for sensory play whilst developing creativity. Set up the paints and allow your child to get as messy as they want!
Play feely games to explore different textures. Place familiar items in a bag; for example, a teddy bear, a ball, a banana, a car and a spoon. Reach in and feel them and guess what they are? Alternatively, feel and describe what it feels like – is it hard, soft, bumpy, smooth, furry, cold or rough? Collect pairs of samples of fabric, for example dishcloth, scourer pad, fleece, fur fabric, silk, and cotton and put one of each into two bags, using the sense of touch feel and find the matching pair in each bag?
Hopefully, this article has helped identify alternative touch sensory play ideas to the typical messy play. Not all children enjoy messy play activities but with the different types of touchy feely play outlined, all children can enjoy some type of touch sensory play. Elaine trained as an Occupational Therapist before working with children with autism on home based early intervention programmes. Through her work in the home she helped parents to support their child’s learning, implemented behaviour plans and assisted with teaching self help skills for example toilet training, self-feeding and dressing. She has also had experience of supporting children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, adapting the curriculum to make it accessible to them. After the birth of her first child, Elaine started Littlesheep Learning – www.littlesheep-learning.co.uk – an online store with an ever-growing range of teaching and learning materials for everyone who wants to help their children reach their potential.
Nothing says fall round these parts than pumpkins! So to celebrate the season, I thought I would share a fun activity that I am doing with the toddlers and preschoolers I work with this week. We are planning a trip to the pumpkin patch, so we are starting to talk about pumpkins during our home visits, i.e., the color, size, shape, texture, etc.
Now let’s face it, pumpkins are not all that exiting to most toddlers or preschoolers. So, to make it a bit more fun to learn about pumpkins, I do the following activity with them before we head to the pumpkin patch for our annual field trip.
Here’s what you will need:
• A medium sized pumpkin
• A child’s play hammer
• Golf tees
Yup, that’s it.
The activity is as simple as pounding the tees into the pumpkin. For toddlers, you may have to start the tee in the pumpkin and let them do the pounding. Some preschoolers might be able to put the tees in on their own.
Enhance the activity by talking about what they are doing, the color of the golf tees, putting the tees in and out, etc. They can make designs, e.g., eyes, nose, mouth, etc.
There are a number of developmental activities to this activity:
• Develops eye-hand coordination
• Develops visual perceptual skills
• Develops gross motor skills
• Help develop fine motor skills. Have them pull the tees out. It helps develop hand strength!
• Expressive language development
• Receptive language development
The biggest plus to this activity is that it is fun!
I haven’t met a toddler or preschooler yet who didn’t have fun with this activity.
I hope your child enjoys it!
Jill Urbane, aka, The Mentor Mom is a social worker, parent coach and early childhood educator. She lives in the midwest with her two active kids, fantastic husband and menagerie of pets. To learn more about her or to subscribe to her blog feed, go to www.thementormom.com.
I.Walkie talkie buggies starts out the discussion on the talking with your baby habit.
II Walkie talkie parenting.
Communication starts when they are babies
“Talk To Your Baby, the early language campaign of the National Literacy Trust, is tackling children’s poor communication skills by encouraging all parents and carers to talk more to babies aged 0-3 years. Reports and surveys confirm concern from headteachers, Ofsted and early years professionals that too many children have poor language competence at entry to nursery.”
To redress this the literacy trust suggest teaching about language acquisition in the last years of school so future parents understand the importance of talking to their children.
To facilitate this they have produced a pack of free information for download.
“The pack contains:
A quiz and fact sheet, which act as a fun introduction to the benefits of talking to babies.
The Baby’s First Word toolkit, which is an initiative to encourage the collection of babies’ first and second words and the stories behind them in order to stimulate thought and discussion on the subject of communication.
The most talked about campaign is the “Talk to your baby” from the National Literacy trust.
They encourage parents to use walkie talkie buggies, ones which face them. Early years professionals believe that buggies that face outwards are contributing to the poor language and communication skills of many children. The manufactures of strollers make a valid point that toddlers like the stimulation of seeing other things than their parents face. Also that communication is best left for times when face to face time can be appreciated on all sides. Whilst I sympathise and agree to an extent…
I just wish there was more choice.
I want to be able to get a forward facing or ‘me facing’ stroller at an affordable price so I can decide which way my child faces. Some days we could have the long stroll into town; through the park; in the forest and point out things together and other days just put me head down and push through and let them discover things themselves.
Whilst there are many more out there now than when I started with my first child in 2003 the prices are not for everyone. The popular Bugaboo’s Chameleon and Gecko and the Stokke Xplory set you back a tidy sum when compared to the other strollers.
The best way to learn language is to spend quality time playing and talking to your baby. This routine of easy talk gets more interactive and fun the older they get. It’s easy to stick in music or listen to your favourite podcast during the car shuffle or to talk on the phone pushing the stroller. Sing rhymes or sing-a-long with your child to their songs; traditional or modern ones.
Remember to sometimes stop and engage that little bundle all snuggled up. They love the rise and fall of your voice. Remember that toddler pointing- identify it, describe it, ask and answer questions. All too soon they’ll be at that “Why?” stage.
Develop the walkie talkie habit when they are young . Give them an opportunity for their communication skills to explode.
For more tips on communicating with your child go to the Literacy trust.
********Do you have a walkie talkie stroller/buggy?**********
How do you or did you generate talking moments in your day with your baby/toddler?
What things do you talk about? Where do you have your best conversations?
We did collect pine cones to display at home and perhaps spray gold for later.
We had great family time together on a stroller friendly walk. Lots of running, climbing and talking. I totally agree with what Michael Grose says on his blog about the talking.
I love the Autumn! Get out into nature and enjoy it!
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Elaine trained as an Occupational Therapist before working with children with autism on home based early intervention programmes. Through her work in the home she helped parents to support their child’s learning, implemented behaviour plans and assisted with teaching self help skills for example toilet training, self-feeding and dressing. She has also had experience of supporting children with special educational needs in mainstream schools, adapting the curriculum to make it accessible to them. After the birth of her first child, Elaine started Littlesheep Learning – www.littlesheep-learning.co.uk – an online store with an ever-growing range of teaching and learning materials for everyone who wants to help their children reach their potential.
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