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SENSORY AWARENESS
National Network for Child Care's Connections Newsletter
Charles A. Smith, Ph.D.
Human Development and Family Studies
Kansas State University Cooperative Extension
Copyright/Access Information
If we want to promote sensory awareness in our children, we may have to overcome our own tendency to think about the world around us instead of experiencing it. We have to become toddlers again and discover wonder in every raindrop, in every leaf, in every passing butterfly. Life is not what happened yesterday or may happen tomorrow. Life is what we experience right now through our senses. Consider these techniques when planning sensory awareness experiences for young children.
Provide a vaiety of experiences that nurture all the senses. Encourage children to help prepare and taste different kinds of foods. Use small plastic jars with different odors for them to smell. Place objects with different textures out for children to touch. Encourage them to listen to the different sounds that objects make. Participate in these activities with the children instead of simply observing.
Take advantge of unplanned experiences to involve children in sensory exploration. When you go for walks, encourage children to explore within safe and reasonable limits. What is under that nearby rock? How do the leaves smell? How does the bark from different trees feel? Stop for a moment and listen. Can they hear the trees shifting in the wind, the birds overhead, the sounds of the city in the distance?
Show children how to become involved in sense-pleasure play without altering or destroying the environment. Do not tear bark off a tree, pull up wild flowers, or remove rocks. Return everything; destroy nothing.
Emphasize sensory experience. Encourage children to see, taste, smell, hear, and feel. Avoid distracting them with questions while they are involved in sensory exploration. If they start to talk, gently turn their attention back to what they are seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, or feeling. Point out that some things are dangerous to sniff or taste.
Following the experience, encourage children to think and talk about what they discovered. Use a rich, descriptive vocabulary to describe their experiences. Introduce words they can use to describe what they see, taste, smell, hear, and feel. Keep in mind, though, that words are poor substitutes for experience.
Encourage fine discrimination by setting up brief, informal sensory experiments. Set several plastic bottles out with different intensities of the same odor. Invite them to rank the samples from the strongest to the weakest smelling. Begin with three bottles for younger children, and increase to four or five. Set up similar tasks that challenge different senses.
Vocabulary and sensory discrimination skills help children appreciate their capacity for sensory experience. Sense-pleasure play involves letting go to become fully involved, then pulling back slightly to reflect on the experience. Unfortunately, children can be like many adults who have lost their sense of wonder. Children can become so preoccupied with naming and comparing that they stop experiencing. Here are learning center ideas for helping children explore and learn through their senses.
SQUEEZE BOTTLE ART
Purpose: to promote sensory awareness.
Age: 3+
Setting: Learning Center.
Materials: three or four squeeze bottles, flour, salt, and three or four colors of tempera paint.
Activity:
1. Mix equal parts of flour, salt, and water, adding liquid paint for color.
2. Pour into plastic squeeze bottles.
3. Let children squeeze out designs on pieces of cardboard.
4. Put the cardboard up to dry for several days.
SMELL COLLECTION
Purpose: to promote sensory awareness.
Age: 4+
Setting: Learning Center.
Materials: about nine film canisters or small plastic bottles; an interesting thing to smell such as perfume, lemon, vanilla, onion, chocolate, coffee grounds, vinegar, crushed pine needles, and rubbing alcohol.
Activity:
1. Put a small amount of each substance into a container. Putting a few drops of liquids on a cotton ball will help to avoid spills and safety hazards.
2. Invite children to smell each container. After a few moments, ask them to describe the odor. What words do they use to describe the odors? Identify what they are smelling.
TEXTURE FINGER PAINTING
Purpose: to promote sensory awareness.
Age: 3+
Setting: Learning Center.
Materials: textured materials, such as sand or oatmeal, that can be added to finger paint.
Activity: Mix textured materials into finger paint and set it out for children to use.
OPPOSITES
Purpose: to promote sensory awareness.
Age: 4+
Setting: Learning Center.
Materials: objects that have opposite textures such as rough versus smooth (a pretzel and uncooked spaghetti); wet versus dry (wet and dry sponges); lumpy versus smooth (corrugated and smooth cardboard); hard versus soft (a stone and a cotton ball); warm versus cold (warm water and ice).
Activity:
1. Put each pair on the table sequentially.
2. Have children touch each object in the pair to feel and experience its texture. After a few moments, encourage them to describe the difference in the objects.
3. Some of these objects can be placed in a "feely" bag and pulled out one by one.
OIL AND WATER BOTTLE
Purpose: to promote sensory awareness.
Age: 3+
Setting: Learning Center.
Materials: a clear plastic bottle (with labels soaked off), food coloring, mineral or baby oil, and glue.
Activity:
1. Fill bottle one-third full of water.
2. Add food coloring.
3. Fill the rest of the bottle with oil.
4. Glue top on securely with quick-bonding glue. Wiggle or shake the bottle to see waves and slowly floating colored bubbles. Let the children examine and manipulate the bottles.
DOCUMENT USE/COPYRIGHT
National Network for Child Care - NNCC. Part of CYFERNET, the National Extension Service
Children Youth and Family Educational Research Network. Permission is granted to reproduce
these materials in whole or in part for educational purposes only (not for profit beyond the cost of
reproduction) provided that the author and Network receive acknowledgment and this notice is
included:
Reprinted with permission from the National Network for Child Care - NNCC. Smith, C. A. (1992). Sensory awareness. In Todd, C.M. (Ed.), *Day care center connections*, 1(3), pp. 1-2,7. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service.
FORMAT AVAILABLE:: Internet
DOCUMENT REVIEW:: Level 3 - National Peer Review
DOCUMENT SIZE:: 32K or 5 pages
ENTRY DATE:: March 1996
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