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Montessori sensorial activities to do at home
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I’ve received so many questions about the best sensory play activities for infants and toddlers that I got excited to write this article. Before I jump ahead and give you some sensory play ideas, I believe it is important that you understand the benefits of sensory play.
In this article, I will answer the most asked questions about Montessori sensory play and its benefits:
I am so excited to share this article with you, so let’s get started!
When babies come into this world, they immediately begin to use all their five senses. They begin to explore their new environment and try to make sense of everything that surrounds them.
Sensory play is any activity that stimulates your child’s senses of touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing, as well as activities that engage balance and movement. Sensory play is about giving your child the chance to explore.
Outdoor sensory activities can be as simple as observing and interacting with the environment, smelling the trees and grass, touching rocks, and playing with sand.
In the home setting, you can make simple DIY sensory bins. You can easily make sensory bins using small containers or small bins and fill them up with tactile material such as pom poms, sand, or popcorn kernels.
What are the benefits of sensory play in early years? Sensory stimulation activities for infants are crucial to brain development. These sensory exploration activities help infants improve their motor skills and have a strong impact on language development, cognitive growth, and social interactions.
Here are the main benefits of Montessori sensorial activities for infants:
Montessori sensorial activities are so much fun for infants and are an awesome way to make new discoveries. Sensorial activities for babies can be as simple as playing with sensory balls or letting them play and explore with different fruits.
In our opinion, the best Montessori sensory activities for infants and babies can be found outdoors. We started taking our daughter on short hikes right after birth. The smell of trees and plants, feeling the cool air hitting her skin, and observing her surroundings had a huge impact on her development.
As she got older, we let her play with rocks and sand, or touch the plants and flowers she saw. We also took her to the river where she played with running water and learned how to throw rocks. Check out this video of our daughter interacting with nature!
As mentioned previously, the outdoors offer some of the best sensory experiences for infants and toddlers. But sometimes it may be hard to go outside and enjoy nature, so the next option is to get creative and make your own DIY sensory play activities for your baby.
Setting up sensory activities in your house can be fun. If you’re having trouble thinking of ideas to help your child engage in sensory activities, you can do some of these activities listed below:
Before we dive deep into the best sensory play activities for infants and toddlers, I would like to give you a final word on why sensorial stimulation activities are important.
Your child will absorb a lot of information during the infant stage. During the first year of development, sensory play helps build neural pathways that are needed for much more complex tasks later on in life.
As children grow and encounter more challenges, they will have the necessary skills to overcome these obstacles and continue to build upon the skills they learned during infancy.
Below are some simple Montessori sensorial activities to do at home. You can easily DIY some of these activities, but I also provided some developmentally appropriate products that can help your child develop skills in all five senses.
Get different fruits like limes, apples, oranges, and bananas. Allow your child to play with one fruit at a time. Give your child enough time to feel the texture of each fruit. You can peel the orange and banana and let your child squeeze them.
With the same or additional fruits, let your child smell them. You can scratch the lime and apple as they will release their natural odor. This simple sensory play activity will help your infants develop their sense of smell.
Print out some images of family members. As you show your child each image, narrate who they are: “This is your grandmother, her name is Ana” or “This is Chico. Chico is your dog.” Your child will start to recognize who each person or pet is.
Having a mirror in your child’s Montessori bedroom is one of the most common sensorial activities in Montessori. The mirror helps them develop their visual senses. Place an acrylic mirror in your infants’ bedroom at their eye level (close to the ground) and let them look at themselves. The mirror can be used during tummy time or during play time. The mirror we use is from Amazon and you can get it here.
Playing with sand is one of the simplest sensorial activities for infants. Many parks have sand volleyball courts or sand pits for kids to play in. Sand play has many developmental benefits like developing fine and gross motor skills like those needed to pick up a shovel and fill up a bucket with sand.
Music is a great sensory activity in Montessori that helps infants develop their sense of hearing. We have been taking our daughter to music and movement lessons at our local library and have seen how much she has benefited from participating in this activity and watching other children dance.
Your infant may not be able to walk yet but this should not stop you from exploring nature. As mentioned earlier, babies are natural explorers and are eager to get out into the world to explore. As you go on hikes, babies will observe vegetation, smell the air, and see different types of animals.
One of the best investments we made in our daughter’s development was getting the Lovevery Play Gym. Lots of research has gone into developing this play gym and we have seen its benefits first hand. From using the mobiles to the sensorial items, this is an all-in-one sensorial activity item that should be in your child’s Montessori room.
Are you looking to do sensory activities with food? How about cooking together? Cooking is a great way to help your child develop fine motor skills. Allow your child to touch each ingredient, add these ingredients to your pot, and stir the pot. This is also a great way to work as a team to cook a delicious meal!
Babies love playing with water. Fill up a small container with water, throw in a few toys, and allow your child to play and splash in the water. Besides being fun to get wet, infants will develop their sense of touch and body awareness. Fun fact: our little one likes to play with our dog’s water bowl!
This is another simple sensory activity with food. Fill up some containers with different kinds of pasta like penne, farfalle and macaroni and mix them up. Give your child a spoon and have her scoop out one kind of pasta at a time. To make this activity more fun, cook the pasta and allow your child to eat it as she scoops it out.
This is a very simple DIY sensory activity to do at home. A sensory bin is just a simple container filled with sensory material. You can have themes to make the activity more fun. For example, if the theme is nature, you can fill up the bin with sand, rocks, sticks, pine cones and leaves.
Sensory bottles are great to help children calm down, plus they are simple and fun to make. Get a clear bottle, mix some water with a viscous or thick liquid like hair gel, add some glitter, and pieces of building blocks like LEGO® and mix it. Flip the bottle over and watch the bricks fall in slow motion.
If outdoor exploration offers many benefits for infants, imagine what it can do to toddlers! Toddlers who are already walking can climb on trees, jump on water, and race up a hill. Toddlers will build upon the skills they learned during infancy.
The Pikler triangle offers so many benefits such as improving gross motor skills, balance, spacial awareness, limb and core strength, and developing independence and problem solving skills. We invested in the Avenlur triangle and have seen how our daughter has benefited from it.
Why buy playdough when you can make your own? Homemade playdough is a great sensorial activity because you can add different objects to help with the development of the senses. Here is a simple playdough recipe from Good Housekeeping.
This is a super fun DIY sensory activity to do at home and with the entire family. Get a non-see through bag and fill it up with familiar objects. Put your hand in the bag, get an object and without looking, try to guess what it is. Parents will surely have fun playing this game too!
Part science and part fun, oobleck is one of the coolest sensory activities for toddlers. And the best part is that you only need corn starch, water, and food coloring. You can check out these instructions on how to make oobleck.
The Lovevery Play Kits offer so many developmental benefits. Just like the Play Gym, these Play Kits have been designed to support your child’s growth. These Play Kits are delivered to you every two to three months, helping your child hit important milestones.
We got this idea from our friend’s daughter. During hikes, she likes to take a small bag that she calls it her “nature bag.” Whenever they go on hikes, she puts random items in her bag that she found along their hike.
This is just a short list of sensory activities for your baby. And as you can see, many of these activities can be done in the home with very simple objects.
Don’t think you need fancy objects to support your child’s senses. And don’t overthink these sensorial activities either. As long as you understand the benefits of sensory play activities and how they support your child’s development, you’ll be able to create your own and have fun doing them.
Hello, I am Leslie. I am on a mission to help you support the growth and development of your child. With the right tools and proper guidance, you can navigate parenthood with confidence and assertion! My goal is to equip you with knowledge to help you construct a strong foundation for your child’s life.
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