Sensory experiences are critical for brain development – especially in the first few years of life…
To best support your child’s development, look around for simple opportunities to engage your child’s senses. Feel the hot grass under your feet on a sunny day. Bake gingerbread together, taking time to smell each spice. Enjoy a walk through the neighborhood and listen to the birds.
When your child uses their senses to explore, they’re learning A LOT of valuable information about the world around them.
In Montessori, the goal of sensory activities (usually called sensorial activities) is to help children develop and refine each of their senses. Children might learn to differentiate soft and loud sounds by exploring a quiet shaker filled with sand, followed by a noisy shaker filled with beads. Or they might refine their sense of touch by exploring various natural objects with interesting textures, like smooth stones or rough pinecones.
Luckily, these kinds of activities don’t have to be complicated or require a lot of prep work. Ready to check out some Montessori-inspired sensory activities you can do at home with your toddler? Let’s go!
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21 Easy Montessori Sensory Activities for Toddlers
1 | Exploring the fruit and veggie basket
Some of the most meaningful sensory experiences for little ones involve exploring everyday objects, like fruits and veggies. There are tons of interesting textures and smells for your toddler to discover in the family produce basket as they investigate a rough pineapple, smooth apple, squishy tomato, or sweet-smelling banana.
2 | Collecting natural objects
Children are fascinated by natural objects, like stones, pinecones, flowers, and twigs. Try taking a basket or egg carton outside and encouraging your toddler to collect a few interesting items. Back at home, you can store your child’s collection in a basket for them to explore whenever they’d like!
3 | Spending time outside in nature
Spending time in nature is one of the best things you can do for your child’s development. So, step outside and feel the sunshine, wind, and rain. Dig in the dirt, splash in puddles, and jump in a pile of crunchy fall leaves. Smell the flowers, listen to the birds sing, and watch the clouds move across the sky. These experiences help promote your child’s emotional wellbeing and boost brain development.
4 | Everyday water play
It’s no secret that little ones love splashing and playing in the water. Luckily, you don’t need to do anything fancy to encourage this kind of play. Bath time and hand-washing offer simple, everyday water play opportunities for children. Rinsing dishes, watering plants, and washing toys are fun options too!
5 | Working with playdough or clay
This is one of my favorite, go-to sensory activities for toddlers. (It doesn’t hurt that manipulating playdough or clay is an engaging, hands-on way to help children build fine motor skills, as well.) Consider adding essential oils, spices, or herbs for a more exciting sensory experience.
6 | Smelling bottles
You can make your own DIY smelling bottles at home by saturating cotton balls with different essential oils or extracts (e.g. vanilla, peppermint, lemon) and then placing each scented cotton ball in a small bottle or jar. As your child investigates each smelling bottle, you can talk about how each scent smells: Sweet? Sour? Bitter? If your child likes this activity, they may also enjoy exploring the spice cabinet with you!
7 | Playing sound games
Here are a few fun sound games you and your little one might enjoy…
- Sound walk: Take a walk outdoors and talk about what you hear. Birds singing, rain hitting the neighbor’s roof, cars beeping…
- Sound hide-and-seek: While playing hide-and-seek, take turns hiding and ringing a small bell. Can the seeker listen carefully to find the hider?
- Silent game: Set a timer or flip an hourglass over and practice staying completely silent until the time is up. You may need to start with 15 or 30 seconds of silence and build up to a full minute over time.
8 | Discovery basket
Try filling a basket with several interesting, everyday objects for your child to explore. Almost anything can be added to a discovery basket, from wooden spoons, metal whisks, and napkin rings, to fabric swatches, compact mirrors, lavender satchels, and seashells. These ordinary materials can be incredibly exciting for little ones to explore, offering them early experiences with a variety of interesting everyday objects.
9 | Baking
Baking is, of course, a classic practical life activity, but it’s also full of opportunities for sensory exploration. Juicing a lemon, smelling herbs and spices, kneading and rolling out dough… These are all amazing and memorable sensory experiences for your little one. (There’s a reason the smell of cinnamon or the sound of the stand mixer whirring can instantly bring you back to your childhood!)
10 | Movement activities
In addition to the five senses you learned about in kindergarten – sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste – humans have at least a dozen more senses. Many of these senses involve movement. For example, the sense of proprioception tells us where our body parts are in relation to other body parts. Meanwhile, equilibrioception helps us keep our balance. By offering your child a variety of movement activities, like dancing, twirling, running, jumping, climbing, and tumbling, you can help your little one strengthen these important senses.
11 | Nesting toys
Nesting boxes, cups, and dolls help children work on size discrimination and practice ordering objects based on size. As your child plays, you can introduce descriptive vocabulary like small, medium, and large, as well as comparing words, like smallest and largest. This kind of work is a great way to introduce early math concepts to your child through play.
12 | Mystery bag with familiar objects
For this activity, place a few objects in a paper bag so your child can’t see what’s inside. These should be everyday objects that your child is very familiar with, like a comb, banana, or fork. Then show your child how to reach into the bag without looking and guess what might be inside. At first, you can ask your child to find a specific item inside the bag based on touch, “Can you find the banana?” Once your child is comfortable with this game, try asking them to guess what each item might be.
13 | Taste testing
There are tons of ways to involve your child’s sense of taste through play. For a fun fall activity, try taste testing different kinds of apples and describing the flavor of each apple. Or create a snack plate with all kinds of flavors: Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Talk about how each food tastes and which flavor is your favorite. You can even recreate a classic taste test activity by filling four small glasses with water and adding a little bit of honey, salt, lemon, or vinegar to each glass. Then have fun tasting each mixture!
14 | Puzzles
Simple knobbed puzzles are a great sensorial activity for little ones. In addition to traditional puzzles, look for puzzles that help your child practice size discrimination and sequencing. For example, this handmade circle puzzle features circles of different sizes to help children practice telling the small circles apart from the medium and large circles. Another great option is this wooden bar puzzle, which encourages children to practice sorting the puzzle pieces from shortest to longest.
15| Hand transferring activities
Montessori transferring activities simply involve moving objects from one container to another. For hand transferring, you’ll want to set your little one up with an empty bowl, as well as second bowl filled with interesting objects. Stones, pinecones, ice cubes, pom poms, the possibilities are endless! Then encourage your child to pick up each object and place it in the empty bowl. This is a simple sensory activity that helps build fine motor skills and concentration, as well.
16 | Juicing citrus fruits
Most toddler-friendly kitchen tasks make great sensory activities. Juicing citrus is no exception! Squishing and squeezing oranges, lemons, and limes offers children a fun opportunity to help out in the kitchen while exploring the bright colors, interesting textures, and sweet scent of the fruit. Depending on your child’s fine motor skills, they may prefer hand-squeezing or using a manual citrus juicer to get the job done.
17 | Exploring fabrics
A small basket or box filled with fabric swatches can provide little ones with an interesting sensory experience. Cotton, satin, silk, velvet, and so on. For a fun matching activity, try placing pairs of fabric swatches in the basket for your child to match. With this activity, the goal is for your child to explore various textures and describe them. Which fabrics feel soft and smooth? Which fabrics feel rough?
18 | Hot and cold sensory bottles
Toddlers are often fascinated by temperature. From investigating the warm soapy water in the bathtub to sipping cold milk fresh from the fridge, there are tons of simple, everyday ways to explore temperature with your little one. These DIY hot and cold sensory bottles are another great way to satisfy your child’s curiosity. Simply fill one water bottle with hot (but not scalding) tap water and another with ice cubes. Then let your toddler explore!
19 | Sound cylinders
Sound cylinders are simply small containers filled with materials, like sand or rice, that make different sounds when shaken. The goal with this activity is to listen carefully, noting the differences between each sound and matching like sounds together. You can purchase Montessori sound cylinders, like this unique crochet set, or make your own DIY sound cylinders at home.
20 | Matching paint swatches
Paint swatches are an amazing – and free! – sensory material for little ones. With a younger toddler, start by introducing three pairs of primary color paint swatches (red, yellow, and blue). Then encourage your child to match each color pair. Once your child has mastered this activity, you can add secondary color paint swatches (orange, green, and purple) for an additional challenge. When this activity becomes too easy for your child too, encourage them to create a color gradient using different shades of the same color.
21 | Playing musical instruments
Toddlers LOVE exploring music. Singing, dancing, and listening to music are all great options for little ones, but adding musical instruments to the party can help double the fun! Look for percussive instruments your toddler can hit or shake, like a drum, xylophone, bell, tambourine, or maraca. Homemade instruments work great too, whether it’s a DIY musical shaker or pot and pan “drum” with a wooden spoon. Musical exploration is a fantastic sensory activity that also helps children build language, math, and motor skills as they play.
Have fun!
Sensory play is critical for a child’s brain development in the early years. In addition, sensory activities are a great way for children to learn about the world around them and develop many different cognitive skills through play. So, look for ways to add a variety of sensory activities to your little one’s daily routine.
From splashing in rain puddles to baking a warm loaf of bread on a stormy day, there are tons of fun and simple ways to get started with sensory play with your toddler.
Enjoy!
♥ Meg
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