Sensory Box? What IS that?

A sensory box is a great play tool that allows your child to explore and interact through their senses: sight, touch, smell, taste, balance, movement and hearing.

This is even more important if your child has any sensory processing issues. This allows your child to explore and adapt to a variety of sensory input in a safe, playful manner.

Creating opportunities for your child to engage in sensory play is a vital step towards sensory integration. When creating a sensory box, I recommend that you think about and include a variety of different:

• textures
• colours
• scents
• shapes
• sizes
• objects

Pine cones incorporate an interesting texture and scent

Star of Anise and Cinnamon add scents reminiscent of Fall/Autumn, and they have interesting shapes and textures

What I Included:

• brown and red lentils
• wild rice mix
• fabric leaves in Fall/Autumn colours
• large and small pinecones
• small and medium sized pom poms
• star of anise
• cinnamon
• felt turkey
• shoe sized plastic box with lid

When introducing a themed sensory box, it is an ideal time to help build speech and language skills. You can talk about the items included, the theme itself and also provide your child with sensory language.

Ooh, look at the cinnamon! Does it feel rough or smooth? What does it smell like?

My little girl is a sensory seeker in most cases and she really enjoyed the strong cinnamon smell. So much so that we added cinnamon into our next play dough batch!

My son was really into the textures and his favourite elements were the pom poms and felt turkey.

Sensory boxes are a great activity for all ages:

• If you have a toddler, make sure you are supervising closely as they may still tend to mouth objects.
• If you have a preschooler, why not include them in the choices of objects to be included?
• For older children, encourage them to put the sensory box together with support from you.

Overall have fun with it and offer multiple opportunities for them to play and explore.