The Top Elements of Sensory Play What are the benefits of sensory play in a young child’s development? There are so many benefits to sensory play, one in particully is stated by Suzanne Gainsley who writes in the Curriculum Newsletter From Highscope; she states “Stimulating the senses sends signals to children’s brains that help to strengthen neural pathways important for all types of learning.” We know there are great benefits connecting to sensory play, but what exactly is sensory play, and does the type of sensory play vary on the age of the child? Sensory play is important to the development of a child because it emboldens the child to explore, create, investigate, and use scientific methods to processes what they are partaking in. So what exactly is sensory play? According to the PBS Parents website sensory play is “any activity that stimulates a young child's senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing.” Sensory play involves the acts or uses of sensory activities. Sensory activities can include many different types of things some pointed out by Rachelle Doorley of Tinkerlab are “Bean Bowl Exploration, Tearing and Feeling Wet Paper, …show more content…
The answer to that is found in an article written by Kathleen Strom. In her article Kathleen states sensory play “promotes creativity and self discovery, fosters positive social interaction and cooperation, increases fine motor skills and gross motor skills,” as well as “stimulates brain growth and cognitive development”. Sensory activities have the ability to help learn and retain knowledge. As a side note sensory play challenges a child to explore the feeling, appearance, smell, taste, and sound of an object or item; which encourages them to question and want to know more about such item or object. When a child learns to question things they are learning more and more. This is a very valuable tool to introduce to any