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Home › Articles › Development › Sensory Play for Toddlers

Sensory Play for Toddlers

Part One: Developing the Sense of Touch

By Laura Cone

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Developing your child's sense of touch may mean getting a little messy at times and thinking outside the playpen. While it's important to keep fragile items out of reach, experts say it's important to let toddlers satisfy their urge to touch and explore their surroundings.

Vivian Matos of Odessa, Fla., allows her 1-year-old daughter, Maria, and 3-year-old son, Adrian, to help her cook, which is a good activity to help develop toddlers' sense of touch.

"If we cook rice, my son loves to dig his hands into the pot with the rice before it goes onto the stove and touches and feels the grains of rice," says Matos. "If I am going to make scrambled eggs, he is the one who gets the eggs from the refrigerator. He's the one who cracks them and puts them into the bowl and stirs them for me."

Sandi Dexter, author of Joyful Play With Toddlers: Recipes For Fun With Odds and Ends (Parenting Press, 1995), says some parents forget art is a sensory activity for toddlers. "They put their hands in it, and they spread it all over their bodies," says Dexter. "It's important for them to really get into it. One of the things I encourage parents to do at home, after they have run their dishwasher and emptied it, is put the door down, put a mat down on the floor and let your toddler do water activities. Give them measuring spoons, cups and funnels. It's a great place for them to be able to do that. The dishwasher door becomes a little desk for them."

Tickle, Squeeze, Stretch
In addition to art and water play, try balancing your toddler on a therapy or exercise ball. Hold his legs and send him forward, back and side-to-side. Also, buy a length of spandex, the material used for swimming suits, and sew it up to make a tube for your toddler.

"They love the feeling of resistance with that," Dexter says. "It helps them underst

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