What Is Sensory Play?
Sensory play involves activities that stimulate a child’s senses—sight, hearing, touch, and smell—helping them explore and understand the world. It includes activities like:
Touch: Exploring textures like sand or water
Hearing: Listening to sounds or music
Sight: Engaging with colours and lights
Smell: Experiencing scents from flowers or herbs
This type of play is essential for a child’s development. It strengthens brain connections, particularly for sensory processing and motor skills. Sensory play supports both fine motor skills (e.g., squeezing, pouring) and gross motor skills (e.g., running, jumping), while encouraging problem-solving, creativity, and cognitive growth.
How to Include Sensory Elements in Your Playground: Our Designer Amy's Perspective
These days, designing a playground that gets kids moving, exploring, and engaging all their senses is like hitting the sensory jackpot! It’s amazing how much fun and excitement you can pack into a play space when you incorporate sensory-rich elements that allow children to touch, hear, see, and even smell their way through adventure. As a designer, my absolute favourite part is harnessing the sun to project and emphasise textures or shapes – it just adds that extra layer of magic to the sensory experience! Creating a playground that’s not only fun but also inclusive and engaging for children of all abilities is easier than you might think. Here’s how to design a space that sparks curiosity and excitement for everyone:
- Sensory pathways - They're like turning any space into an adventure playground for everyone's feet – and wheels! You've got everything from super snuggly surfaces to those delightfully lumpy-bumpy ones. Honestly, there's just something ridiculously fun about feeling that texture switch-up right under your toes, or the smooth roll for wheelchair users!
- Musical panels or chimes - Think of them as the coolest, secret Easter eggs hidden around the playground! Seriously, they're like little brain-ticklers, sparking all sorts of awesome connections up in your noggin.
- Water play - Okay, so picture this - the cool, slippery feel of water rushing through your fingers, the sound of bubbly splashes, and the sun reflecting off tiny droplets – that's water play! It's basically a sneaky, super-fun science class disguised as a sensory explosion!
- Sensory gardens - Imagine tickling textures, happy-dance smells, rainbow colours, and nature's symphony! Kid-friendly, but honestly? It's magic for everyone. They're a blast of visual beauty and sensory excitement for children – think: music, textures, colours, and smells all partying together in one amazing space!
- Colour and light - That's a party everyone's invited to! Seriously, popping contrasts and touchy-feely textures? They're like instant imagination boosters and joy sparklers for any space. As an ex-lighting designer, I'm all about sneaking in those subtle colour splashes with light. Plus, here's the kicker: playing with sunlight to make patterns that shift and dance? That's like turning a space into a living, breathing art show!
- Scents - are like little time machines for the brain! A single whiff, and suddenly, you're back in a past memory. For children, this is pure magic! It transforms learning into an exciting, multi-sensory adventure, where they’re not just having fun, but also building a treasure trove of scent-linked memories that support their growth and development in wonderful ways!
So, bottom line? Sensory play areas aren't just fun, they're essential. They let kids feel the world, boost their brains, spark joy, and most importantly, throw open the doors to inclusive play for everyone. It's where learning and laughter meet, and honestly, what's better than that?
