Nursery World - EYFS Best Practice: All about ... Sensory development

How children learn from the world around them is influenced by both
their external senses, such as taste and touch, and their internal
senses of movement and body awareness. Anne O'Connor considers how these senses help to build understanding, when problems might arise, and how practitioners can make sure they are offering suitable environments

Although it is a subject that has been much debated we tend to think in terms of five main senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. These are our external senses that pick up information from the world outside us. However, most specialists in child development would now agree that there are two further internal senses that are hugely important. These are the vestibular and proprioceptive senses, though we can think of them more simply as the sense of movement and the sense of (internal) body awareness.

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MULTI-SENSORY LIFE

Rarely do our senses work in isolation. Imagine you are in the park on a summer's day. Unless you have a sensory impairment, your eyes will probably see trees and grass and probably people. Your ears will be hearing the sounds of the birds and children playing. Your nose might be smelling cut grass, the scent of those trees, flowers and other vegetation, maybe even a hotdog seller or a barbecue. If you concentrate you can feel the fresh air against your skin; sit down and you will feel the bench under you or the grass on the ground.

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