Sensory development occurs naturally in childhood. As children go about their daily lives, they seek out opportunities to use their five senses – touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. They receive, sort and make use of a constant stream of stimulus – from the calming feeling of sand running through their fingertips to the excitement of skidding down a mud bank, or watching the clouds float past as the wind touches their cheek.
Every encounter in a child’s life is a sensory experience, it could be argued, which is why nurseries are laden with texture-rich materials, engaging exploratory resources, opportunities for spontaneous and planned messy play and large-scale equipment that stimulates children’s motor skills and ‘hidden’ senses.
THE ROLE OF THE SENSES
Sensory play has a vital role in hardwiring children’s brains and integrating their sensory and nervous systems, which is essential for all-round development.
During the heights of Covid, many close-contact resources, such as sand, playdough, soft toys, gloop, slime and water play, were set aside, or restricted, which limited children’s sensory exploration.
Linda Keats, early years education partner for Essex County Council, says many settings are now ‘turning towards’ resources that support sensory play because of the ‘calming effect’ it has on mood and behaviour, which is an area that has been flagged since Covid lockdowns, she explains.
She says, ‘Practitioners worked hard to think outside the box and came up with ingenious ideas on how to still allow access to these stimulating resources while keeping everyone safe and adhering to hygiene standards. However, sadly, many children missed important learning opportunities they would normally have accessed at an early age as a result of the pandemic.’
When delivering training on sensory play, Keats talks about the role that resources have in stimulating the senses.
‘It’s important to select resources that “give something back”. For example, a natural scrubbing brush has a prickly, rough, spikey feel which makes a sensory connection within the brain. The stimulation, connection and response you get from sensory resources is ten-fold compared to resources such as plastic, which tends to have cold, smooth, flat, hard surfaces.’
BARRIERS TO PROVISION
Parents’ increasing reluctance to allow their children to engage in messy play experiences at home can have an impact on children’s openness to get messy at nursery, according to Tara Pegley-Stanger, lead teacher at Harrington Nursery School in Derby.
She says, ‘It’s about encouraging the children to take risks through messy play and educating the parents. I used to have a T-shirt on display which had a mark for each messy play encounter. For example, a grass stain with the caption “This shows I have been using the outdoor area to develop my physical skills”; and a mud splodge with the words “The mud kitchen is messy but it helps me to develop my imagination and use of descriptive language”.’
Practitioners are often instructed by parents to ‘not get their clothes dirty’, explains Keats.
‘We seem to have a generation of parents who perhaps didn’t experience sensory play themselves, so don’t know of the benefits of it in supporting their child’s holistic development,’ she says.
PRACTITIONER PERCEPTIONS
Practitioners can also express discomfort around handling and working with messy materials, with some going so far as wanting to ‘vomit’ at the thought of touching mud, brown playdough or wet and sticky resources such as baked beans, explains Sue Gascoyne, a play therapist and early years consultant and trainer who specialises in messy play, or ‘material encounters’, as she prefers to call it.
In her book, Messy Play in the Early Years, Gascoyne, who also runs PlaytoZ, a sensory play company selling carefully chosen sensory resources, classifies messy play resources according to their wet, dry, in-between or sticky textures.
She says, ‘Messy play is often associated with paint, gloop, clay, shaving foam, mud or food products, but almost anything has the potential to be used for messy play, be it fabric, a collection of natural treasures or even paper.’
‘The knowledge that not all messy play resources are wet and sticky enables anxious practitioners to start with less-threatening textures, such as shredded paper in a tuff spot, and gradually build up to more challenging wet and stickier resources, such as an indoor gloop slide on a sheet of polythene, when their confidence allows,’ she adds.
REAL FOOD
There is much debate about using real food in messy play, particularly now that food poverty is of such widespread concern.
Keats ‘firmly believes’ in limiting the wastage of food in activities such as messy play but says that ‘food used in context’, for example, a small tub of pasta in home corner or cutting fresh vegetables to make soup, helps children make links with home experiences and cements learning and knowledge.
However, she adds, ‘A tub full of rice or pasta used for pouring or scooping could feed a family for a month.’
But with budgets tight in nurseries, some nurseries are finding that out-of-date food products are the most affordable options for messy play.
Pegley-Stanger says, ‘We use food that’s out-of-date. But also, a cheap packet of cereal is affordable. In our utility room we’ve got a corn flour, snow play, slime, jelly bass, corn flour, tea, coffee, tea bags, shaving foam. The food items are also safe exploratory materials, if some children have a sensory need to put it in their mouth.’
Gascoyne says there is ‘a lot of research’ which supports children exploring food ‘sensorily with their hands’, but she favours using out-of-date food or natural resources.
‘I only recommend two specialist play resources – Gelli Play and non-toxic water beads – because of the benefits they’ve had on my practice,’ she says.
One of Gascoyne’s ‘favourite examples’ of messy play is an observation she did at Nannas Day Nursery in Colchester, where a group of 18-month-old children made tea and coffee.
‘This adult-led activity involved a tray, china cups, two teapots and a cafetiere,’ she explains. ‘Containers were placed on the table for children to help themselves to sugar, coffee and tea bags and the adult sat nearby helping, if needed, to lift the heavy teapots. Each child chose what to add to their cup, pointing and using simple statements and questions, such as “thank you”, “sugar now”, “me one” and “we stir it”. It felt natural, like real-life rather than role-play. Several times the adult calmly reminded them that they couldn’t drink their drinks but it was great to see the learning in action.’
HIDDEN SENSES
In addition to the five main senses, there are three senses that are ‘often overlooked’ when it comes to the development of children’s brains and bodies in tandem, explains Anne O’Connor, independent early years consultant, trainer and author, specialising in the Prime areas of development (www.primedforlife.co.uk).
She says, ‘My main focus, in terms of sensory development, continues to be the often-overlooked interoceptive, proprioceptive and vestibular senses which are still often not given the attention they deserve, particularly with regard to the Prime areas of learning.
‘Just like all the other senses, these do not develop in isolation and rely on ongoing multisensory experience to support integration and effective processing.’
She adds, ‘A lot of the activity that children are biologically driven to do in order to develop these senses are the kinds of things adults keep telling them not to do. “Don’t spin about, you’ll get dizzy”; “Don’t jump on the furniture”. This is the age at which they most need to be moving constantly – and we keep trying to make them sit still!’
Here are some examples of how to stimulate the ‘hidden’ senses in your setting:
- Interoception: the internal state of our bodies. Involves sensing when we are hungry, thirsty or need the loo. Also relates to the physical sensations of feeling excited, tense or agitated; needed for survival and self-regulation.
- Proprioception: understanding our bodies in relation to our environment. Movement is key.
- Heavy work play: children will naturally engage in pushing and pulling, lifting and carrying, brushing and sweeping, transporting toys around the setting, building dens, playing with building blocks, tidying up and taking part in meaningful daily chores. Clambering in and out of baskets, cupboards, cardboard boxes and home-made dens are also important for proprioception.
- Vestibular: our internal sense of balance. This often involves ‘dizzy play’: early shared activities where we rock, swing, sway with babies. Later, it involves all their independent spinning, swaying, sliding, jumping, running, balancing, rocking, bouncing and hanging upside down.
CASE STUDY: internal senses at SEND to Learn Nursery
SEND to Learn is a 70-place setting in Blyth, Northumberland, where 90 per cent of the children have special educational needs. It is owned by Dr Kath Dickinson, who has a doctorate in SEND (autism).
She says, ‘We’ve got children from right across the spectrum – from those who are following a more normal developmental pathway to those with complex medical needs or those who may just have language difficulty.
‘We define sensory play as play that uses all the five senses, as well as the internal senses like proprioception, vestibular and interoception. We try to hit all the senses. For example, we’ve got spinning swings, trampettes, tunnels, car tyres, mud kitchens, a herb garden and aromatic plants, alongside musical sensory experiences.
‘Access to the outdoors provides lots of opportunities for staff to help children develop their vestibular sense. Children love the sensory path, which is embedded with different textures. It has concrete, pebbles, spiky bits of rubber, a slab of ribbed slate.
‘As they walk barefoot across it, they get feedback through their feet, which not only helps with their balance but also helps them differentiate between the different textures. Outdoors, the vast majority of our children veer towards physical play as opposed to smelling the scents in the herb garden. I think this is because it helps them self-regulate and develop their co-ordination. If they’re climbing or moving tyres around or spinning, they’re busy, they’re moving, and they’re hitting all the different senses through their physical play.’
Messy play textures
- Dry textures include lentils, rice, split peas, porridge oats, leaves, seedpods, wood shavings, compost and natural treasures, sand, shredded paper, fabric scraps, maize packaging peanuts, powder paint and objects.
- In-between textures are dry resources that don’t stick to the skin and include playdough, clay, kinetic sand, artificial snow and water beads, or Orbeez, cooked spaghetti, ice, soap and water.
- Messy textures are shaving foam, gloop, Gelli, slime and finger paints, tinned tomatoes, beans, rice pudding, dough and yoghurt, mud, wet sand, clay.
CASE STUDY: messy play at Harrington Nursery School
Sensory play is threaded through the entire curriculum at Harrington Nursery School in Derby. ‘It’s indoors, outdoors, and children transport it around the nursery,’ explains lead teacher Tara Pegley-Stanger.
‘It’s multi-sensory and children get different learning experiences from it, depending on their age.
‘When planning for sensory play activities, I think about malleable resources and hands-on exploration with all the five senses.
‘The mud kitchen, for example, is part of our continuous provision, and an ongoing sensory area. There are potion-making stations and domestic role play takes place, where children “cook” with flowers, herbs, petals, roots and use different tools to mix, stir, pour and chop vegetables and clean with spray bottles.
‘We also teach children how to make playdough, adding more flour or water to the cornflour or conditioner to change the consistency. In the sand tray we add glitter, little gems, treasure boxes, small-world or seasonal natural resources such as acorns or leaves. They use this to make transient art, set up small-world scenes, mark-make and create patterns or sequence difference resources, developing vocabulary as they go along.
‘We would then add shaving foam to the sand or add sand to the paint to create different textures.
‘Sensory play is great for developing activities involving science, technology, engineering, art and maths. It’s particularly useful for science, looking at quantities, capacities and changing materials and engineering, involving joining pipes and tubing together in water play.’
BOOKS
- Messy Play in the Early Years: Supporting Learning through Material Engagements, Play to Z, £19
- Understanding Physical Development: Linking bodies and brains by Anne O’Connor and Anna Daly, Routledge, £38
