Sensory Stimulation

Sensory stimulation provides a child with a wide range of auditory (hearing), tactile (feeling), visual (seeing), olfactory (smelling), and tasting experiences.  As the child performs these activities, the goal of the teacher is to provide active verbal exchange with him/her.  The main objective of sensory stimulation time is to increase the oral language of the children, enabling them to describe themselves and their environment effectively.  An example of this would be in describing a piece of spaghetti.  The teacher could point out that the spaghetti is hard, smooth, long, cylindrical, and brittle as the children feel and break dry spaghetti.  Each activity listed in this section is classified by the sense that it is to stimulate.  Note also that besides the explanation of the activity and the list of materials needed, the vocabulary to be developed is listed.  Try to use these words (and as many others as you can add) as you and the children experience sensory stimulation and talk about it.  A few examples are listed below.

Flower Smell (Olfactory) 

This activity allows children to smell fresh flowers and describe what they smell.  Flowers can be obtained from the children's home gardens or from a florist.  A trip could be made to a florist shop or into different persons' yards.  Flowers can also be brought to school.  Provide a carnation, chrysanthemum, rose, hyacinth, violet, tulip, daffodil, and lilac.  Other varieties can be used.  Have the children discuss the different fragrances of the fresh flowers.  A special field trip could be made to a local green house.  Also, florists might come to the school as resource persons to describe the flowers they bring with them.  They could also help the children with the vocabulary needed to describe the different smells of the flowers.

Materials Needed - A fresh cut rose, carnation, chrysanthemum, hyacinth, tulip, daffodil, violet, lilac.  Place flowers in water to keep them fresh.

Vocabulary - Distinctive, fragrant, perfumy, delightful, sweet, ambrosial, pleasant, heavy, mild, rose, carnation, chrysanthemum, hyacinth, violet, tulip, daffodil, lilac, dull, spring, strong.

Relate the book The Plant Sitter by Gene Zion (Book #59 in Children's Literature section) to this activity.

Flashlight Fun (Visual)

This visual activity also involves eye-hand coordination.  Place six to eight pictures that are familiar to the children (zoo or farm animal pictures, for example) on the wall or a door.  Provide several children with flashlights.  Tell the children to shine a light on an animal.  (Tell the name of the animal.)  Or, you could tell one child to shine his/her flashlight on one animal, and tell another child to shine his/her flashlight on another animal.  This activity is fun for children, especially when they get better at handling the flashlight!

Holiday Ideas:  At Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and other special holidays, seasonal pictures instead of animal pictures could be used.

Materials Needed - Flashlights, seasonal pictures, animal, toy, or clothing pictures.

Grape Day (Tasting)

Grape Day is always fun!  This activity provides children with opportunities to taste many different products that come from the same source.  This will also help with classification skills.  Provide grape juice, both white and purple, raisins--again both white/light and dark.  Also, buy fresh grapes, if available.  The seedless green and red grapes are excellent since many children don't like seeds in their food.  Grape leather, grape jelly and crackers, grape popsicles, raisin bread, and oatmeal cookies with raisins are other products to have children taste.

Materials Needed - Grape juice (Concord and white), raisins (white and dark), fresh grapes (red and green), dried grape leather, grape jelly and crackers, grape-flavored popsicles, raisin bread, oatmeal raisin cookies.

Vocabulary - Chewy, gummy, juicy, sweet, delicious, tangy, flavorful, light, cold, crisp, tart, grape, dark, luscious, mild, savory, delicate.

Zoo Animal Sounds (Auditory)

Distinguishing between different sounds aids in the development of auditory discrimination skills.  It helps focus children's attention to auditory stimuli.  Records or tapes of wild animal sounds are available from local libraries.  Listen to the sounds BEFORE presenting them to the children.  Try to find pictures of the animals to which you will be listening.  As the children and you listen to the sound of a lion roaring, for example, ask, "What animal makes a roaring sound like this?"  Then, after the children have told you what animal they are hearing, hold up a picture of that animal.

If the children are unable to match the sound of an animal with its name, do not let them keep guessing incorrectly.  Instead, as you listen to a sound, hold up the picture that represents the animal making the sound and say, "This is the sound of an elephant trumpeting."

Materials Needed - A tape or record (available at local libraries) of zoo animal sounds and pictures that correspond to the animal that produces the sound on the tape.

Vocabulary - Roar, bellow, squeal, squeak, grunt, whistle, growl, trumpet, hiss, buzz, swish, wheeze, croak, snarl, bark, howl, yowl, squawk, shriek, screech.

Say:  "You were able to tell the animal because you listened to the sound.  You heard the (roar or whatever).  You used your ears to hear the sounds."

Wet and Dry (Tactile)

This activity encourages children to make comparisons by feeling objects and deciding how they are different.  Place the following items on a table:  dried spaghetti and noodles and cooked spaghetti and noodles, a dry sponge and a wet sponge, dried flowers and fresh flowers, dried peas and fresh or frozen peas, dried leaves and fresh leaves, a potato chip and mashed potatoes, cookie dough and a baked cookie.  The children touch each set of different objects and describe how they feel.  The children should tell how the objects are the same (e.g., the same shape or color) and how they are different.

Materials Needed - Like objects that differ only in one being wet and the other dry.  This could include:  dried and cooked spaghetti or other noodles, dried flowers and fresh cut or growing flowers, dried peas and fresh or frozen peas, dried and fresh leaves, a potato chip and mashed potatoes, cookie dough and a baked cookie, wet or moist clay and hardened clay.  There should be enough containers and plates for each item, napkins and plastic aprons for the children for easy clean up since this is a tactile activity and children will be touching the items.  Bake extra cookies for the children, and tell the children that since the items will be touched it would be best not to eat any of the food, but that afterwards they could eat the extra cookies.

Vocabulary - Brittle, hard, pliable, squishy, gooey, wet, dry, moist, crunchy, stiff, pliant, impliable, bending, soft, supple, rigid, petrified, willowy, flexible, unbending, firm, unyielding, stiff, malleable.

Return to activities.
Return to ECLE.