The Importance of Sensory Play for Children With Disabilities (2024)

FAQs

Why is sensory play important for children with special needs? ›

Sensory play works to build skills on several levels. Sight play encourages children to explore colors and experiment with light. Touch play helps children learn to experience the world using their hands. Taste play helps bring new sensations into their world and helps associate food with fun.

Play is central to learning and development for all children. Play and friendship help children with disability learn skills and abilities, including social-emotional, communication and physical skills. Playing with others can help children with disability have fun and feel included, supported and cared for.

With sensory activities, children develop language and social skills naturally. They are given the ability to learn through experience in these environments. This helps them understand the ways to communicate their emotions, wants, and needs.

Overall Benefits of Sensory Play

Sensory play encourages learning through exploration, curiosity, problem solving and creativity. It helps to build nerve connections in the brain and encourages the development of language and motor skills.

Sensory experiences can help children understand their environments and support them to feel safe and secure. A well-developed sensory system is essential for both cognitive and social intelligence and is therefore required for children to become successful learners.

Sensory play activities stimulate your child's senses which supports their brain and language development, gross motor skills, social interaction and problem-solving skills. With sensory play, there's always much more going on than meets the eye.

Play helps bridge the gap in communication. Having fun together promotes unity and inclusion! “Just about any sport or activity can be altered to give special-needs children the cardiovascular, flexibility, and strength-training benefits that allow kids to stay healthy and fit.” — University of Rochester Medical Center.

Peer support

them join a child's play to give encouragement through modeling and commenting. For the child who has difficulty with activities that require several steps (such as making a collage or building a castle), pair the child with a buddy. The two can then take turns participating in the activity.

Make it sensory

Children with sensory, learning or physical disabilities may struggle to access information. Those who experience difficulties processing sensory information may choose to avoid certain experiences. Play helps to introduce new sensory stimulus in an accessible and entertaining way.

Sensory stimulation is very important for the development of infants and can be used effectively to improve the well-being of developmentally disabled adults, people with neurocognitive disorders, and older adults.

Why is sensory processing important for autism? ›

Understanding and accommodating sensory issues can ease discomfort and increase opportunities for autistic people to learn, socialize, communicate and participate in the community. Accommodations might mean modifying the environment, using tools and strategies, or creating new habits or routines.

Sensory play supports language development.

Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling are all ways children learn to think, feel and compare their environment and the objects within it. Using multiple senses at the same time stimulates learning and language development, especially descriptive words.

Managing Emotions

Activities like squishing playdough or squeezing stress balls can serve as outlets for emotional expression. Play that engages the five senses (and more!) allows children to release tension and stress in a constructive manner, promoting emotional regulation and self-soothing abilities.

Sensory Calming Activities provide sensory input and help to meet your child's sensory processing needs. They can help your child to become calm, self regulated and less fidgety. These sensory calming activities can also reduce your child's stress and anxiety.

Sensory toys help children with autism relax, focus, and calm down to a scenario or event. It helps them grasp objects with decreased dear and discomfort, ultimately helping them play naturally. Futhermore, sensory toys help develop social learning skills like negotiating, planning, and sharing.

As described by individuals with autism, sensory integration techniques, such as pressure-touch can facilitate attention and awareness, and reduce overall arousal. Temple Grandin, in her descriptive book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, relates the distress and relief of her sensory experiences.

It's important to help kids with autism improve their play skills, because play is a foundation for learning. During playtime, try working on: Foundational learning skills—like attention and flexibility. Cognitive skills—like problem-solving.

Sensory needs, which can be hearing loss and/or visual impairment or sensory processing difficulties and physical difficulties, can occur for a variety of reasons, e.g. congenital conditions (some progressive), injury or disease.