Sensory play is any activity that invites children to use their senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste, plus movement and balance. Pouring water, squeezing play dough, and tapping a music board all count. It helps children explore, describe, and make sense of the world, at home, in nurseries, and in school playgrounds.
Look. Listen. Touch. Smell. Taste. These five basic senses are how we all experience and connect with the world around us. Each person may perceive these senses differently, and some children experience sensory input more or less intensely than others. For young children especially, engaging all five senses is crucial for their growth and learning. Stimulating a child’s senses during these formative years is essential for supporting overall development, including cognitive and language skills.
The early years are an important time for sensory play and development. Sensory play stimulates the senses through a variety of textures, sounds, tastes, smells, and sights. Whether at home or in the classroom, sensory play activities use everyday materials and props. They encourage children to explore and develop their senses by responding to what they find.
This guide is written for nursery practitioners and teachers, and for parents who want ideas for home. It covers what sensory play is, its five key benefits, seven ideas to try, how play changes with age, safety, and how to support children with different sensory needs.
In this article
- What is sensory play?
- Why is sensory play important?
- The 5 key benefits of sensory play
- Sensory play ideas to try
- Sensory play by age
- Sensory play in nurseries and schools
- Sensory play outdoors and in the playground
- Supporting children with different sensory needs
- Safety: supervision, food, and small parts
- FAQs
What is Sensory Play?
Sensory play is a hands-on learning approach that engages all five senses—touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing—to promote discovery and development. It also involves movement and balance, sometimes called the vestibular sense, and body awareness, called proprioception.
Sensory play is a core part of play-based learning in the early years. It supports children’s all-round development by encouraging them to explore and think. By exploring their surroundings through several senses at once, children build skills that support learning and creativity. Everyday examples include digging in sand, splashing in water, squishing play dough, listening to rain on a canopy, and smelling herbs in a garden.
Why Sensory Play is So Important
Children learn by experiencing the world through their senses. As they grow, educational demands increase, but young children often find it challenging to sit still and focus for extended periods. Sensory play offers an energetic and engaging alternative that keeps children moving and curious as they explore new textures, tastes, sounds, and sights. Sensory play supports a child’s development by encouraging growth in multiple areas, including balance, problem-solving, and emotional growth.
Play broadens a child’s awareness of their surroundings. Sensory play in particular can help children develop social skills, language, motor skills, thinking skills, and emotional understanding.
The 5 Key Benefits of Sensory Play
Here are the five key benefits of sensory play, each with an example you can try. Sensory play often involves various objects and materials, such as sand, water, textured fabrics, or natural items. For younger children, our guide to toddler sensory activities has more age-specific ideas. You will find seven sensory play ideas that use these materials further down this page.
1. Supports brain and cognitive development
Sensory play can support cognitive development: the way children think, remember, and solve problems. By using several senses at once, children observe how materials behave and make connections between them. For example, a child pouring water into containers of different sizes learns that some fill faster than others. These early experiences can lay a foundation for later learning.
2. Supports Language Development
Through sensory play, children learn new words by exploring and describing different textures, smells, tastes, and sounds. Repetition of descriptive words during play helps expand vocabulary and improves communication skills. You can help by talking with children as they play. Ask what they can hear and smell, and whether something feels hard or soft, squishy or rough.
3. Promotes Motor Skill Development
Sensory activities encourage fine motor skills, such as gripping, pinching, and handling small objects of different shapes. They also build gross motor skills, such as running, jumping, and balancing. Tactile play, exploring objects through touch, is especially useful for fine motor skills and sensory awareness. Balancing, jumping, and swinging stimulate the vestibular system, which helps children develop balance and movement. These skills support everyday tasks such as writing, dressing, and coordination. For example, squeezing and rolling play dough strengthens the hand muscles children later use to hold a pencil or scissors. Our guide to outdoor activities that develop fine motor skills has more ideas.
4. Encourages Emotional Regulation
Sensory play provides children with safe ways to express and manage their emotions. Whether it’s calming down by squeezing playdough or expressing joy through water play, these activities help children self-regulate and develop emotional awareness.
5. Fosters Creativity and Imagination
Open-ended sensory play sparks creative thinking by letting children experiment with different materials. Whether mixing colours, building with blocks, or exploring sensory bottles, children use their imagination and find new ways to solve problems. Open-ended equipment outdoors can do the same, as our round-up of creative playground equipment shows. Open-ended sensory play also often involves social interaction, as children collaborate, communicate, and share ideas. Read more about how sensory play helps develop creativity.
Sensory play ideas to try
These seven sensory play ideas work at home, in a nursery room, or outdoors. Each one lists what you need, what to do, what it builds, and the ages it suits. Supervise every activity, and check the safety notes below.
Sensory bin
What you need: a shallow tub, a filler such as dry rice, pasta, or lentils, and scoops, spoons, and containers with lids. What to do: let children scoop, pour, hide, and find items, using only the objects you provide. Talk about how the filler feels and sounds. What it builds: fine motor skills, language, and sharing when two children play together. Easier or harder: start with large scoops, then add tongs. Age: toddlers and preschoolers; use larger items for under-threes.
Messy play
What you need: paint, play dough, cloud dough, moon sand, or shaving foam, plus aprons and a wipe-clean surface. What to do: let children squeeze, spread, and mix freely. What it builds: touch, comfort with new textures, and creativity. Easier or harder: for children who dislike mess, offer a brush or spoon, or seal paint in a zip bag. Age: toddlers and preschoolers.
Sand and water play
What you need: a sand or water tray, jugs, funnels, sieves, and containers. What to do: fill, pour, and empty, and compare wet and dry sand. What it builds: cause and effect, early maths language (full, empty, more), and hand control. Easier or harder: add a water wheel or moulds. Age: toddlers and preschoolers; babies with close supervision. Our sand and water play range brings this outdoors.
Texture trail
What you need: squares of foil, card, cloth, bubble wrap, and carpet taped to the floor. What to do: let babies reach for and pat each texture, or let toddlers walk the trail barefoot. What it builds: touch, reaching, two-handed play, and balance. Easier or harder: add a texture with each visit. Age: babies and toddlers.
Sound making
What you need: pots, wooden spoons, sealed shakers, or an outdoor music board. What to do: tap, shake, and copy simple rhythms, then play loud and quiet. What it builds: hearing, rhythm, listening, and turn-taking. Easier or harder: add a song to follow. Age: babies to preschoolers. Outdoor music and sensory playboards give children a permanent place to make sound.
Sensory bottle
What you need: a clear plastic bottle, water, a little oil, food colouring, and glitter or beads. What to do: an adult fills and glues the lid shut; children tip, roll, and watch the contents settle. What it builds: sight, focus, and a calm moment. Easier or harder: make a set with different speeds. Age: toddlers and preschoolers. Check the lid stays sealed.
Nature collection and mud kitchen
What you need: a bag or basket for leaves, sticks, stones, and pine cones; mud, water, pots, and spoons. What to do: collect and sort natural objects, then “cook” with them in a mud kitchen. What it builds: smell, touch, outdoor exploration, and imaginative play. Easier or harder: add a list of things to find. Age: toddlers and preschoolers. See our mud kitchens.
Sensory play by age: babies, toddlers, and preschoolers
Sensory play suits young children of every age, and it changes as they grow. Sensory activities help children learn through exploration, social skills, and hand-eye coordination. They also let children be creative while developing fine motor skills, discovering new things without worrying about getting dirty.
Babies: sensory play can start from birth. Young babies explore through touch, sound, and faces, so try textured fabrics, gentle rattles, and peek-a-boo.
Toddlers: toddlers want to pour, scoop, and squish. Sand and water trays, sensory bins with large items, and play dough suit this stage. Our guide to toddler sensory activities has more ideas.
Preschoolers: preschoolers start to describe, compare, and plan their play. Mud kitchens, music boards, and mixing colours give them more to talk about and more ways to play together.
Sensory Play in Nurseries and Schools
Sensory play is a familiar part of early years education. In classrooms and early learning environments, educators use sensory play activities to nurture a child’s development in ways that are both engaging and effective, particularly when outdoor areas are planned to maximise the Early Years Foundation Stage benefits of outdoor play.
By weaving sensory play into the curriculum, teachers can support cognitive development and brain development, helping children build the foundation for complex thinking and problem-solving. Activities like finger painting, messy play, and exploring musical instruments encourage children to use their senses, which in turn strengthens neural connections and boosts cognitive skills, a benefit also provided by outdoor music and sensory playboards.
Sensory play outdoors and in the playground
Outdoor spaces offer sensory experiences that are hard to recreate indoors: the sound of rain, the feel of bark and mud, changing light, and room to move. Sensory play can happen in designated indoor areas, which help keep play safe, clean, and engaging. It also works in well-designed outdoor spaces with specialist playground equipment, which adds sound, texture, water, sand, and mud to everyday play.
Our sensory play range includes:
- Sand Hut Major: combines sand play with imaginative play, and closes to become a small performance stage
- Play boards: let children explore sounds and rhythms, and suit playgrounds and sensory gardens
- Painting station: encourages creativity, imagination, and balance
- Squirrel Feeder Maze, Water Play Maxi, Mud Kitchen Mini, and Double Bubble Viewing Board
Sensory bins filled with natural materials such as leaves, rocks, and sand are a simple way to start sensory play at home. Larger outdoor features like a Cambridge Sensory Tunnel can enrich sensory experiences in shared play spaces.
If you are planning a sensory area, think about a mix of senses, quiet and busy zones, ground-level play for wheelchair users, and shade. Our designers can walk you through the options at a free site consultation.
Supporting children with different sensory needs
Sensory play benefits all children, including children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), by offering accessible ways to learn and explore. Every child responds to sensory input differently. Some children seek out strong sensations, while others find certain textures, sounds, or smells overwhelming.
- Follow the child’s lead and let them go at their own pace.
- Offer choices, such as a spoon instead of hands for messy play.
- Introduce new textures gradually.
- Watch for signs of distress, and offer a quiet space to take a break.
For more on supporting children with autism, read our guide to sensory play for children with autism, and see our inclusive sensory play equipment. Sensory play is not a treatment for any condition. For advice about an individual child, speak to the professionals who support them.
Safety: supervision, food, and small parts
Children of all ages should be supervised by an adult during sensory play, at all times. Check materials for choking risks, particularly small parts for children under three. Check for food allergies before using food-based materials such as pasta, rice, or flour. Never leave a child alone with water, however shallow. Wash hands before and after messy play. In nurseries and schools, follow your setting’s own risk assessment.
FAQs
What is sensory play?
What are the benefits of sensory play?
At what age can children start sensory play?
What are some sensory play ideas?
How can nurseries and schools use sensory play (EYFS)?
Is sensory play suitable for children with autism or sensory sensitivities?
Is sensory play safe, and how should it be supervised?
How does sensory play help language development?
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