Sensory Learning – Willowbank School, Kilmarnock

Hi everyone!

This week we are focusing on all things sensory. We will explore all our senses through a variety of activities and experiences. As always, these activities are only suggestions and you are under no obligation to do all or any of them. Have fun and stay safe.

Sight

‘Eye spy’ is a great game that can be played anywhere and with limited resouces, it also helps us to explore letter sounds and words. I challenge you to make a sensory ‘eye spy’ bottle with an adult. The bottle can be made using anything small enough to fit inside along with either water (with food colouring and glitter!), sand or rice so that we have to move the bottle around to find all our hidden items. Here is an example of a sensory bottle for your reference.

Hearing

Listen to this sensory story and have a chat about all the different sounds you hear! Could you read a story with an adult and create some sound effects to go along with it?

Your hearing challenge is to go on a ‘senses hunt’ either in your garden or while you’re out a walk. Takes some time to just stand safely in an outdoor space and listen hard for any sounds you can hear. How many sounds did you hear? Did you know what all of them were? Have a think as well about what you can see and smell and touch along the way!

Taste

This is a very funny video of celebrities taking a taste test which should introduce your taste challenge well! Your challenge is to wear a blindfold and try five different foods. How many foods did you try and how many did you guess correctly?

Want to make the challenge more interesting? Take away another sense. Simply put headphones on as well as a blindfold and try the challenge again. Was it trickier?

Smell

Your smell challenge has an arty flare! You are going to create bubble art with different smells and colours. For this challenge you will need; Bubble mixture/fairy liquid, a bubble blower wand, food colouring/coloured paints, cups/tubs to dip your wand into and white sheets of paper. This activity should be completed outdoors

Simply mix a colour and a drop of something smelly (shampoo, vanilla extract, sauces, shower gel) into a cup/tub filled with bubble mixture and then blow your bubbles in the direction of the paper! Watch the colours mix and smell the different scents mix together! (If you don’t have a bubble wand, sellotape plastic straws together!)

Touch

Sensory writing. For this activity, simply fill a tray with any dispersible product such as rice, lentils, foam, sand or salt and practise finger writing. Try a range of products one after the other and see which texture you prefer. If you want to get creative here are some recipes for creating special sensory writing trays:

Fairy Dust – https://theimaginationtree.com/sensory-writing-in-fairy-dust-literacy-activity/
Moon Dust – https://theimaginationtree.com/moon-dust-sensory-writing-tray/

The lesser known internal senses…

Vestibular

“…The sensory system that provides the leading contribution to the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance.”

Yoga is a fantastic and calming way to develop balance and muscle control and coordination. Cosmic Yoga is favourite with our young people – check them out on Youtube.

I have included a link that will take you to a Harry Potter themed session for the Beech Harry Potter fans!

Proprioception

“Proprioception is the unconscious awareness of body position. It tells us about the position of our body parts, their relation to each other, and their relation to other people and objects”

Chores that will provide proprioceptive input: