Sensory Play & Sensory Toys

Play is an important part of cognitive development for infants and toddlers. At this stage, it is very important to provide adequate play opportunities for infants and kids, including exposure to various toys, including sensory toys. Young children learn and develop at a rapid rate. An infant who is only a few months old can absorb a lot of information from the world through tactile and sensory stimulation. Creating a sensory environment is beneficial to a child's early development and education in all aspects. ExploraToy helps you fully understand what sensory toys are and how they can help your child?

What is sensory play? What are sensory toys?

Sensory play is any type of activity that involves stimulating the senses of young children and is designed to stimulate the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These five senses are with your child from birth as they explore the world around them. This type of play helps develop the senses and builds cognitive skills and stimulates the child's brain development. Sensory toys are specifically designed to stimulate one or more senses, and they may include elements such as color contrast, different sounds, or different tactile sensations. These toys are designed to help children develop their senses through play in a safe and natural environment. For children with special needs such as autism and Down syndrome, sensory toys may be more appealing to them because they help children stay calm and provide the sensory experiences they want, and are especially useful in helping them interact with their senses, stay focused, and soothe and calm them during times of stress.

How can sensory toys help your child?

Sensory toys benefit children by helping them interact with their senses, providing feedback to their sensory systems, and regulating their sensory needs, thus providing a wide range of developmental benefits for infants and toddlers, to name a few:

• Cognitive Development

Research has shown that sensory play builds neural connections in brain pathways and stimulates brain development, thus empowering children to perform more complex learning tasks, in addition to helping children develop and enhance their memory, and is also helpful for hand-eye coordination.

• Fine and gross motor skills

Fine motor skills are skills that require a high degree of control and precision in the small muscles of the hand (for example, using a fork, writing, etc.). Gross motor skills use large body muscles for balance, coordination, reaction time, and physical strength and are defined as the coordination of larger muscle groups responsible for activities such as running, jumping, and bicycling. Sensory tactile play for infants and toddlers can help develop fine motor skills and gross motor skills by playing with toys that help the baby's movement and activities.

• Social Skills and Language Development

Sensory toys allow children to share, plan, and negotiate together, helping to encourage more interaction and promote social skills in young children. Giving sensory toys encourages children to talk about new textures and shapes, which subsequently stimulates language practice and the use of words associated with the toy or activity they are engaged in.

• Concentration Improvement

Calm a restless infant or toddler with the ability to relax, focus and concentrate on something by playing with sensory toys that give children the sensory experiences they need.

The most important thing is that sensory play is fun and exciting for children. They are exploring. No child does not love to explore! In fact, sensory games can happen anywhere. For example, when playing in the back garden with ExploraToy garden tools, children already use multiple senses to interact outdoors. ExploraToy encourages children to use sensory toys to play. We provide a series of sensory toys for babies and toddlers, which are designed to stimulate curiosity, develop senses, stimulate creative games and help cognitive development. Know what your child needs and choose sensory toys that suit him.