Discovery Point Blog

September 3, 2019

At-Home Sensory Activities for Toddlers

The best at-home learning activities for toddlers typically involve one or more of the five senses. Sensory input is of critical importance during early childhood. By engaging toddlers and preschoolers on this basic level, parents can often create memorable learning experiences that can have a lasting effect on young minds. The experts at Discovery Point have curated these five at-home sensory activities for toddlers.

Sight

Brightly colored flash cards and puzzle pieces are among the most popular visual learning tools for younger children. Other options include some or all of the following:

  • Concentration games rely heavily on both sight and memory to help your child build cognitive and memory skills.
  • Alphabet games are ideal for children learning the appearance of letters.
  • Books and online games that focus on finding a particular character or item against a crowded background can provide hours of fun for preschool-aged children.

By incorporating sight-oriented games into your daily routines, you can help your toddler or preschooler to achieve greater success in his or her academic activities.

Hearing

Simple songs can allow you and your child to enjoy sing-along time every day. Providing a varied musical background can also boost your child’s natural mathematical ability. The precise rhythms and progressions demonstrated in certain types of music can stimulate the same parts of the brain used in mathematical calculations, providing your child with an advantage in later coursework.

Touch

Early experiences with different textures can help your toddler learn more about the surrounding world. Finger paints are an ideal combination of visual and tactile stimuli that can allow your child to express his or her creativity. Other touch-based activities include the following:

  • Water play with warm and cool water
  • Digging in sand and building castles in the sandbox
  • Making mud pies
  • Comparing cotton, sandpaper and other soft, hard, scratchy or smooth surfaces

Presenting your child with engaging tactile experiences can promote greater understanding of the sense of touch and an increased appreciation for textural differences in the surrounding world.

Smell

Baking cookies, fresh lemons and cabbage are all known for their distinctive scents. Creating a set of smelling bottles with extracts available at your local grocery store can allow your preschool-aged child to enjoy a fun and challenging educational activity at home. Vanilla, vinegar, pickles, almond and many other flavors can be used to create your own scent-based activity. Over time, your toddler will learn to distinguish the different scents and to identify new additions to your smelling bottle collection.

Taste

Blind taste tests can be fun for both you and your toddler and can help to break down resistance to the introduction of new foods in your daily menu. By offering a bite of an unfamiliar food and asking your child to identify it, you can help your child enjoy a wide range of foods without the potential for outbursts or tantrums sometimes associated with mealtimes during early childhood. This can help to instill a healthier attitude about food and a more balanced approach to nutrition during the formative years.

At Discovery Point, our educational experts are proud to provide a wide range of activities designed to engage toddlers and preschoolers and to allow them to reach their full learning potential. Our dedicated teachers use the Creative Curriculum® System for Preschool to provide every child with the opportunity to excel in the academic setting. The entire team at Discovery Point will work with your toddler or preschool-aged child to provide a customized learning plan perfectly suited to his or her needs.