Sensory Art Opportunities At Bubbles Academy

Article At A Glance:

• Sensory play helps babies and toddlers develop motor skills, problem-solving abilities, and sensory integration.
• Early sensory experiences build a foundation for future learning and exploration.
• Parents can support sensory development by encouraging exploration, embracing the mess, and following their child’s lead.

Our Sensory Art Opportunities

Baby Sensory Art: 5 months to 14 month 

• • Baby’s introduction to taste-safe, sensory-rich play including sights, sounds, tastes and textures!
  • 45 minutes

Toddler Sensory Art: 13 months to 20 months

• • Your toddler is on the move & ready to explore! This exploration-based class provides hand (and feet) on interactions with art making, water play, paint and sensory rich play activations to meet the ever changing curiosities of your toddler. These art activities for toddlers offer engaging, sensory experiences.
    
  • 45 minutes

Additional Read: Toddler Art Projects: 5 Steps for Success

Art + Music: 15 months to 3 years

• • This class combines our favorite music + movement activities with two art explorations including project making & sensory play.  This 60-minute class helps your toddler practice transitions along with building stamina and sensory integration, a buffet of the best that Bubbles programming has to offer!

Benefits of Early Sensory Rich Experiences

• Growing curious and creative kids through sensory rich engagement and play
• Helps build problem solving and executive functioning skills, along with developing observational and recollection skills.
• Gets the brain, body and senses working together more efficiently, aiding regulation and overall sensory integration.
• Sensory Play and Art Making promote coordination along with strengthening fine and gross motor muscles & skills from reaching, pinching, grasping, splatting and pouring too!

Additional Read: Experience the Importance of Hands-On Learning in Early Childhood Development With Sensory Play

• Promotes a strong sense of self by exploring preferences and new experiences in a safe social setting.
• These experiences also help to scaffold future play & learning skills, laying a solid curious foundation for more new, novel and involved experiences as our brains & bodies develop.

Sensory Exploration: Why does it all go in their mouths?

• Our “taste safe” Baby Sensory Art classes help promote and support developmentally appropriate exploration of materials and textures through baby’s most developed observation tool: their mouths!
• Babies have MORE taste buds in early childhood than we do as adults, pointing to just how integral mouthing & chewing their toys and materials is, sending vital information to their brains, bodies and sensory receptors! 
• Our Babies & Toddlers are in their Sensorimotor Stage, where they’re learning to differentiate themselves from their surroundings, relying heavily on their senses to give them LOTS of information about the world around them
  • This is why Sensory Rich Experiences and environments are so important in early development, giving Babies and Toddlers lots of opportunities to explore, differentiate and indulge in new experiences.
  • As their sense of sight, smell and touch continue to develop and heighten, taste and oral exploration provides both lots of information to baby along with the comfort and soothing of sucking & feeding during a new sensory rich experience.

What is Sensory Integration?

This is how the brain receives, organizes and interprets information from all of the bodies senses– hearing, smelling, seeing, tasting, touching, as well as our vestibular and proprioceptive systems. It’s also important to remember that our senses both motivate and are stimulated by movement & activities.  The more sensory rich information we take in, the more curious we become and the more we form relationships with the world around us and ourselves!

Developing & Supporting Each Kiddos Sensory Profile

Just like a fingerprint or a smile, each of us, kiddos and adults, have a unique sensory profile; meaning we’ll all interpret and experience our surroundings and sensory input slightly differently.  In order to develop and learn more about our sensory profile and preferences, we need exposure to sensory rich experiences to figure out just what we love, dislike and aren’t sure about.  “Individual senses sharpen according to the type and amount of stimulation they are exposed to (A Moving Child is a Learning Child, Connell & McCarthy).”

Ways to Support Sensory Play & Exploration

• Follow your child’s lead… notice what they’re noticing and help them figure out what THEY enjoy, not what you think they should be enjoying. It’s ok to dip one toe in slowly or dive right in!
• Be a sensory role model! No matter the texture or sensation, you can be their enthusiastic “I’ll try it too” cheerleader for new sensory experiences, and yes, this may mean getting out of your own comfort zone too.
• Magnify the Moment! Describe what you’re seeing, feeling and experiencing using descriptive action based language– squishy, slimy, soft, bumpy!
• Embrace the mess! Mark making and mess making is an integral part of childhood and helps build strong connections between you, your child and their surroundings! It all washes out, we promise!

Additional Read: 3 Reasons why you should embrace Artistic Mess

• Seek out new sensory experiences together! “I wonder how that sand feels between our toes?!” “That puddle looks ready for us to jump in!”
• What if your child doesn’t immediately enjoy a new sensory experience? That’s ok, take it slow, offer comfort and try something else, then return to try that texture or experience again another time. Creating a variety filled sensory landscape will help your kiddo develop at their own pace and with their own tastes.