Each month, we create a new sensory experience for your family and provide additional ideas to extend the play. These ideas also are not meant to be gone through all in one sitting, but to follow the lead of your child. Some ideas may resonate more with your child than others. That’s okay. In fact that’s great! Go with it. Enjoy playing and learning together.
When it comes to play, I am a huge advocate for encouraging our children to take the lead. I strongly believe Broccoli Boxes sensory kits (and any sensory play) are best used when the child takes the lead, going wherever their imagination takes them. However, I also completely understand that there are times when it can be fun to help guide the play in a new direction or you may need to help your child get started. This is not an exhaustive list and isn’t meant to be printed and checked off as you go (but it certainly can if that works for you).
Literacy
- Read Digger, Dozer, Dumper together.
- Try to match the trucks in your kit to the trucks in the book.
- Read a poem in Digger, Dozer, Dumper and listen for the rhyme. If your child is able, have them help you find words that rhyme.
- Encourage your child to use the building sticks to write letters in the sensory dough.
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics)
- Add different items to the dough cups and shake. Notice how the sound changes. Add more or less and notice the change in sound.
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Build a tower with the blocks, building sticks, wood circles, and rocks.
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Afterwards, ask your child if they can think of a way to build it taller or sturdier?
- Smell the sensory doughs. Ask your child to describe the scent.
- Count the blocks, building sticks, trucks, and wood circles.
- Lay the sticks on the sensory dough to make a “road” and encourage your child to drive the truck on the road. Look at the tracks that are left behind from the trucks.
- Make another road on a different color of dough, drive a different truck on the road, and compare the tracks to the first set. What’s different? What’s similar?
- Make tracks with the different trucks and compare the types of tracks.
Motor Skills
- Pretend to be the different trucks and act out how the trucks move.
- Squish, pinch, roll and pound the dough
