Tag Archives: sensory diet

Keep Calm and Messy Play On!

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Ever wonder why most of us have a baby photo with food all over our hands and faces? An important part of processing our world is through touch, even from a young age. Our sense of touch gives us information about our environment and the characteristics of our surroundings. We are able to determine if something is hot, cold, sticky, dry, soft, smooth, and so on! Messy play is a vital part of child development as our touch processing feeds into our skills such as motor planning, body awareness, visual-motor skills, fine motor skills, and more. At the moment with our schools and businesses closed many of us may be stuck indoors as we quarantine at home. While our current focus might be keeping our hands and homes clean, we can find ways to continue promoting our tactile sensory processing and get messy safely!

Our sensory processing abilities determine how we respond to tactile input. Your child may demonstrate sensitivity or avoidance to tactile input, such as withdrawing their hands when they get messy or splaying their fingers outward when they engage with wet textures. Maybe your child craves tactile input and you have a hard time keeping their hands clean or to themselves. Either way, incorporating messy play or multi-sensory experiences into their day can help them learn to process and respond to tactile input in order to better participate in grooming, meal time, bath time, and other daily routines!

Sensory Materials from Home:

You can always try to repurpose materials that you already have in your home to promote messy play. Try filling up a plastic bin at home with any of the following. You can switch out the material weekly to continue providing a range of tactile sensory experiences.

  • Cotton balls or pom poms
  • Feathers
  • Dried foods: pasta, rice, beans, oats, corn, seeds, coffee beans
  • Wet media: shaving cream, frosting, whipped cream
  • Slime, Gak, Flarp
  • Kinetic sand
  • Beach sand
  • Potting soil
  • Beads
  • Small rocks
  • Shredded paper
  • Water with ice cubes
  • Packing peanuts

Messy Play Activities at Home:

  • Have your child help you cook or bake
    • Roll dough, wash vegetables, mix batter
  • Art
    • Finger paint! Paint your child’s hand and make hand prints on paper
    • If your child has a hard time using their fingers use cotton balls, Q-tip, or a paint brush
    • Use halved apples, peppers, or celery to make vegetable stamps with paint
  • Homemade PlayDoh
    • Add essential oils for a multi-sensory experience
  • Hide puzzles or activities inside of a sensory bin
  • Make a mess with shaving cream in the tub during bath time
  • Practice letter formation in wet messy play such as whipped cream
  • Have your child help you garden by planting seeds or flowers in soil
  • Have your child wash their toys in soapy water
  • Hide beads inside of Theraputty or PlayDoh
  • Play barefoot in grass or sand
  • Blow bubbles and encourage your child to pop them with their fingers or toes
  • Make spaghetti or pasta and color with food coloring for edible messy play
  • Make clough dough or moon sand at home
  • Make homemade gak or slime
  • Go on a nature hunt and collect leaves, sticks, rocks for a nature sensory bin

Make messy play part of your child’s daily routine by adding it to their sensory diet activities or designating a day for messy food play at meal time. Increasing your child’s experience with messy play will help them learn how to process and respond to tactile input and tolerate a variety of textures and materials. It can also be a motivating way to engage children when you are stuck indoors.

Questions or concerns?

If you have questions or concerns about your child’s responses to tactile or sensory input, please contact us at info@playworkschicago.com or 773-332-9439.

Robyn Geist, MS, OTR/L
Occupational Therapist

Photo Credit: JBryson via istockphoto.com

Feeding our Senses: What is a Sensory Diet?

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Does your child love to run, swing, and jump? Engage in messy play with finger paint and shaving cream or seek out hugs and cuddles? Or perhaps they prefer to watch other children navigate the rock wall at the playground or quickly wipe their hands clean when dirty? Our sensory systems are responsible for how we take in sensory stimuli from our environment, process and interpret the information internally, and produce appropriate responses. We rely on proper functioning of eight senses (yes, eight!) to maintain a regulated state, in which we are better able to understand, interact with, and grow within our environments.

What are the eight sensory systems?

  1. Sight: helps us process what we see
  2. Hearing: helps us detect and process sounds, beats, and frequencies
  3. Smell: helps us detect and process scents and odors
  4. Taste: helps us process and distinguish between different tastes
  5. Touch: helps us process and understand how things feel on our skin, such as soft or hard, hot or cold
  6. Vestibular: provides us with a sense of balance, movement, and an awareness of orientation in space
  7. Proprioception: provides information about position and movements of our muscles and joints, including pushing, pulling, and deep pressure sensations
  8. Interoception: provides an internal sense of how our organs feel, such as hungry or thirsty, our sense of temperature, our feelings of pain, and when we need to use the bathroom

What happens if our sensory systems do not process stimuli correctly or efficiently?

When our brains are unable to make sense of the information our bodies receive, we often respond to the environment in inappropriate or unexpected ways. While the reactions formed in this disorganized state, often referred to as deregulation, present differently for every child and depend on both the type and number of sensory systems affected, responses often aim to find more of (seek) or stay away from (avoid) input. Examples include but are not limited to:

  • Sight: excessively looking at moving, spinning, or shiny objects; appearing bothered by bright lights
  • Hearing: appearing to ignore people when spoken to; becoming distracted in noisy settings; covering ears in response to loud noises
  • Smell: showing heightened sensitivity or aversion to scents and odors; may impact feeding routines
  • Taste/oral: preferring a limited variety of foods; difficulty trying new foods; excessive drooling
  • Touch: difficulty tolerating having nails trimmed or wearing certain clothing textures; refusing to touch or play with various textures, such as grass, sand, finger paint, or Play-Doh; wiping hands clean immediately after getting dirty
  • Vestibular: appearing to excessively enjoy or look for movement opportunities (running, jumping, rocking, etc.); seeming clumsy; appearing fearful of ordinary movement, such as when both feet are off the ground (e.g. swinging)
  • Proprioception: biting or chewing on non-food items; excessive bumping into, pushing, or hitting peers or objects in the environment
  • Interoception: not feeling full after eating; missing the urge to use the bathroom at the appropriate time

These sensory responses may lead to overarching difficulties with a child’s ability to attend to academic activities in the classroom, maintain balance and coordination, plan and sequence novel tasks, build social relationships, perform self-care activities, such as dressing and feeding tasks, and participate in family routines and schedules.

Sensory diet: what is it and how can it help?

A sensory diet is a carefully designed series of sensory-based activities in which a child is encouraged to participate to increase regulation and attention throughout the day. Much like we eat healthy foods to give our bodies the nutrients they need, sensory diets are made to meet the specific sensory needs of each child. While sensory diets typically incorporate touch, movement, and proprioceptive input, strategies targeting any sensory system can be included to promote optimal regulation. Sensory diets are often organized into schedules based on a child’s daily routines, activities, and family plans to maximize participation and success and can be easily modified as the child’s needs change over time. See below for an example of a sensory diet:

If implemented correctly, sensory diets provide consistent access to specific amounts of sensory input needed throughout the day and result in more appropriate responses to environmental stimuli over time. When successful, children are better able to participate in meaningful activities and daily routines, develop important foundational skills, and more effectively understand and engage in the world around them.

Questions or concerns?

If you have questions or concerns about whether your child may benefit from a sensory diet, please contact us at info@playworkschicago.com or 773-332-9439.

Caitlin Chociej, MS, OTR/L
Occupational Therapist

References:

Bodison, S., Watling, R., Kuhaneck, H.M., & Henry, D. (2008). Frequently Asked Questions About Ayres Sensory Integration. American Occupational Therapy Association. Retrieved April 14, 2019 from http://www.aota.org/Consumers/WhatisOT/FactSheets.aspx.

Smith Roley, S., Mailloux, Z., Miller-Kuhaneck, H. & Glennon, T. (2007). Understanding Ayres’ Sensory Integration. OT Practice 12(7).

STAR Institute for Sensory Processing Disorder. (2018). Your 8 Senses. Retrieved April 14, 2019, from https://www.spdstar.org/basic/your-8-senses.

Photo Credit: Sharon McCutcheon via Pexels