Many blogs posts on sensory play involve wonderfully creative activities designed to feed imagination and imitate real world experiences. This is great, but I believe just involving your child in every day activities is often a better experience for them.
My son is now 8 months old, crawling, starting to cruise and into everything. I have three coping strategies as a parent. Reserved for when I'm fed up of pulling my son away from electrical points and sharp edges.
The first is back caring in my mai tai.
The second is water play.
The third is baking.
I strap him in the highchair and let him explore a bit of all the ingredients. Each and everyone gets inspected by my little assistant.
I tip flour, raisins and sugar on the table. He gets passed spoons and pots whilst I make the biscuit dough. He bashes, traces, tastes, chomps and flings. The mess is beautiful. Because he is learning and loving the experience.
When we have guests (other babies) its such a great, go to activity. We plonk them on our large kitchen table to 'help' us roll out and cut the cookies.
I love watching how much they love this play activity. I also love that it results in yummy mummy fuel (biscuits).
Adding food colouring drop by drop and watching the colour change, rolling and shaping. Banging the rolling pin. Using tin cans and cutters to shape cookies.
This has to be the ultimate sensory play?