Great messy play ideas for children with special needs and sensory processing disorder.
Out and About Bingo
Have a chat with your little one about the things they might see whilst out walking or playing games painted on the playground.
Then, create a simple grid with squares and draw the things onto each square.
It can be as easy or as hard as you like.
Now, see if you can get ‘Bingo’ by spotting all the objects!
Paper Towel Roll and Pom-Pom Challenge
This clever idea is a great way to help your little one become one of the engineers or mathematicians of the future.
It’s also great for fine motor skills, balance and coordination. Who knew a tube could do all that?
First, you need some cardboard tubes, cut into smaller pieces of varying sizes.
Then, stick them onto a tray or box lid with space enough to roll a small round thing around in.
The aim is to roll the round thing through the tubes. You can play slot games at kingcasino.com if you’re looking for entertainment that can help you relieve stress and to relax.
If you want to make the game more challenging for older children, try numbering the tubes and rolling the ball through them in numerical order.
Let’s roll! you can also find great games ideas from Tik Tok videos where you can also share your own ideas and with Social Boosting you can boost the views of this videos to provide a larger audience and get more engagement in your next videos.
(With thanks to Raising Dragons for the idea)
indoor bowlingIndoor Bowling
Time for some indoor bowling fun.
To create your own skittles all you need are cardboard tubes, scissors, some glue, paint, pens, shiny bits and bobs, scraps of paper or whatever you have to hand.
No glue? Not a problem, just mix up a little flour and water to make a paste. It works a treat! Finally, a rolled-up sock makes a great little ball, or you may already have one of your own to use.
Encourage your little one to decorate the tubes, then once dry, line them up and roll your ball. Try and knock down as many as you can and whoever knocks down the most, wins.
Why not number each of the skittles, then as your little one rolls the ball and knocks one over, name the number on it? This will help your little one to begin to recognise number names and their written form.
Edible farm sensory tray!
this is another one of our farm theme play trays, this one was made before the larger tuff spot tray witch was inspired by famed teds. This one was inspiderd by edible themed sensory play ideas.
We know a lot of our small world and sensory play ideas involve a lot of smaller parts. These style
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Glowing water beads sensory box!
This is another one of our sensory boxes. This is water beads that glow bright green under uv light.
Lets get started on how we made this sensory box.
first you will need a box our boxes our from pound streacher these are 3 for £10 and come with handy lids.
next you will need some clear water
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Easter sensory box!
This is another one of our easter sensory boxes. This is a pretty old one from a few years ago.
Starting with the box. This is a underbed storage box from pound streacher. These are 3 for £10 and come with handy lids.
next we move on to what we have used for our sensory base.
This is
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Farm sensory box!
This is another one of our older sensory boxes. This is a very simple farm theme sensory box.
So let's get started on how we made this simple farm sensory box.
Qe started with the box. This is a under bed storage box from pound streacher. These are 2 for £10 and come with a handy lid.
Next
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Sea theme sensory box!
UThis is another one of our first sensory boxes. This one was done In a sea/ocean theme.
Lets get started on how we made this sensory box!
We started with the underbed storage box witch is 3 for £10 in pound streacher.
Next we added some blue coloured rice. How to colour rice in tutorials.
I added a pack
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Bug sensory box!
This is one of our very first sensory boxes! This was big hit with all the little bugs and added details.
This sensory box was very small and very simple. So let's get started on how I made this sensory box
I started out with the smaller storage box these are 2 for £5 in pound streacher.
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Ocean theme water bead sensory box!
This is our ocean them water bead box! It looks so pretty.
The base of this sensory box is water beads. You can find a tutoral about water beads and how to grow them here on our website.
http://specialneedsandsensoryplayideas.com/blog-post/how-to-grow-water-beads/
The box we used here is one from pound streacher under bed storage boxes are 3 for £10. This
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Rainbow tuff spot tray!
This is our rainbow/spring theme tuff spot tray. This one was very easy to make but did take quite a while to add all the details to the tray.
So let's get started one how we made this one.
This one was easy but time consuming. I started by cleaning the tray of any dirt or dust.
Then
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Number finding tuff spot tray!
This tray was set up to keep Edwin busy for a while over the half term.
its pretty basic numbers hidden inside two plastic storage boxes. The objective was to find the hidden plastic numbers and place them on the numbers on the tuff tray.
Starting with numbers on the tray. I used facepaint to paint on
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Uv glow rice sensory box!
This is our glowing rice. This rice glows brightly under uv light.
I acutcally made this rice myself. At the time I did not know if it would work or not. What I used to make the rice glow is the ink from inside a high lighter pen.
All I did was cut open the pen and
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Easter sensory box!
This is one of our estates sensory boxes. This one is a older one. Very simple but a lot of fun.
The base of this box is green coloured rice. The rice was coloured with food colouring. How to colour rice for sensory play in tutorials.
What's we used and where to find them.
we added transparent chickens
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Coloured pasta tuff tray!
This is a very simple but effect sensory tray to make. It's also a good one for children still in the mouthing stage as you can buy any pasta in different shapes and sizes. Just pick a size that's more mouth friendly.
So few people have messaged me asking me to do a write up on
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Snow play tray!
I only have the one photo of this tray as it's a very old one so I will just do the write up and add some details on what we used and how we used it.
To start with the base of this tray is edible. It is made out of cut up rice paper witch
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Castle tuff spot tray!
This is our castle sensory tray. This one was made a few months ago using bits and bobs we picked up from around the toy room.edwin really loved playing with this one.
Somwe started off by using green split peas as the grassy base again.
Once we had the grassy parts done we started in the moat.
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Farmer teds tuff spot tray!
Edwin had a school trip to farmer teds and loved it. Once he returned home he begged me to make him a sensory tray with a farm theme. This tray was what we come up with together.
So for anyone who dose not know farmer teds. Farmer teds is a children's farm with indoor and our
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The good dinosaur tuff tray
This older sensory tray we made last year but never uploaded it. Edwin insisted we watched the movie six times with a note pad and pencil to take notes. Once we had all the details we got started on the tuff tray.
this photo is the finished tray and below we will have some details on
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Winter wonderland sensory tray
Warning due to small parts this tray is not recommended to children who are still at a mouthing stage.
Today we have made a new sensory tray, we decided on a winter wonderland theme sensory tray. It's got a very simple but effective layout. It took a while to complete as it has a lot of
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Autumn/fall sensory tray
Today I have put together our autumn/fall themed sensory tray. This tray is very simple but I will go though what I have used and what I have used it for. I will also add some links to make it easier to find the same items I've used here.
I started with a large clear sensory play
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Under the sea sensory tray
Under the sea tuff spot sensory tray.
Today's sensory tray has a under the sea theme, which I thought would be pretty easy and quick to put together before Edwin arrived home from school later that day.
I was wrong, I had a good few problems the first one being the plastic table cloth sheet I brought
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Fairy garden messy play tray
A quick and simple tutorial on how to make a fairy garden sensory tray.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Buy some pvc green leather for the lower base, you can get it from here:
Step 3: Make some green coloured rice for the bottom layer, tutorial
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Insect garden messy play sensory tray
A quick and simple tutorial on how to set up an insect garden messy play sensory tray.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Make some green coloured rice for the bottom layer, tutorial here.
Step 3: Shred some green tissue paper up, or buy some pre shredded paper
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Easter messy play sensory tray
A quick and easy guide to make an Easter messy play sensory tray.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Buy 2-3KG of green split peas, they can be found here:
Step 3: Find
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Bee hive messy play sensory tray
A quick and easy guide to make a bee hive messy play sensory tray.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Buy 2-3KG of green split peas, they can be found here:
Step
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How to make a puzzle messy play sensory tray
A quick and easy guide to make a puzzle messy play sensory tray.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Find some old puzzles you don't need any more and put loads of
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How to make a rainbow rice messy play sensory tray
A quick and easy guide to make a rainbow rice messy play sensory tray.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Make 5 different colours of rice using this tutorial here.
Step 3: The helping hands
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How to make a dinosaur messy play sensory tray
A quick and easy tutorial on how to set up a dinosaur messy play sensory tray.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Buy some dinosaur toys, ant from the pound shop or
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How to make a space themed messy play sensory tray
A quick and easy guide to make a space themed messy play sensory tray.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First buy a garden tray, 60x60cm should be big enough, we got ours from Amazon:
Step 2: Next we bought 5kg of black turtle beans:
Step 3: Next have a look around
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How to make a sensory sandpit
A quick and easy way to make a sensory sandpit.
Click on the pictures or the blue links to be taken to the seller's website.
Step 1: First we bought a large sand & water play table from Early Years Resources:
Step 2: We then bought 4 bags of blue sand from the ELC:
Step 3: We then bought play
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