None of us are strangers to the five human senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. However, many often underestimate the importance of these five senses when it comes to a child’s holistic development, especially their role as the main means through which children can make sense of the world around them.
Learning through sensory exploration comes naturally to babies and children, through touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, hearing, and moving. The lattermost consists of balance and body awareness — both commonly missed out when we talk about our senses — and plays an equally important role in a child’s sensory exploration of the world.
The concept of sensory play surrounds activities that engage a child’s senses, and includes the likes of riding a bicycle, playing with slime, creating shapes with kinetic sand, or simply listening to music or fiddling with musical instruments.
Sensory play is crucial to a child’s development from birth to early childhood and facilitates the building of nerve connections in the brain’s pathways which can help children tackle and complete more complex tasks. It is thus important for parents and preschools alike to incorporate sensory play into their children’s daily lives and preschool activities.
The Early Learning and Development Benefits of Sensory Play for Children
While seemingly frivolous, sensory play holds many learning benefits for preschool children:
Brain Development
Sensory play strengthens nerve connections in the pathways of the brain, thereby enhancing a child’s memory skills while building a foundation for children to process and take on more complicated learning tasks in the future.
Language Development
Sensory play also encourages language development in children as they attempt to verbally communicate what they are experiencing, their ideas, their wishes, and opinions. The strong oral language skills learnt in this manner also acts as a cornerstone for communication and expression.
Scientific Thinking
Due to the inherent processes of inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching, and investigating that come with sensory play, it also stimulates a child’s scientific thinking skills as they utilise their senses to continually discover new aspects of their environments.
Problem-Solving and Creativity
Lastly, sensory play also enhances a child’s problem-solving skills and creativity. Partaking in sensory play inspires children to explore how to play and engage with different experiences and how to manoeuvre around or overcome challenges they come across.
MindChamps’ Experiential Approach to Sensory Play
At MindChamps PreSchool, we recognise the importance of sensory play for preschool children, and have thus taken an experiential approach into intentionally incorporating its elements into our preschool learning curriculum. Each and every of our MindChamps PreSchool teachers is trained to proactively engage a child’s senses through specially curated preschool lessons, activities, and games, such that our children enjoy a holistic learning experience.
We also further leverage on the benefits of sensory play for children through our unique Enquiry Teaching and Learning™ approach, thereby fostering our preschool children’s curiosity about the topics discussed in our early childhood education programmes. The best part? All of the aforementioned are wrapped up nicely with other evidence-based pedagogical practices through our S.M.I.L.E.S.™ methodology.
Advantages of MindChamps’ S.M.I.L.E.S.™ Methodology
MindChamps PreSchool’s S.M.I.L.E.S.™ methodology is one of engagement, security, nurturing, and exploration, designed to prepare the brain for quintessential growth and future development of the three minds needed for success. Encapsulating sensory, motor (music and movement), intellectual, emotional, and social elements for optimal early childhood education, our preschool programme at MindChamps stands as a reliable source of age-appropriate stimulation for preschool children in Singapore.
Through MindChamps’ S.M.I.L.E.S.™ methodology, preschool children can benefit from a holistic approach to learning that not only builds resilience and increases optimism whenever they are faced with challenges, but also inspires them to constantly strive for new, unique, and exceptional experiences
Find out more about admissions for our preschool programme at MindChamps, or look for a MindChamps PreSchool near you today and book a visit with us to experience our learning centres and facilities first-hand.