This week we have a guest post from Porch over at porch.com. Porch.com is a Seattle-based home services platform that helps homeowners and renters everywhere make the home simple. They make the move easy, help complete one-off projects, and take on common home maintenance tasks. Enjoy!

Our homes are full of a variety of sensory items and DIY Toys that can be used during sensory playtime with your child. These are just a few of the many activities to get started with sensory play:

Pasta Pictures

Pasta is available in all varieties of shapes and sizes. All you want are a few one-of-a-kind pasta shapes consisting of macaroni, cavatappi, rotini, and a few construction papers and non-toxic paste. Encourage your kid to stick the pasta to create images like a circle, a square, or maybe more complicated ones you hint for them, like a star or a heart.

Pasta Pictures

Pasta is available in all varieties of shapes and sizes. All you want are a few one-of-a-kind pasta shapes consisting of macaroni, cavatappi, rotini, and a few construction papers and non-toxic paste. Encourage your kid to stick the pasta to create images like a circle, a square, or maybe more complicated ones you hint for them, like a star or a heart.

Salt Dough Ornaments

No Play-Doh? No problem. Using a mixture of flour, water, and salt, you could whip up a batch of salt dough to create amusing seasonal decorations. Children will have fun by squishing the dough, rolling it, and forming it into shapes using their fingers or cookie cutters. Once you’ve baked the decorations so they hardened, you and your youngsters can paint them with small pom poms, ribbon, or different odds and ends.

Sensory Bin

Create a sensory bin with different items and leave it out for daily stimulation. Provide plastic measuring cups and other tools for children to touch and explore on their own. You can swap in new items to keep them interesting. Here are some examples:

• Dry beans
• Edible sand
• Little toys
• Rice
• Cotton balls
• Shredded pieces of paper

Tea Party

Unless you’re having high tea with the queen, you don’t need a formal tea service to have a tea party. Plastic cups, some water, and a plate filled with cookies or apple slices will do just fine. The key is to let your child do the hosting. That means it’s their job to fill and refill your glass with ‘tea.’ It’s their job to serve your cookie.

Pots and Pans Band

Pots and pans, of course, make great drums. But there are many items around your house that children can use to make sounds. You can hand them a couple of spoons and allow them to make ‘music’ on the kitchen floor using items like pots, plastic colanders, boxes, and more.

It is really important to always be careful when allowing your little ones to play with small objects, around water or when using the many different household items they can to engage in sensory play.

Engage your children in sensory play by utilizing some of these ideas we’ve shared and prepare to enjoy the great time you will have as you bond with your children through these different activities.