Salt Letters

Lil Lady loves letters. Last year I was teaching her how to draw the letters and decided that salt would be a great sensory activity to incorporate with our fun. I poured about an inch of salt in a pan and pulled out her preschool book with all the letters listed. Then I showed her how to write in the sand with her finger. She didn't like it. Not wanting to spoil the fun, I got a pencil out and showed her how to draw in the salt with the pencil. This worked much better! She did a few letters and then discovered that it was also fun to bury things in the salt and then dig them up.
 
She buried the pencil, eraser, and scoops that I later gave her. It was great fun for her. Boy was our kitchen covered in salt after this! It got everywhere! It's all good though, it was easy enough of a clean up, Lil Lady even helped. Win win!

Water Paint

Lil Lady prefers to stay clean. She is getting better about being a little dirty but she still stresses a little about it. Painting with water was a great activity for us! You can't get sticky or muddy or messy with water! It's also great on warm sunny days to do in the shade and cool down a bit.

We had a neighbor friend over to play for a few hours who has Down Syndrome and I decided that it'd be a great time to Water Paint. All you do is get a cup of water, any type of paint brush, and head outside. They each enjoyed painting pictures and then a few minutes later discovering that they had disappeared. At first, it stressed Lil Lady out that her art was gone but once I explained what happened she was okay with it. Our friend also had fun painting himself!

They had fun moving area to area on the back patio making new creations. 

And when the "paint" spills, no worries! It'll clean up quite nicely! The only problem we found with this activity was when our friend decided to throw his cup of water at Lil Lady-that didn't go over so well! :)

Couch Fort

What kid doesn't love a fort? I've noticed that many SPD kids love tight, dark, quiet spaces so one day we decided to make a fort with the couch. Yup, we are pretty technical with our fort building! ;) We made it quite simple and the kids loved it!

It was lots of fun for them to play in when daddy got home too, daddy and the kids all fit in it and had a great time giggling and cuddling. 

I love how sensory play doesn't take anything fancy to do, just use what you have laying around and find a new purpose for it! 

Bugs bugs bugs

Little Lady used to freak out about bugs. Literally freak out. Dragonflies were the worst. She would see or hear them and come unglued. It really made playing outside in the summer a bit rough. She'd become hysterical until we went inside.
 

Then one day, she discovered that not all bugs are terrifying. She found a Potato Bug on the patio and was intrigued watching it so I convinced her to hold it. She was very nervous but agreed. She discovered that this kind of bug was great fun to hold and play with!

She still doesn't like a lot of bugs but she loves lady bugs and potato bugs. I'm just glad she now shows interest in them instead of pure fear! She lets them crawl all over her arms and gets so sad if she can't find one when we are outside playing. 

Ribbon Wands

I try and find ways to get Little Lady moving. She would much rather sit and stay stationary so one of our challenges is finding fun things to get her excited to get up and move. I made a bunch of ribbon wands around the 4th of July last year to pretend that we were making our own fireworks show. I got popsicle sticks and hot glued various colors and lenghts of ribbon on them. 

Then I told the kids to start dancing around and wave their sticks in the air. 

They were so excited to see the ribbons fly and dance in the air. Lil Man had a bit of a harder time with the twirling but he still had lots of fun. 

Lil Lady wanted to see how many she could hold in each hand and loved watching them fly all around her.

Pardon all the blurry pictures! I couldn't get them to stand still long enough to get a non blurry picture. Goal accomplished of finding something fun to get her up and moving!

Lil Man trying to use his mind power to get the ribbons to dance!

Whistle Wand

Lil' Lady's wonderful aunt also gave the kids a whistle wand. It's a long plastic stick that has rivets like a straw and when you swirl it around fast it whistles. It took a little bit for her to figure out how to use it but once she got the hang of it, she loved it. It can whistle loud or soft depending on how fast you swirl it. They are also fun to use as swords to attack people with! She also loves to use it as a horn to shout things in, a walking stick, or countless other things! Another great find at the Dollar Store!

 

Butterfly Net

Little Lady's aunt gave her a butterfly net last year one night when we were at grandparents for dinner. Such a fun toy for lil Lady! She loved running all around the yard trying to catch butterflies, bugs, or people! You can find these nets at the Dollar Store. Since we got this first one, we've bought several more. I think we have 5 now. They really are great fun!

 

Bubble Gun

For Father's Day last year the kids got daddy a toy to play with him...A Bubble Gun! They all loved it. You just attach a bottle of bubbles to a gun and press the button. Walla! Lots and lots of big, fun bubbles! Bubbles are great for all kids (and parents!). We all had a great time chasing and popping them. What a fun and easy sensory play!
 

Sensory Play

I don't know how many of you have noticed the name of this blog Sensory Play Keeps Tantrums Away. I just wanted to give you a bit of background why I chose this name! A year and a half ago, my life was full of dealing with temper tantrums. Sun up to sun down I dealt with fits from my toddler. It was exhausting to say the least and emotionally/physically draining. Many days I would just cry with her out of frustration. It was our life and it was a roller coaster.

Looking back, I really don't know how either of us survived. Thank goodness for daddy coming home from work and school to give us both a break from each other! When we first met with the OT and he suggested sensory play I panicked a bit. How on earth would I convince my kid to play with things that stressed her out?? How would I find time amidst the tantrums to spend doing the sensory activities? How will I find sooo many ideas of things to do? You really want me to expose her to every sense every day in a play format? Are you kidding me? You get the idea.

Now that I have a year behind us of seeing results, I am amazed. I am shocked at the progress we've made together. I am baffled at how much she craves the sensory play now. I am constantly rejoicing over how many days we can go in a row without a temper tantrum. It is amazing. Do we still have some rough days here and there? Sure we do, we are human and we are still learning. I remember last year when we made it to day 5 without a fit and then we kept going and going. I think we made it to 20 or 21 days temper tantrum free. HUGE SUCCESS!!! I remember feeling a sense of relief each night as I looked back on the day and actually enjoyed the day and had fun with my kids instead of being stressed and exhausted. Yes, most of this success was from me learning who my daughter was and what she needed to succeed day to day. She didn't change anything herself, I changed our structure and routine and learned how to gear things towards her. It works. When you hear people say kids learn through play, they are right. We are proof of it. My daughters smile on her face is proof. The tearless days, the new found adventurer, the girl who will now eat food, the girl who enjoys life, the happy mommy, it's all proof. Don't believe me? Just try it. SPD kid or not, try it. It'll amaze you how much fun you and your child will have together learning and exploring things in a sensory world. Sensory play really does keep tantrums away!

Box Fun

Everyday objects are great fun. My husband always makes fun of me because I keep the most random things for play time. (I just kept an old Poppy Seed spice container-you should have seen his face!)

These pictures were from when we were packing up to move 2 years ago. I had a huge box in the kitchen and Lil Lady loved playing in it. It entertained her for days! She was not happy when I had to put stuff in it and tape it up!

Peek a boo!

 

Where did she go?

There she is!

Beware, daddy's like being in on the fun too!

Roar, daddy scared her!

Looking Back

I was looking through my pictures to find more old pics of sensory play we've done and I found some great pics of how our journey started with sensory play...with temper tantrums! Good thing I can look back and laugh now, but I still get teary eyed thinking back to those days.
So before you see her screaming videos pictures, here's one of her showing off how smart she is. I've found that a lot of sensory kids are exceptionally smart academically. Lil Lady is no exception. She knew her entire alphabet by sight and could sign all of the letters before she turned two. This was her at 22 or 23 months old. My favorite part is how she called H's HaHa because she couldn't pronounce H yet. Sorry, the videos are loading, I'll try again later!

This is the video that helped us start to make some progress with her fits. This is the first screaming video I took and then I sat down to watch it while she kept screaming until she got curious what I was doing and calmed down and sat next to me. We watched it several times and talked about why she was so upset.

This one you may not want to watch! Beware, she throws up at the end. Throw up was a common occurrence at our house because she would hyperventilate so badly and then barf. It was lovely.

I don't remember what triggered this one but I think it was because her pants got dirty. Good thing I love this girl!

 

Splash Pad

Summertime makes sensory play so much easier! There are so many more options when you can go outside! While on our vacation we found a fun splash pad that had a lot of variety. It didn't only have splashing water! Lil Lady doesn't like to be splashed so I was thrilled!

It had a fun river that at the deepest was maybe 8" deep. It had rocks in the river and along the river to climb on and explore.

It had a fun rock waterfall that you could climb on and splash in. At the top were a couple fish that squirted water out.

Some kids thought it was fun to lay in the stream and swim. Others got a group of kids together and squished together as closely as they could lay in the water and made a dam to flood the river.

Of course she found some flowers to smell and play with. She also had fun watching them go down the stream and then would go find new flowers.

Lil Man loved all the rocks to play on

 

 

They had a fun staircase with a waterfall. The first time Lil Lady walked down the dry steps but then got brave and enjoyed the wet ones.

 

At the bottom of the park there was what Lil Lady called Water Glass. "Look mom! It's water that feels like glass!!"

This is how Lil Man decided to walk up the waterfall steps! Such a creative boy! And of course his pants were falling off almost the whole time we were there.