There’s a reason you’ve been hearing “messy play” and “sensory play” talked about more and more. It’s play based learning that packs a punch.

Along with the colorful fun, the activities throughout the session are created with purpose to promote a child’s growth and development in big, meaningful, lifelong ways. It looks like mess making, but inside a child’s brain during play is like a fireworks show of activity.

A session of classes helps your child:

1. Strengthen cognitive skills including reasoning, problem solving, decision making and executive function.

2. Be introduced to early STEM including spatial awareness, volume, cause and effect, sorting and multi‑step processes.

3. Use scientific processes to learn about new things (an ability they are born with that we can strengthen with practice.) Explore simple concepts like open/shut, over/under, float/sink.

4. Build gross and fine motor skills, tracking, balance, dexterity, pincer grips and pre‑writing skills.

5. Practice emotional regulation by creating a “sense-library” to help identify feelings within their body.

6. Use creative play parts to encourage language acquisition including colors, numbers, animals, textures, temperature, and themes.

7. Work on extending attention spans with multiple exciting ways to explore each activity. (hard to choose just one!)

8. Helps boost confidence and resilience as kids learn to trust their own abilities to solve problems.

9. Build up their sensory tolerance which promotes better eating and mealtimes.

10. Brain boost: Play activates multiple parts of the brain and sparks new neural connections they need for more complex tasks.

Mini-Scientist.

Your baby was born a scientist! From birth they innately know how to learn -it’s a crucial skill needed for survival!

Babies learn using the same scientific process as real scientists by observing, hypothesising, testing, concluding and applying.

With enough practice in the first few years, this ability can become a hardwired pathway in the brain. This means a brain that can take in and process information easier and faster.

This is a brain primed for learning before they even enter a classroom.

Sensory play is a great way to practice because it is attention grabbing and attention keeping, inspires curiosity, is open ended and child led.

‍ ‍*Articles cited are on the Benefits page.

It’s not just what a child is doing during sensory play, but how the brain naturally reacts to it.

Two important ways sensory play boosts brain development:

During the first few years, your baby’s brain is amazing! It’s a supercomputer creating connections they’ll use to do all things big and small. During this time, the brain can make more connections and make them faster, than at any other time in their lives.

Sensory play is so powerful because of how and how much, it activates the brain. Since during this time a child experiences the world primarily through their senses, the “spark” that makes a new connection is a new and unique sensory experience. Sensory play is like a supercharged dose of these providing a boost to the process. Research shows that during sensory play a child’s brain is lighting up like a fireworks show!

Not just any connections too, but sensory play creates connections between multiple important areas in the brain, ones responsible for language, memory, emotions and movement. When areas “light up” together it’s a chance to connect and form neural pathways between them. These connections are needed to move onto more complex tasks. While other types of play are activating, sensory play is lighting up more and keeping them active longer!

*Information is cited on the Benefits page.