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What is visual stimulation? And what makes it so important in early years? 

Children make connections and learn a lot about the world through their eyes and they will rely on their visual skills to recognise familiar people, make discoveries about their environment, and keep themselves safe.[1]  

From the day your baby is born, they begin to learn about the world around them through their senses. Sensory play provides an essential foundation for children’s overall development. It is very important that children have the opportunity to explore their environments by using all their senses, as this helps to contribute to healthy brain development through the growth of neurological connections. These are the building blocks of the brain. Our app has lots of ideas to help you support your child’s sensory development from birth. In this article, we explain more about why sensory development is important and you’ll find ideas to get you started with supporting your child’s sensory development.  

Going outside with your baby or child gives them the chance to explore the world in a different way, they can move more, notice changes in weather and see, hear and touch things that they won’t find inside. Playing on a hill provides a particular challenge and a unique set of experiences, in this blog we will focus on the opportunities presented for supporting sensory development.

I thought it might be helpful to start this investigation into the importance of nursery rhymes by answering the question ‘What is a nursery rhyme?’   

In this article, we are going to focus on sensory stimuli and tantrums, how thinking about sensory stimulation might help you to support your child during a tantrum and what you might do if your child seems particularly sensitive to sensory stimulus. 

Touch

For many of us what we want after, or before, a hard day is a hug. Touch helps us to build relationships and to regulate our emotions. Your newborn baby has been aware of touch since around the 8th week of your pregnancy and will have felt their hands touching their face and mouth before they were born. Touch is one of the first ways in which your child learns about themselves and about the world. They use their mouth and then, as their physical skills develop, their hands, feet and body to explore and learn. In this blog, we are going to look at the role of touch in helping your newborn baby regulate their emotions and learn about the world. 

Why tactile sensory activities are important

‘Sensory play’ is something that a lot of children enjoy engaging in from a young age. Most people forget, however, that it makes for great learning opportunities for children of all age ranges.