It's just around that time of year again! Halloween is a fun time to learn new and fun sensory activities that involve ghosts, pumpkins, and spooky sensory bins. These sensory activities promote a great way to help children strengthen fine motor skills, promote creativity, give exposure, encourage playtime, and help complete a goal.

All of these fun activities are a great way to celebrate Halloween this year. I love that these fun Halloween sensory activities can be done with one child or in a group activity.

Here are some fun Halloween sensory activities to complete a goal with your child.

Ghost Sensory Activities

A fun way to get into the spirit of Halloween and enhance fine motor skills are ghost activities! These activities are perfect to try at home, school, or at a clinic. One fun idea that you can use with your child is playing with shaving cream. Playing with shaving cream has many benefits when looking for a fun sensory activity.

Ghost Foam

Ghost foam is a fun way for kids to make and play with. Playing with shaving cream can improve handwriting skills, visual motor skills, and play skills. It is also a great activity to work with children who are tactile. Be careful though shaving cream can be quite messy, I suggest keeping a towel nearby to clean up the mess!

Here is a fun recipe from Growing a Jeweled Rose to make a spooky ghost!

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Ice Ghost

This fun spooky ghost activity involves using the sink and bathroom! It is a great way to incorporate everyday activities into something exciting. Turning ghosts into ice can also be a fun way to involve sensory play while being at home. Following the steps in making the spooky ghosts, it can be an easy way to teach your child how to follow steps in their daily routines.

Learning how to follow these steps can help enhance creativity and teach your child how to use their imaginations. Waiting for the spooky ghost to cool down, you and your child can create an imaginative world using fingerpaint that can help improve fine motor skills! After playing with your spooky ice ghost and creating your enchanted imaginative world, your child can learn how to clean up their mess.

Here is another fun recipe from Finding the Golden Gleam to

Pumpkin Sensory Activities

Pumpkins are a big part of Halloween which can lead to many fun activities all season long. It is the perfect theme to use all fall from Halloween to Thanksgiving. You can work on carving pumpkins, playing with pumpkin seeds, using pumpkins as a themed sensory pin, or even finger painting a pumpkin.

All of these fun activities can be worked on at home, school, and occupational therapy sessions. If you try this at home, it will be a fun family activity that will create so many amazing memories and at the same time help strengthen your child’s sensory skills. These pumpkin sensory activities can be an outstanding way to work on strengthening therapeutic skills!

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A great way of strengthening therapeutic skills is carving a pumpkin! Carving pumpkins combine using your fine motor, gross motor, and sensory skills. After you carve your pumpkin, taking out the pumpkin seeds is a perfect example of sensory play.

You can even color the seeds of the pumpkin for creativity. Working on carving the pumpkin can help strengthen your child’s hand muscles and fine motor skills. Be careful with using sharp objects around children. This activity can be done in the comfort of your own home!

Here is a recipe to dye pumpkin seeds for sensory play!

Pumpkin Squish Bag

Making your own pumpkin squish bag is the best way to celebrate Halloween this year! It is the perfect activity to strengthen up your child’s hand muscles. After carving your pumpkin, you can use the pumpkin’s insides as the best way to create a mess-free squish bag! Putting the pumpkin’s insides in a zip lock bag can help create the spooky concoction.

Drawing a scary face on the squish bag is an exciting way to celebrate Halloween in this fun activity. The pumpkin squish bag is a wonderful fine motor skills activity.

Your child can learn how to manipulate the pumpkin seeds while they are in the bag. Pushing the pumpkin seeds around can also incorporate using both visual and fine motor skills. This is the perfect sensory activity to get your child involved in celebrating Halloween and perfecting their hand-eye coordination!

Here is a link to a great explanation of how to make your squish bag from Little Bins for Little Hands!

Spooky Sensory Bins

Sensory bins are a beneficial way for children to learn how to play and use their senses! Playing with the toys in the bin can help calm down your child, make your child focus, and initiate interactions.

Some of the sensory bins can be decorated to match the seasons. It is also easy to make sensory bins, they can be made with any type of tray, bin, or box making it super affordable. Putting the seasons with the sensory bins is a great way to create Halloween sensory bins.

This page has great resources to make Halloween themed sensory bins for an effective therapy session.

Witches Brew Sensory Bin

This spooky sensory bin is a great way to incorporate sensory play and Halloween! You can add any type of object or item that you want when it comes to making a spooky sensory bin.

Sensory bins are a great way for a child to explore sensory play and feel many different textures. In the Witches Brew Sensory Bin, adding several spooky-themed objects can be really exciting. Adding different tools to the sensory bin is also a great way to incorporate fine motor skills.

Placing several objects in the bin can help the child identify them and point them out. This is a perfect exercise to work on visual-motor skills. Playing in this sensory bin can be a perfect way to concocted spooky Halloween spells!

Here is the website where I find the perfect recipe to make this spooky sensory bin!

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Halloween Cloud Dough

Making Halloween Cloud Dough can be quite messy! Cloud dough is super soft and easy to mold which is perfect for children.

To incorporate the Halloween theme, the cloud dough can be colored into any color, but for Halloween, the perfect colors would be black, white, and orange. I found the perfect recipe on how to make Halloween Cloud Dough here at Simple for Kids - https://www.simplefunforkids.com/how-to-make-cloud-dough.html/.

If you want to read more on Halloween Cloud Dough, Simple for Kids has the perfect article for more information.

Playing with the cloud dough is the perfect opportunity for children to learn more about sensory play. There are so many benefits when playing with cloud dough:

If you want more information on the benefits of cloud dough, here is the website that I found for more information.

Children who have special needs, such as those with autism, have difficulty communicating, interacting, and comprehending in ways that are easy for the rest of us. These challenges facing them result in their inability to focus on something or pay attention easily. A safe and effective solution involves introducing them to a sensory room. This is a sort of sensory gym used in occupational therapy, helping special needs children engage cognitively and physically.

The pandemic, with all its lockdown restrictions, has made life more challenging for special needs children and their parents. Thankfully, introducing children to a sensory room is a great way to reduce the hardships suffered due to the pandemic.

Coronavirus Precautions

 

What Is a Sensory Room?

A sensory room, also called a sensory gym, is a space that engages multiple senses simultaneously, helping to regulate the brain’s negative reactions to outside stimuli. It can help develop coping skills when a child is placed within one of these spaces.

A sensory gym can be an entire room, or it can be part of a room that has been carefully crafted into an occupational therapy space for special needs children. Each one of these safe spaces should match the needs of the particular child to ensure they are as effective as possible. Children who have autism, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, or ADHD can greatly benefit from having easy access to a sensory room.

Sensory Gym

 

Sensory Room Benefits

There are a number of benefits to having a sensory room for your special needs child. Each year we receive thousands of calls from parents who are looking for a safe and effective outlet for their children. Here are the most significant and impactful benefits of a sensory gym:

 

Calming

 

Stimulating

 

Socializing With Others

 

Increased Focus

 

Improved Motor Skills

 

Wrapping Up

A sensory room is a type of occupational therapy that helps children with special needs, such as those with autism, with sensory integration. This is vital due to it being a major cause of developmental, behavioral, and information processing issue. When you provide your special needs child with a sensory gym, you help their sensory systems either become more active or less overactive. The pandemic has caused new challenges for special needs children that can be alleviated thanks to interacting with and exploring a sensory room.

It absolutely is! To develop and learn, children need a stimulating environment and lots of opportunities for play. At an early age, kids learn about the world around them by using their senses: touching, smelling, tasting, seeing, and hearing. The best learning environment is one where a child feels safe and encouraged to use their senses and explore their environment.

Sensory play represents a child’s ability to engage their senses as they play and it is recognized as one of the most important educational tools from a very early age. Sensory play includes a variety of activities that stimulate any or all of a child’s senses, helping them explore and use those senses.

The experience of exploring the world through sensory play is fundamental for a child’s development. Art and sensory play promote creativity and imagination, boost curiosity, problem-solving, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor skills. Sensory play enhances a child’s social-emotional skills, supports language development, and lifts self-esteem.


Why is Sensory Play Important for Children with Developmental Disabilities?

Children with developmental disabilities often experience difficulties in exploring the world around them with their five senses. They may have a hard time making sense of different sensations they experience with their senses and may need extra support to learn through senses.

Sensory play is important for kids with special needs because it has many benefits. It helps kids understand how their bodies work and teaches them how to process information from their environment.

Taste sensory play helps kids with developmental disabilities recognize different kinds of food, but it also helps them associate food with fun and pleasure. Sight play teaches children about colors and encourages them to experiment with light. Through touch play, kids learn to explore the world with their hands, and so on.

Sensory Play Encourages Fine Motor Development

Fine motor skills involve the coordination of small muscles of hands and fingers with the eyes. Although these movements seem so natural and effortless, fine motor skills are complex skills that involve synchronized efforts of the brain and muscles.

Different art and sensory activities require a child to hold and manipulate a variety of objects, materials, textures, and shapes. Holding and manipulating items such as pencils, brushes, squeeze bottles, crayons, pipe cleaners, Play-Dough, pom poms, beads, straws, stickers, and other small objects promote small muscles development and encourage eye-hand coordination.

Fine motor skills ensure that a child masters a variety of skills from getting dressed to writing their own name. These skills improve brain functions and encourage overall development.

Sensory Play Boosts Brain and Cognitive Development

Brain development in early childhood is rapid and radical and amazingly progresses in the first five years of life. More than a million neural connections (synapses) are created in every second of this early-stage development. In other words, the brain is most flexible to learning during the first few years of life.


Sensory play improves brain plasticity and flexibility, helping grow and strengthen connections in the brain’s pathways. Brain plasticity and flexibility are essential for the child’s ability to complete more complex tasks, cognitive and language development, and gross motor skills.

Sensory activities can help develop memory, enhance a child’s problem-solving skills, and teaches kids sensory attributes such as dry, cold, warm, sticky, wet, smooth, bumpy, etc.

Also, sensory play sparks creativity and allows children with disabilities to make new discoveries and build upon their existing knowledge.

Sensory Play Promotes Social and Emotional Development

Sensory play promotes social interaction and helps children develop their social and emotional skills through engaging with their peers in play. Painting, drawing, and other arts and sensory activities help children with developmental disabilities express their emotions and thoughts. Through the use of a variety of colors, materials, and textures, they can communicate their inner world without using words.

Sensory Play has a Calming Effect

Playing with Play-Dough, coloring, building sandcastles, or engaging in other forms of sensory play has a calming effect and can help children relax when they are anxious, upset, or frustrated. Moreover, sensory play helps kids with developmental disabilities be content and teaches them how to live a happier life.

Sensory Activities for Children with Developmental Disabilities

When you plan sensory activities with kids with special needs, take into consideration how they will experience these activities.
Kids who have physical limitations can enjoy the sensory play by seeing, smelling, tasting, or listening.

Children who are deaf have a hearing impairment can feel the vibrations and feel the music through other senses such as touching or seeing. Children who are visually impaired or blind may benefit from touching different textured objects such as scratchy paper, bumpy rubber balls, soft fabrics, etc.

Children who are overly sensitive to sensory stimulation, like kids on the autism spectrum, may enjoy sensory activities differently. For example, a child may wear a smock or rubber gloves while painting if they get oversensitive about having paint on their hands or clothes.

When you plan sensory play for kids with special needs, always put safety first. Make sure that someone supervises a child and provide help if needed. Be aware of overstimulation and the child’s developmental needs. Finally, ensure that sensory play is age-appropriate and that the child makes the most of it.


What Our Clients Are Saying

  • Leaps and Bounds Physical Therapy

    After five years in practice, I decided that I needed to upgrade the look of my office to allow for optimal patient care. Upon researching some possibilities, I came across the Fun Factory Sensory Gym. I immediately called the company to purchase my own gym unit. We scheduled an install date and in three short days, my gym and my vision were complete. My patients and their parents walk in and are amazed at the beautiful and fun set up. I truly feel that my patients are getting the most effective and efficient care because I have the best equipment to address their individual needs. With the Fun Factory Gym equipment, I am able to help these children improve by Leaps and Bounds!

    Jill Kissel
    Clinic Owner
  • The Kaufman Children’s Center

    The Kaufman Children’s Center was proud to announce an exciting upgrade made here at the KCC. Over a long weekend in late January 2013, we completed a huge remodel to our sensory gym.

     The Kaufman Children's Center
  • Our Fun Factory Sensory Gym has been life changing for our family! The entire experience of having the FFSG team in our home was so enjoyable. The crew’s heart and soul is behind the work they’re doing. From the first phone call, FFSG was committed to helping our family and our 3 small children with their various special needs. We have already experienced the calming effects of the net swing and the multiple ways the entire gym provides sensory input and regulation for our intense sensory seekers. What a great tool for our family and more than worth the investment!

    Heather Helms
    Parent
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