5 Crafts to Work the Five Senses with Children

Encouraging children's creativity by taking advantage of their environment is possible with these crafts to work the five senses.

If you want the little ones to learn to explore the world by themselves, but you don’t know how to accompany them in this wonderful learning process, don’t worry! Today we’re going to present you with some crafts to work the five senses that you can’t miss.

Each of them focuses on a specific area so that your kids can get the full potential of sensations and emotions. Do you want to know what we’ll propose this time? Keep reading!

Work the five senses with crafts

Spending time together and sharing a fun and stimulating experience is possible. So jot down these ideas!

1. Sight: Color sensory bottle

This is a perfect craft to see how colors are mixed and, as corroborated by a study published by the Technical University of the North, it encourages creativity in the youngest members of the household.

Ingredients

• Liquid watercolors or food coloring with the three primary colors: Magenta, blue, and red
• Mineral oil
• Transparent corn syrup
• A reusable water bottle
• Funnels (one for the oil and one for the corn syrup)
• Spatula

Step by step instructions

• To start, pour the corn syrup into the bottle as the bottom layer, using one of the funnels. The exact amount will be half of the bottle (minus the extra space you need to leave for the mixture to flow).
• The most complicated part of the whole process is the color mixing. To do this, add a few drops (3 to 5) of liquid watercolor or food coloring to the corn syrup.
• Now, stir it all together.
• Now comes the most chaotic part: Dyeing the mineral oil separately. To do this, keep in mind that this is much easier to transfer than corn syrup.
• Once you’ve dyed the mineral oil with a different color, use a funnel or container and finish filling the bottle. Be sure to include a small empty space.
• To finish, hot glue the lid on and check over the days to see if the glue weakens.

2. Touch: A handful of sensations

What sensations do you get from the sense of touch? Dare to show them to the little ones of the house with the palm of their own hand. This will make them experiment with different materials of different textures: Soft, rough, smooth, hard, or sticky.

Materials

• Construction paper
• Marker pen
• Tape
• Sandpaper
• Pebbles
• Cotton
• Slime
• Scissors
• Glue

Step by step instructions

• To begin, place the little one’s hand on the cardboard and draw the outline with a marker.
• Cut a rectangle of glue and sand making sure that each piece occupies one of the fingertips of the drawing.
• When you have them, glue them to the sheet and add a piece of cotton, a little slime, and some pebbles to the remaining fingers.
• Let the child touch each of their own drawn fingers to experiment as they like.

3. Smell: Spice paints. One of the 5 most surprising crafts to work the five senses with children

This spice paint will arouse the curiosity of the smallest members of the house. Of course, before choosing the spices, it’s important to make sure that none of them are too spicy or cause allergies to your child. That said, here are some ideas.

Ingredients

• Nutmeg
• Ground cinnamon
• Chicken salt
• Vanilla powder
• Turmeric
• Oregano
• Parsley

Step by step instructions

• To begin, put a small amount of each powder in a bowl.
• Then, mix a little water in each to diminish the intensity of the products and form a paste.
• Time to paint!

4. Taste: An edible bracelet

First of all, you have to teach the little ones in the house that food isn’t to be trifled with. Once this is clear, we present this craft to enhance the taste for eating foods that perhaps don’t arouse much interest.

Perhaps your child has already tried those typical bracelets with candy that looks like jewelry. Well, on this occasion, we’ll teach you how to make a sweet bracelet with cereals and dried fruit that children will love.

To do this, you just have to place the cereals and fruit (previously pierced) on a string so that children can remove them from the bracelet as they eat them. Of course, always under adult supervision and with caution regarding the size of the food to avoid choking.

5. Hearing: Multisensory rainsticks

Reconvert traditional rainsticks by filling them with different elements to produce different sounds. This way, children can experiment with the music of nature itself and will be encouraged to make surprising creations.

Materials

• A cardboard tube
• Brown paint in different shades
• Brushes
• A brown paper bag (such as a lunch bag)
• Rubber bands
• Scissors
• Rice, chickpeas, river pebbles, and beach sand

Step by step instructions

• Start by painting the tubes a uniform brown. Once dry, you can point out some spots of different shades to make it look like a more realistic stick.
• Then, cut a round piece from the bag and attach it to one end of the rainstick with a rubber band.
• Fill one of the sticks with beach sand, another with rice, the third one with chickpeas, and the last one with river pebbles.
• Cover the other end of the stick with another piece of paper and a rubber band. You can also secure the ends with packaging tape.
• Voila! Let the children shake them and try to figure out what noise each element makes.

The benefits of these crafts that work the five senses with children

As a study published by the Catholic University San Antonio shows, it’s important that teachers and parents involve crafts of this type in the education of the little ones.

Learning through the senses has a very positive influence on the physical, cognitive, and social development of children. It also allows them to establish contact with the world around them and fosters their interest and curiosity for everything they perceive.

Be sure to implement this pastime with your children, today!