7 Sensory Activities and Crafts for Restless Children

Sensory activities and crafts bring many benefits to a child's development. In addition, they're perfect for those who have a lot of energy. Today, we'll tell you about 7 sensory activities and crafts for restless children.

Written and verified by the psychologist Mara Amor López.

Last update: 27 December, 2022

Do you have a little boy or girl at home who won’t stop moving and you don’t know what to do to distract them? Here are some ideas for sensory activities and crafts for restless children that your child will have a lot of fun with. What’s more, they promote overall development.

Sensory activities help develop the imagination and fine motor skills of young children. In addition, these crafts help them to direct their excess energy and frustration and bring them enormous benefits and learning through discovery and experimentation.

Benefits of sensory activities and crafts for restless children

Sensory stimulation can bring many benefits to little ones. What’s more, it can also help the most restless children to channel their energy into educational activities that will benefit their development. So, among the benefits of sensory stimulation are that it…

• Relaxes children, calms them down, and slows down the rhythm of those children who are restless. These activities make them stop to observe, interact, reason, think, etc.
• Improves fine motor skills among little ones. That’s because many of these activities require them to use their fingers and hands to grab small objects or even use tweezers.
• Increases self-esteem and security, since they’re activities in which they will achieve a guaranteed achievement. This, in children who easily become frustrated or don’t feel confident, is helpful. That’s because, when they do the activity, they’ll realize that they’ve done it well.
• Promotes social skills, especially if children have to interact with other children or adults.
• Improves language development. Children acquire more vocabulary while interacting with the different things they have in their environment.
• Improves attention, coordination and concentration.
• Encourages the development of logical thinking.
• Helps them get the motivation they need to improve in what they do.
• Favors children’s personal, social, emotional and physical development.

7 sensory activities and crafts for restless children

Now that we’ve seen the enormous benefits of sensory activities for children, don’t miss out on some of these crafts and exercises that you can do with your little ones.

Sensory bags

Sensory bags can become one of the best sensory activities and crafts for restless children. Through these bags, little ones explore the world without making a mess.

Here you can use your imagination to fill these bags, and when they’re finished, children will enjoy the different experiences they provide. To make your sensory bags, you’ll need the following materials:

• Freezer bags. We can use two to make sure that what we put in doesn’t come out.
• Gel, shaving foam, coloring, glitter, small flashy objects, letters and numbers, marbles, etc.
• Water, baby oil…

With all these materials, you’ll create a sensory bag. For example, you can add gel and plastic or foam letters so that they can handle them through the viscosity of the gel. Also, shaving foam with different colors, so they can mix them… Here, we’ll leave things up to your imagination!

Sensory goop

This slime is ideal since it can be both liquid and hard. It’s very fun and, what’s more, children aren’t in danger if they put it in their mouths because it contains cornstarch and water. Also, it’s a way of observing different textures in a single dough.

Bubbles

What child hasn’t played with bubbles before? It’s an activity that’s fun for little ones of all ages! If you have a patio, a balcony, or a yard, then you can enjoy this activity without making a mess on your floors.

It helps to encourage your little one to focus their eyes on the bubbles as they float around. Also, it’ll help develop their ability to relate cause and effect, because when they touch the bubbles, they explode.

Natural clay

Working with clay is a relaxing and enjoyable activity for all. You can make your own clay or you can purchase some to mold and manipulate along with your child. In this way, they exercise their hands and fingers and encourage their creativity. The pleasant sensation of manipulating the clay will make them relax little by little.

More sensory activities and crafts for agitated children

Sensory board

You can make a sensory board with different textures so that children can touch each one of them and experience the different sensations they bring.

Cardboard, fabrics, buttons, yarn, sponge, feathers, shells, wooden sticks, macaroni… With all these materials and whatever else you can think of, you can make a sensory board so that children can experience the different sensations that touching each of these objects offers them.

Sensory bottles

To carry out this activity, you’ll need a plastic bottle. Inside it, you can put rice, lentils, water, beads that swell when in water, oil, glitter, dye, etc.

You can use any materials we want and combine them as you please to create this sensory bottle. Then, your child will have a fun time seeing how it sounds or what is inside when he or she shakes it.

Sticky table

With the sticky table, you’ll be encouraging your child’s thinking, as they’ll observe that everything they leave on the table remains stuck. This activity is ideal for the development of fine motor skills. More specifically, it develops the pincer grasp, as children must use their fingers like tweezers. What’s more, this sensory activity for restless children helps to improve concentration and analytical skills.

This sticky table can be made with contact paper and adhesive tape. To do this, you’ll place the contact paper over the table, sticky side up, and secure it around the edges of the table with the tape. This way, you’ll turn a normal table into a sticky one.

In short, sensory activities and crafts for restless children are a great way for little ones to learn while channeling their excess energy. They explore their environment, experiment with different sensory games, and have fun through their senses.

The different sensory stimuli provide numerous benefits in the development of intelligence, thought, and language. In addition, these activities allow the child to analyze and understand what’s happening around them. What are you waiting for to try them out with your child?