Indoor Sensory Ideas and Activities

• Set-up a sensory course. Children always seem to enjoy making and playing on indoor sensory courses. You can set-up a simple course in your living room, bedroom, or basement using household materials. Couch cushions, pillows, flat sheets, and other items are wonderful materials that you can use to create a sensory course. Your children will have a blast jumping into a pile of cushions, or crawling under a sheet!
• Increase tactile input. Many children enjoy touching or manipulating sticky or textured surfaces that provide them with great tactile input as well. Playing with shaving cream on a table surface can be very enjoyable, and it is also a great cleaning activity! You can make sensory stress balls by filling balloons with flour or sugar. Finally, finger painting with pudding or jell-o can be enjoyable, too.
• Take part in physical activities. Even when the weather is cold outside, you can still participate in physical activities. Playing hide and seek, doing the crab walk, or log rolling are great for sensory input as well as increasing physical activity. You can even do a 3-legged race indoors! If the weather is tolerable, then shoveling snow, ice skating, sledding, making snow angels, and building snowmen are great outdoor physical activities.
• Turn daily chores into the Winter Olympics. Playing games while doing chores always seems to make them more enjoyable for everyone. You can use those chores to help meet sensory needs as well. Shooting baskets with dirty clothes, playing pretend hockey with brooms and dust pans, and being a figure skater while picking up toys can be great fun!