Young children love tactile hands-on learning and nothing stirs their imagination like a fun sensory basket. I like to save bits of this and that for preschool learning when taking down my Christmas decorations and clearing out holiday stuff.
This year my sensory basket consisted of some shiny icicles off my Christmas tree, some cotton balls, some fake straw of different colours (I always save the paper straw fillings from gift hampers). I pass the sensory basket around our circle and let my preschoolers have a rummage and touch and feel something that they are interested in from the basket and ask them “What does it remind you of? What does it feel like? What does it make you think about?” Some of my preschoolers’ said that the soft shiny icicles reminded them of rain when they held it up and let it fall down again. They said the cotton balls reminded them of marshmallows, snow, snowballs, a snowman and snow monsters. When touching the paper straw, the little ones said made them think about pasta, spaghetti and grass.
It was great fun for me and my preschoolers to take all the things they just described when touching and feeling around in our sensory basket and creating a story together about falling rain, a big snow monster, children eating marshmallows and having a snowball fight with spaghetti and tired horses who ate grass and then fell asleep in the straw.
Little ones have great imaginations and they love contributing to a story. My favourite children’s stories are the ones that the children and I create together because the fun isn’t just about listening to a story but creating it together, the fun and joy of everyone adding a bit to the story and the fun and excitement of not knowing just how the story will end. It’s always great fun to all give each other a big round of applause at the end of our story for creating a great story together.