Activities & Days Out / 10 August, 2020 / Nanny Anita

Autumn Sensory Tray

Now that BB is finally sitting up unaided it is time to break out the sensory activities. First up is our autumn sensory tray. This one is filled with leaves and conkers for BB to explore. Sometimes it is nice to use as a break from all the plastic toys that sing and flash. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly think they have their place, but it is good to get back to nature and let babies start to explore the world through these experiences.

Make sure you follow my sensory board on Pinterest for more ideas, and don’t forget to save the pin for later.

You will need:

• A tray
• Leaves
• Conkers
• Acorns
• Sycamores

Simply add them all to a tray and let your little one explore.

Yes everything ended up out of the tray and on the floor!

It is good to just allow your little one time to explore the tray without us giving them objects. Please DON’T read that as leaving them unsupervised. However, it is important that they get to look and play with things that interested them, not things that we think will interested them. As adults we can sometimes be a little over bearing in that regard (I know I certainly can be). Not every moment needs to be about us teaching them colours or other vocabulary. Obviously if they hand you things then that is something different.

Ooo I love the leaf

Things to consider with your Autumn Sensory Tray

There are a few things that you need to consider while doing this:

1. The age and stage of development of your little one. If they are still putting everything in their mouth please DON”T put in things that could be a chocking hazard.
2. Where are you getting the leaves? I am not one to sanitise everything children need exposure to dirt. Saying that I would be careful about where you are getting the leaves from. If you are getting them from a park then I would trying picking them from the tree (naughty I know). I only say this because dogs could have peed on them and numerous people could have walked over them. I picked the green leaves straight from the tree. The coloured ones came from a play park so I knew that the number of people/animals walking on them would be limited.
3. Please don’t leave your little one unattended while they play with this. I was sitting right next to BB the whole time this was out.

If you liked this autumn sensory tray be sure to check out some of my other autumn themed activities like painted leaves, tree pictures, leaf printing, and autumn sensory maths tray.

Pin for later:

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