Sensory Tray: Row Row Row The Boat

Nursery rhymes are a wonderful way of helping children to develop their speech through repetition and actions. If your children enjoy nursery rhymes as much as mine try incorporating them into your play as well. We introduced a  nautical feel to our sensory play with just a few items from around the play room.

We have recently started to introduce nursery rhymes to the children's daily routine as well as taking part in the sessions our local children's centre offer at the library. The children have loved this and so I decided it would be nice to include the songs themes into our play. Last week this was 'row row row the boat'. 

One of the activities the children enjoyed the most was the sensory play tray idea. I filled the tray with some simple resources from the play room but you could easily find these for under £10 in your local pound shop or target store. 

Resources: 

Materials of different colour's and textures.

large play space

Plastic balls

Plastic or play boats (if you can not find these you could use home made boats) 

Toy sea animals

All these items could be optional and you could also add any other items you have which might be suitable. 

I set up the activity while the babies had their morning sleep and it instant caught their eye when they came down stairs. Both the boy headed straight for the tray picking up the material and placing it over their heads. Once they had discovered the material which they could see each through they had fun playing boo and looking around at how the colour of the room had changed. 

Once they had lost interest in this game I sang the nursery rhyme to them showing the children the boats moving over material in the tray. The boys copied the actions from the song and picked up the boats.

Through out the afternoon the children returned to the activity. They loved to throw the ball out of the tray and often the boats would follow. Tinnie also enjoyed hiding the boats under the see through material and then taking them out again.

Links to Development Matters
Personal, Social and Emotional Development:
• Seeks to gain attention in a variety of ways, drawing others into social interaction.
• Builds relationships with special people.
• Interacts with others and explores new situations when supported by familiar person.
• Engages other person to help achieve a goal, e.g. to get an object out of reach. 

Communication and Language:

• Has a strong exploratory impulse. 

• Concentrates intently on an object or activity of own choosing 

for short periods.

• Pays attention to dominant stimulus – easily distracted by 

noises or other people talking.

Physical Development:

• Crawls, bottom shuffles or rolls continuously to move around.

• Passes toys from one hand to the other.

• Holds an object in each hand and brings them together in the middle, e.g. holds two blocks and bangs them together.

• Picks up small objects between thumb and fingers