Shaving Foam and 💧Water 🌈 Beads 🙌🏻Sensory Play (Sensorial 🖐️👀👂👅👃 Activities 101 🎥 Series 🎇)

Sensory play is extremely important for children, where they get to explore different mediums such as water, sand, play dough, rice, etc., while stimulating various senses, triggering neuron connectivity and learning through play in the process. Today, we are exploring shaving foam and hydrogels (water beads).  

We are using a 12-pack water beads combo (buy here). Just add water and watch them grow! (See a video of water beads growing here "Sensory Exploration with Hydro Gel ❤️️ Water Beads (Science 🔬⚗️⚖️ 101 🎥Series 🎇)."

First, children added food coloring to the shaving foam. 

In about an hour, hydrogels fully expanded, ready to be added to the foamy mix. 

 Through this sensory play exploration a child is stimulating:

• the tactile sense of🖐🏻touch by manipulating different feelers and by feeling the texture of the foam and gel beads,
• the visual sense of 👀 sight by discriminating the colorful rainbow array,
• the olfactory sense of 👃🏻smell (the shaving foam's fragrance permeated the space),
• the only sense that was omitted, was the sense of 👅 taste (neither of the fillers are edible).  

We ended up with a beautiful foamy array of rainbow colors and different textures. 

During the sensorial work, a child, what Dr. Maria Montessori called:  a "sensorial explorer,"  is able to concentrate on the refinement of all the senses, from visual to stereognostic. Manipulation of different textures and fillers triggers sensory stimulation, which strengthens neuron-connectivity and spurs neuroplasticity (the production of new connections between neurons and new neurons themselves), which in turn increases brain's agility. Also, with sensory bins, the cleanup is minimal since everything is contained in a tray, tub, tin, box, or any other container.

 Sensory play is definitely a favorite here!

For more on Hydrogels, see here a video post "🌊Ocean 🌋Volcano 💦HydroGels Lava Lamp powered by 💥Alka Seltzer (Science 🔬⚗️⚖️ 101 🎥Series 🎇)." 

We used red hydrogels in our "💉 Inside of the BODY Anatomy Unit Study" - read here. 

For more on color mixing, read here "💛💙❤️Primary Colors, 💦Water & Paper Capillary Action ⌛️Timelapse ⚗️ Kids Science Experiment (🌈 Rainbow Walking Water)."

For more on sensory bins, see here "✨The Universe 👋🏻Sensory Bin (🌌COSMOS Unit Study)." Also, read here "🌽 Corn Sensory Bin with 🔤 Alphabet Letters (Sensorial + Language Activity)," and read here a post "Valentine's inspired Love ❤️️ Sensory Bin," and  here our "Christmas-inspired Shredded Paper Sensory Bin with a Math twist."