Five Senses Sound and Texture Activity

The day we made our rainbow paintings with cars I set up this invitation to play so that the kids could play with the cars for a bit before we began our art activity. The focus of the invitation was to talk about the fives senses, mainly the sense of touch and the sense of hearing. But it’s a great indoor boredom buster even if you aren’t focusing on those skills yet with your little ones.

 To create the invitation I gathered different containers and baskets from around our house. I wanted to try and find ones that were made of different materials and different kinds of surfaces. I set all of the containers out with some toy vehicles.

Little Buddy was the first to dive in for playtime. An avid car driver–he’s always trying to drive cars on the walls, windows, and appliances–he started driving his cars on the different containers right away. And he quickly realized that the faster he moved the louder the sound. I could tell right then he was going to love this!

Tinker preferred to start on a bumpy surface. She drove very slowly. Feeling the vibration in her hand as the bus moved along the ridges, she exclaimed, “Ooh, that tickles!”

 She was even more excited when she tested out the baking sheet. She lightly drove the bus back and forth, back and forth and giggled as it made “music, mama!”

And this activity isn’t just for toddlers, preschoolers can’t resist joining in the fun either! Lovey chose to test every car on every surface to compare the different sounds.

They also explored what happened when they drove the cars on the inside of some of the containers. The bowl was the most fun because it created a bit of a ramp for the cars to zoom down. And that perfectly set the stage for the ramp play we did later for our ramp painting with cars.

What fun ways do you like to explore the senses with toddlers?

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