When you think of sensory play, you might picture messy playdough or rice bins — but there’s so much more to it! Contrary to popular belief, sensory play isn’t just for children who need extra support with development or social skills. In fact, all children benefit from sensory activities, no matter their age or abilities.
At Little Scholars, we believe sensory play is one of the best ways for children to learn, grow, and explore their world — all through touch, sound, smell, sight, and movement.
Sensory play refers to any activity that engages your child’s senses — touch, sight, smell, taste, hearing, and even their internal senses like balance and body awareness.
From squishing playdough and painting with fingers to listening to new sounds or jumping in piles of leaves, sensory play helps children make sense of the world around them through hands-on exploration.
It’s natural, instinctive, and incredibly beneficial — babies begin sensory exploration from the moment they’re born! As parents and educators, we simply guide and encourage this curiosity in fun and creative ways.
You don’t need fancy toys or expensive materials to provide amazing sensory experiences at home. Here are a few fun, budget-friendly ways to get started:
A sensory bin is a simple container filled with materials that feel, sound, or look interesting — think leaves, sand, rice, shredded paper, or water beads.
Here’s an easy-to-follow recipe on one off our favourite sensory bin activities, moon sand!
Tip:
Always supervise young children during sensory play, especially if they like to explore with their mouths. Avoid small items that could pose a choking hazard.
Yes, playing with food can be encouraged! Sensory food play helps children explore textures and smells, which can even reduce picky eating over time.
Try:
Remember: sensory food play is different from mealtime — it’s about exploration, not eating dinner with their hands!
Turn everyday items into sensory toys!
To create a sound tube:
This simple DIY helps develop auditory awareness and fine motor control.
Sensory play might look simple, but its benefits for development are enormous. Here’s how it supports your child’s growth:
When babies and toddlers play with different textures, sounds, and materials, they form new neural connections in their brain. These experiences lay the foundation for lifelong learning and problem-solving.
Exploring new sensations stimulates brain areas related to memory and attention. Activities like sorting, scooping, and identifying objects help toddlers remember patterns and details.
Through sensory play, children learn how to share, cooperate, plan, and problem-solve. These experiences build confidence, resilience, and social awareness.
Pouring, pinching, scooping, and stirring all strengthen fine and gross motor skills, improving coordination and hand-eye control — essential for writing, dressing, and self-feeding later on.
Sensory play helps children become little scientists — testing, observing, and learning how things work through trial and error. This kind of hands-on experimentation fuels curiosity and independent thinking.
Surprisingly, sensory play can even make your child more open to trying new foods! Research shows that when children physically play with vegetables or unfamiliar foods, they’re more likely to eat them later.
At Little Scholars Early Learning, sensory play is at the heart of everything we do.
We’re a privately owned early learning service providing quality education and care across South East Queensland, guided by the Early Years Learning Framework.
Our educators design daily activities that stimulate the senses — from messy art and outdoor discovery to music, movement, and water play.
We believe:
We aim to be an extension of your family — nurturing relationships, celebrating milestones, and helping every child thrive.
Want to see sensory play in action?
Come visit your nearest Little Scholars campus and discover how our hands-on, play-based approach helps children learn through joy, exploration, and discovery.
Book a tour today and see why families love being part of the Little Scholars community!
The importance of routines for children is often overlooked. Life moves with different patterns each day, and habits can help children make sense of it all. As parents or carers, it’s crucial to be aware of this and implement healthy structures in your child’s life. Following these routines makes it easy for your child to transition through the different stages of life, whatever happens.
At Little Scholars, we understand the importance of routine and make sure to help all children in our care develop healthy habits. To share this knowledge, we collated eight of our top tips to help you implement routines for your child that will help them flourish.
One core benefit of a well-structured routine is that it can help the child feel safe and manage any changes that come their way. These challenging periods may include moving home, changing school, etc.
Maintaining a routine during these trying times can help them find some comfort and stability, allowing them to adapt in a healthy manner.
Many daily routines such as taking baths, mealtime, story time, bedtime, or setting the table, can be seen as simple and taken for granted. However, each has the opportunity to teach valuable life lessons about responsibility, time management, and more that will stay with them until adulthood. Whatever the routine may be, it’s an excellent opportunity to support your child’s learning and development, even while having fun.
A routine can help your child build their curiosity, self-confidence, and self-control, all things they will require while growing up.
Love them or not, routines are a fact of life. They encompass almost everything we do as adults, from work to socialising. This is why accustoming your child to routines at a young age can help develop their social skills.
Routines around playtime and mealtime are the best to develop these skills fully. As they communicate, share toys, help others, share food, and take turns in different activities, children start to develop excellent social skills. In addition, with a routine in place surrounding these activities, they begin to understand whether it’s time to play or not.
If you’re based in South East Queensland and want the best environment for your child to develop their social skills, then book a tour with us today.
Routines perform a vital role in the home environment as they can help your child feel more secure and cared for. So try and build practices centred around having fun or around family time as they can instil a sense of belonging and strengthen family bonds.
It’s easy to understand this if you imagine your child had a tough day at school, yet they know they can look forward to story time when they get home. In addition, activities like reading together, sharing conversations over a meal (meals could be a no-technology time), or playing sports can foster healthy habits in your child – which brings us to our next point …
Another relevant facet of routines for young children is that they can establish healthy habits that can sometimes be hard to implement. These habits include brushing teeth, washing hands, using the toilet, exercising, etc.
Eventually, these routines can also reduce your stress as your child begins performing these necessary habits by themself. Daily routines also help set the child’s body clock. For instance, bedtime routines can help program the child’s body to know when it’s time to sleep.
Routines are in place for your child, but they also make your life easier. Parenthood can be pretty overwhelming, and having a pattern to work around is a huge bonus. On top of this, a predictable routine helps free up spare time that you might not have had, as there is less time wasted on figuring out what you or your child need to do next.
They can also take some stress out of decision making – if Tuesday night is taco night, then there’s no room for arguments!
Most of all, they teach children skills and responsibility.
Chores may well be chores, but they are an essential aspect of every person’s life, and developing good habits and routines around them from a young age can help guarantee success for your child.
For example, if you set your child the task of setting and clearing the table, they may not know which side to put the forks on the first time they do it. However, as they perform the task more often, they will get comfortable doing it and learn to appreciate the importance of the job and how it is a help to you.
While routines are helpful in many ways, and some structure is good, it’s vital to note that they’re not the be-all and end-all of raising a child. There should still be free time to relax, play, or pursue creative activities. This free time might even lead to spontaneous ideas, which can be the highlight of not just a child’s week, but of their early life. Routines should also be flexible, adapting to the child as they grow, or under certain special circumstances.
Little Scholars is a privately-owned and operated early learning campus providing quality early education and care for children across South East Queensland.
We offer you and your child the very best facilities, resources and early educational, play-based programs available, which are underpinned by the early years learning framework. We believe that through quality education and care for children, we can also encourage, assist, and support the entire family.
Our dedicated team of educators are committed to the individual needs and interests of children and their families, and thus we encourage and welcome family input and involvement.
So if you’re looking for an early learning company that can fit in with your daily routine, contact Little Scholars today. Want to keep reading? Check out our blog on Getting Messy in Childhood now!
As early childhood educators, we encounter a variety of situations on a daily basis, ranging from ordinary to interesting (to say the least!). Reflective practice in early learning is about taking a step back and critically examining these experiences to better understand what happened and why. By reflecting on our practice, we can learn from our experiences, improve our approach, and ultimately provide better care for the children in our campuses.
Little Scholars provides an attractive and safe environment to children on the Gold Coast while giving you total peace of mind while your children are in our care. Learning areas include well-equipped playrooms and landscaped outdoor spaces for maximum learning opportunities. Book a tour today if you are looking for an early learning campus in South East Queensland.
Reflective practice is a process of critical examination and evaluation of experiences, situations, and decisions to learn from them and improve future practice. It involves actively seeking out information, analysing and interpreting it, and using it to guide decision-making and improve outcomes. Reflective practice is not just about what happened, but also about why it happened and how it can be improved.
We apply reflective practice to various aspects of our work, such as planning, teaching, assessing, and communicating with children and families. It helps us identify the rationale behind our practices and evaluate whether they are consistent with our beliefs, values, and core philosophy.
Little Scholars School of Early Learning’s The Collective is a service-wide, multi-faceted educational initiative, designed to enhance each child’s learning and development and best support educators’ time spent with children.
There are different types of reflective practice, including reflection-in-action, reflection-on-action, and reflection-for-action.
Reflection-in-action occurs spontaneously as we make decisions in response to what is happening in the moment.
Reflection-on-action involves thinking about experiences after the event and questioning how and why a specific practice contributed to or detracted from a child’s learning or relationships with families.
Reflection-for-action is a proactive way of thinking about future action and involves considering different approaches and refining inclusive practices and communication strategies to improve outcomes.
We view reflective practice as an essential component of developing a culture of learning that drives continuous improvement and focuses attention on quality outcomes for children and families. It helps us to enrich children’s learning, build our own knowledge and skills, and affirm and challenge our colleagues.
To engage in reflective practice, we take time to observe children closely, foster relationships and gain insights into their thinking and learning. Here are some strategies we employ to engage in reflective practice in early learning:
Reflective practice in early childhood education is important as it ensures educators regularly reflect on what they do, why they do it, and how this knowledge can improve their practice.
Studies show that high-quality early childhood settings positively affect children’s development, and reflective practice is a feature of such environments. This practice allows early childhood professionals to develop a critical understanding of our own practice and continually develop the necessary skills, knowledge and approaches to achieve the best outcomes for children.
Reflective practice also helps us create real opportunities for children to express their own thoughts and feelings and actively influence what happens in their lives. In addition, reflective practice helps professionals to develop a deeper awareness of their own prejudices, beliefs, and values, and advance learning for vulnerable children.
At Little Scholars, we recognise the importance of reflective practice in providing high-quality early education to the children in our care. Our educators engage in regular reflection and are encouraged to share their insights and experiences with their colleagues.
We believe that by reflecting on our practice, we can continually improve and adapt to better meet the needs of the children and families we serve. The Collective allows for educators to have autonomy in how they document and plan for children. This supports a strength-based approach with our team.
If you live in South East Queensland, book a tour today to enrol your child in the best early learning campuses in the community.
Let us hold your hand and help looking for a child care centre. Leave your details with us and we’ll be in contact to arrange a time for a ‘Campus Tour’ and we will answer any questions you might have!
Let us hold your hand and help looking for a child care centre. Leave your details with us and we’ll be in contact to arrange a time for a ‘Campus Tour’ and we will answer any questions you might have!
