SENSE-ational St. Patrick’s Day

If you’re Irish, a St. Patrick’s Day fan, or want an excuse to try out another sensory activity, you’ve come to the right place. Below are a few ideas for sensory activities to do today, St. Patrick’s Day.

Lucky Charms Sensory Bin

Our first activity is simple, low tech, and cost-effective- all you have to do is buy a box of Lucky Charms (or whichever generic brand you want). Dump the box of Lucky Charms into a bowl, bin, or on a tablecloth and give them a cup, a spoon, or let them use their hands to dig through it! They can begin by working to find each marshmallow in the pile. If that’s too simple and they want another challenge, tell them to sort the marshmallows into their categories. If you buy the name-brand Lucky Charms there should be hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, unicorns, rainbows, and red balloons. This type of sensory activity is excellent for cognitive development by encouraging your children to sort objects of varying colors, manipulate different sizes, learn shapes and colors, and practice counting (Occupational Therapy Institute, 2021). Want to add in a little math? Have them count how many marshmallows they have in each category. What’s especially great about this activity is there is no risk when your kiddos start putting things in your mouth since it is all edible- you could even sneak some bites in, too! If your child doesn’t like Lucky Charms, you can try Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles- Lucky Charms just fit best with the St.Patty’s theme!

One way to upgrade this activity and use it to target calming and emotional regulation is to pair it with deep diaphragmatic breaths (belly breaths) using a straw to try to lift and transfer the shapes to their bowl/cup! You can also make it a race, having everyone in the house have one to two shapes they are trying to locate to see who can get theirs first!

Digging for Gold

Our next sensory activity is digging for gold! You will want to begin by making colored rice. We suggest using green and yellow to fit the St. Patrick’s Day theme, but you can create any colors you would like. If you don’t know how to make colored rice, we have a blog on that here. Once you have made your colored rice, put it in a bin, along with some golden coins. If you want an extra incentive for your kiddo to participate, get chocolate gold coins rather than just plastic gold coins. Mix up your ingredients and allow your child to search for gold! They can use their hands or any kitchen utensils you have depending on how challenging you want the activity to be. This activity encourages your child to identify details on objects, understand the movements of objects, train their eyes to work together and work on proprioceptive skills (awareness of one’s body’s position, location, and movement in space) are some basic abilities a child can learn (Koshatka, 2022).

Visual Perception Skills Packet: March Edition

Finally, if you don’t have the energy to create a new activity for your child, that’s okay, too! We have a March-themed visual-perceptual activity packet on our site for purchase/download. This download includes St. Patrick’s Day-themed handouts that allow your child to work on visual attention, form constancy, visual discrimination, visual memory, sequential memory, visual closure, visual-spatial relations, and visual figure-ground. Even though the handouts work on essential skills for your child, they provide them in a fun way for your kiddos, including matching games, word searches, and drawing. Check them out here! Use the promo code LUCKY1 for 50% off during March!

References

Koshatka, B. (2022). Sensory system series: Visual system. SENSE-ational Spaces. https://www.senseationalspaces.com/blog-1/sensory-system-series-visual-system 
Occupational Therapy Institute. (2021). Six developmental benefits of sensory bins. Salus University Health. https://www.salusuhealth.com/Occupational-Therapy-Institute/Resources/News-Events/News-Stories/Six-Developmental-Benefits-of-Sensory-Bins.aspx