A specialised sensory exploration Occupational Therapy designed program led by our dedicated Allied Health Assistants and Occupational Therapists. Targeted to provide sensory rich exploration activities to children aged 3-4 years.
The Pyramid of Learning developed by Taylor and Trott (1991) is a frame of reference for childhood development and is the premise of which the Little Sensory Explorers Program has been developed. The model demonstrates how children require a solid foundation within their sensory systems to build upon other skills and systems including motor skills and cognitive learning, thus highlighting the importance in developing and engaging all the sensory systems from a young age.
The program offers a myriad of benefits and intended outcomes, but the main ones include:
This example program ensures children are regulated and ready to learn before practicing and refining a range of foundational fine motor skills.
The olfactory sensory system is our sense of smell. To process smell, small substances, and particles in the environment enter into our noses and send information to our brain, allowing us to identify different scents. When this information is received by our brain, it is processed to allow us to have an emotional response to each scent and helps us to decide if a smell is pleasant or unpleasant. The olfactory sensory system is important in a child’s development as they can begin to associate smells with environments, people, and experiences via their memory, identify sensory preferences to assist in emotional regulation, as well as begin to influence the role of smell in eating foods.
The activities in this module have been selected to achieve the following outcomes:
