Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for many people. For children and adults with sensory issues, it can be both a challenging time and an interesting time, for many reasons. During the festive season, wherever you go there are blinking lights and new textures in shops, workplaces, schools and in homes. Here’s a list of a few ideas we’ve had at Seashell for sensory Christmas activities for children with autism and special needs.
Benefits of sensory Christmas activities
Sensory play is ideal for calming children who are feeling anxious or overly excited. This can become more of an issue during the Christmas season due to children and adults being exposed to so many textures and lights.
Research has shown how effective sensory activities are at helping children with many development skills, such as oral language, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and social interaction. Children use sensory skills to learn, so it’s imperative for cognitive development.
Given it’s such an important part of their development, physically, mentally and emotionally, you should take advantage of the many textures available to you during the festive season to create fun sensory Christmas activities.
Sensory Christmas activity ideas
There are so many sensory Christmas activities that you can do with children and young adults to calm them during the festive season. Here’s a list of some Christmas sensory activities for children with autism and special needs:
- Play with jingle bells
- Fake snow
- Gingerbread man playdough
- Bake some Christmas cakes
- Grinch slime
Play with jingle bells
The first idea for exciting sensory Christmas activities is to play with jingle bells. A key sound you hear throughout Christmas is jingle bells, typically in a song. If a child with autism or special needs likes sounds to trigger their senses, then jingle bells are definitely something to try at Christmas.
A good idea for sensory Christmas activities with jingle bells is to ask the child to create an instrument using the bells. They could place them in an empty bottle or a box and rattle them to create a sound. Using a couple of different hand-made jingle bell instruments could allow them to create a sort of Christmas jingle too!
Fake snow
Fake snow is another great craft idea for sensory Christmas activities. It’s really easy to make too, so a child should be able to do this without any difficulty.
In a bowl, mix together equal quantities of cornflour and bicarbonate of soda. With a simple 1:1 ratio, you should be able to make as much fake snow as the child wants. Once they’ve created a pile of fake snow, why not see if they’d like to build a snowman? You could even use small items around you to decorate it.
Gingerbread man playdough
Staying on the arts and crafts genre, introducing some playdough to the child or young adult with special needs could be a good sensory Christmas activity.
Ensure you have some man-shaped cutouts to use and ask the child to roll out some playdough. Once they’re happy with how flat it is, they can use the cutout shapes to create their very own ‘gingerbread’ men to play with. Similar to the fake snow, with other pieces and colours of playdough, they could decorate the gingerbread men to dress them.
This is a perfect Christmas sensory activity for children with special needs as it will help to focus their mind, potentially calming them down from a spell of anxiety or over-excitedness.
Bake some Christmas cakes
Our penultimate idea for sensory Christmas activities is to head into the kitchen with the child you’re caring for and try some baking. At Christmas time, baking can be so much fun, with colourful decorations, interesting shapes and all kinds of flavours to include.
You could ask the child if they’d prefer to bake some cookies or cakes for their friends and family. Either way, introducing them to textures like flour and eggs, or even dough, and kneading and mixing with their hands is a great way of triggering their senses and imagination.
They may even have a skill for it and take a liking to baking, helping them to feel more comfortable. Thus, giving them something to do the next time they feel overwhelmed.
Grinch slime
Our final ideal for sensory Christmas activities involves slime. There are so many slime products on retail store shelves lately because kids love it! Introduce the child to green-coloured slime and tell them it’s from the Grinch. They’ll love mixing it in their hands, moulding it into different shapes and generally playing with it.
This interesting texture can provide a calming effect to a child with complex issues.
Sensory Christmas activities with Seashell
Seashell is a charity dedicated to providing a creative, happy and secure environment for children and young people with complex needs and additional communication challenges from across the UK. Throughout the year, we provide care for many individuals, including sensory services.
We provide a wide range of sensory support services at Seashell, including training from our team of experts.
If you’d like some more information about our sensory services for children with autism and special needs, don’t hesitate to contact us on 0161 610 0100, or email us at info@seashelltrust.org.uk.
