For many of us, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year! However, for children and young adults with sensory needs, it can be a challenging time for many reasons. During the festive season, wherever you go, there are blinking lights and new textures in shops, workplaces, schools, and homes. As experts in sensory training, 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. However, this can become more of an issue during the Christmas season because children and adults are exposed to so many textures and lights.
Research has shown that sensory activities are effective 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 they’re imperative for cognitive development.
Given that it’s such an important part of their physical, mental, and emotional development, you should take advantage of the many textures available 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. Jingle bells are a key sound you hear throughout Christmas, typically in a song. If a child with autism or special needs likes sounds that 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 the bells 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 it without any difficulty.
Mix equal quantities of cornflour and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl. 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, 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. It will help them focus their minds, potentially calming them down from a spell of anxiety or overexcitement.
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 have been so many slime products on retail store shelves lately because kids love them! 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 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 across the UK. We provide care for many individuals throughout the year, including sensory services.
At Seashell, we provide a wide range of SEND support and autism services, including disability training from our team of experts.
If you’d like more information about our sensory services for children with autism and special needs, don’t hesitate to contact us at 0161 610 0100 or email us at info@seashelltrust.org.uk.
