How to promote Multi-sensory Education in early years and early primary education
Multi Sensory learning is not an approach that you should give a try but an approach you should definitely be using on a daily basis whether it is your classroom/playroom or your child’s home/garden. It’s a wonderful way to support your children’s natural learning and offer them stimulating holistic learning environments.
What is Multi-sensory Learning?
Multi Sensory learning is one of the most effective approaches because it helps differentiate and personalize learning experiences, contexts and environments so that they appeal to children’s different learning needs and requirements. It can also be used to stimulate neurodiverse students and those with unique learning requirements. It helps children connect with the world around through their senses and explore the world using their bodies and being hands-on. It helps children relax and has positive effect on their emotional and mental health and their nervous system.
As the name suggests it is learning through engaging senses and in particular the sense of sight, hearing and touch but also taste and smell if possible. This method works really good with young children as this is exactly how they learn on their own but it can be easily used with all ages. Basically it is how we all learn because we are sensory beings. If you observe children you will notice straight away that they need to touch things, they like colours and shapes, they are sensitive to rhythm and sounds.
The main idea behind Multi-sensory approach is to offer children environment filled with multi-sensory stimuli so that they can learn the way they naturally do.
Also, appealing to more than one sense at one time is more effective especially when you consider differences in individual learning styles. Some children may be more touchy-feely whilst other might prefer audio-visual stimulation. Satisfying the needs of all children will be possible if you appeal to all senses. Multi-sensory classroom/playroom or any learning environment will always be more exciting and motivating and will offer more meaningful learning contexts.
The approach however needs to be followed with full awareness as it is very easy, especially in the modern world, to overstimulate children which might in turn increase their anxiety, reduce their concentration span and create chaos in general. It’s not about how much you offer but the quality of the learning environment that matters and “balance” is the key word here.
One needs to be particularly careful working with neurodiverse children and those with unique learning needs and requirements to make sure the multi-sensory stimulation does not trigger or aggravate certain medical conditions, for example anxiety, panic attacks or trigger epileptic condition.
Benefits of Multi-sensory Learning
Sensory learning is very important to keep children physically healthy. Their emotional and mental health is positively affected when they can channel their energy into something exciting, that feels joyful and can be experienced in real world instead of seen on the screen or read about.
Sensory learning:
– keeps children relax
– soothes their nervous system
– helps concentrate
– accelerates learning
-prevents discipline problems
– helps children understand and address their body needs.
How to Introduce Multisensory Learning
Although multi-sensory experiences are holistic and multi-disciplinary at the same time, it may help to organise them into categories for easier implementation.
Visual experiences:
Books and magazines
Aside course books, make sure your students/children have access to various types of magazines or books which you may use in many different ways.
For younger children organise reading corners, “pick your favourite book sessions”, make a book displays etc. Older children may browse magazines for recent news or trends and then report it back as presentations or organize visual displays.
Photographs and artwork
Having a nice collection of photographs and displaying visually intriguing pieces of artwork can boost activities such as story telling, close reading, listening and they can be easily used for any subjects. They stimulate students’ imagination and are particularly effective to promote cross curricular and cross cultural learning.
For home schooled children and for the early years working with images and using them to organise visual boards, dream boards, arts & crafts creative projects is a nice way to combine multi-sensory learning with cross-curricular and cross-cultural learning, inspire story telling or vocabulary games.
Wall displays
Look for good quality and attractive photographs and resources. They should be colorfull, clearly visible and full of interesting details that will encourage your students to look at them now and then. Wall displays can be interactive and used for activities such as reading, vocabulary work etc. so the more interesting and colorful the better. The best idea is to involve children in creating these boards and choosing images for them. This way you’ll appeal not only to vision but also to the sense of touch and will make the experience more personalized. Such activities easily inspire collaborative spirit, foster communication, open the door to discussions and story telling sessions. You can effectively use them to organise regular “spot the object” activities, hunts and even physical activities such as “run and touch”.
Movies and cartoons
When used in moderation they can help introduce and explain certain topics, complex processes and provoke discussions. Make sure they do not substitute them for other resources. You may effectively use movie stills for brainstorming sessions, story telling etc. – just pause a movie on an interesting scene to encourage creativity.
Colours, shapes, patterns
No matter what kind of resources you decide to use whether it is toys, books or everyday objects make sure they are visually appealing. Introducing colours, shapes and patterns not only makes them more interesting to your students but also helps them remember things better.
Light
Working with light is a very exciting way for children to learn and there is so many ways to incorporate light into your everyday learning spaces. You may use light tables and colorful blocks for creative work, you may organize dark rooms and use light for story telling, experimenting, guessing games. You may decorate the playroom/classroom with lights to add the element of extra fun and excitement. This works particularly well with reading corners, sensory tents, relaxation spaces. Light can become a permanent feature and part of your overall design to gently stimulate children every single day and appeal to their senses.
Auditory Experiences:
Music, sounds, audio books
Music and sounds can be used in lots of various ways to help you cover any content for any subject. You may introduce a topic by playing specific sounds and music to stimulate creativity, build interest, set the scene etc. Introducing multi sensory books, toys and resources that make sounds or play music will work great with younger audience while audio books, authentic audio recordings, interviews and songs prove to be more effective with older children. Make the content even more appealing by linking it with recent trends and your students’/children’s interests. Finally, playing relaxing background music during project time or group work will boost your students productivity and will help with classroom/behaviour/energy management.
Tactile Experiences:
Textures and shapes
Select resources, books, objects, fabrics that have interesting textures and shapes. No matter what subject and topic you are covering there is always something that you can bring to the table that can be symbolically or literally related to the content.
Invite children to examine the objects with their fingers to sense the texture, the material they are made of, their shape and size. They will also try to check how soft or hard an object is, whether it bends easily or not, if it has some decorations and whether there are some parts of the object that can be dismantled, removed, opened or closed. Your students will naturally try all these ways so you need to make sure the objects they work with are not too precious and also if they are safe for your students to manipulate with.
Provide touchy-feely books for young children to enjoy, for all ages plan lots of hands-on experiments, organise outdoor sessions and introduce natural materials such as sand, wood, leaves, stone etc.
Apart from special and unique objects make sure the environment around is generally stimulating and can be explored by touch. If possible, have soft carpets on the floor, bean bags to sit on, fabrics to use for role-play, toys made of various materials such as wood, stone, foam, metal etc.
Interactive Walls
Turning your playroom/classroom walls into interactive and engaging displays can take the multi-sensory learning to the next level. It’s not about displays anymore but about using the wall as a working and creative space. If you decide to go for permanent installations make sure they are flexible enough to use them in many different ways. eg. magnetic boards to be used with magnetic blocks for creative play, story telling etc. or to be used to draw on.
Holistic Experiences
In practice every experience is multi sensory and so there will always be more than one sense engaged. However, there is still strong tendency among teachers and parents to go for pen and paper activities as their first choice since this is they way most of us were taught. Shifting the percentage of learning environment from the dominant pen-paper to hands-on and experiential should be your main goal to make sure your children are offered the most enabling environments to learn through their strengths and in the way they prefer the most. Just check how easy it is to come up with super multi-sensory experiences!
Sensory Corners
These are very popular with children and easy to set up. Multi-sensory corners that appeal to all senses at one time allow children to immerse themselves in the magical world, relax, let go of energy and get creative. It’s a great idea to have one in your setting/playroom but apart from it you need to make sure you offer variety of different experiences on a daily basis and be careful not to rely just on the sensory corner.
You can even make them yourself and involve children too!
Apart from the above ideas try to occasionally offer experiences that appeal to the sense of smell and taste. The first one can be easily achieved during your hands-on experiments and outings (make sure the substances your students smell are safe) while the second during cooking sessions for example.
Outdoor Learning
Outdoor Learning provides excellent opportunities for hands-on holistic experiences that can offer your students/children the whole package of balanced sensory stimulation. There will always be lots of things to touch eg. leaves, pebbles, flowers to smell and pick, buzzing insects to spot, rocks to climb, puddles to splash in, not to mention fully immersive messy play! You just need to make sure the environment is safe to explore for your students, do your initial risk assessment, address aspects that may pose danger and promote manageable risk-taking.
Multi-sensory learning is one of the most holistic ways of supporting your children’s/students’ balanced growth and learning and it will always be the way children naturally and instinctively choose. Experimenting with various ways of offering sensory stimulation is also very exciting for educators as we also (like children) prefer learning this way. So, get ready for a truly exciting adventure!
WHAT TO DO NEXT
To help you learn how to apply Multi-sensory Active Experiential Learning in your setting, Natural Born Leaders has launched a new teacher support programme ACTIVE LEARNING BOOSTER.
It’s a self-paced hands-on online training programme for Early Years and Primary Teachers who are ready to offer Future-Oriented Education based on Active Experiential Holistic Learning and Development.
You can access the first training module for FREE.
Part of this article was initially published on TheEducator, written by Natural Born Leaders.
Some Images published with this article were sourced from Pinterest and belong to their respective authors. They have been used under the law of fair use to illustrate best practices, offer commentary, to contrast and review exemplary and non exemplary practices. No copyright infringement intended.
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