Sensory Storytime: Spring Garden

With the sun shining, the air fresh and the trees beginning to bloom, a spring themed story time session is sure to get little ones at one with nature. We based our recent spring garden themed sensory story time session around two Barefoot Books titles, ' Who's in the Garden ' and ' What's This '.

Our session began with a round of nursery rhymes and spring themed songs, as well as a few children's favourites. Good spring songs include, 'Baa Baa black sheep', 'Mary had a little lamb' and 'Mary Mary quite contrary' as well as the ever popular sleeping bunnies and 'dingle dangle scarecrow'.

Once our little book worms had danced off a little energy it was time to move on to our stories. 'Who's in the Garden ' is a fun peep style book that introduces featuring animal that the children can recognise and emulate, which allows for great interaction. ' What's This ' will get children on their tip toes as they try and grow as high as the sunflower in the story.

After our stories had finished, it was time for a bit of exploring. We created a simple worksheet that encouraged the children to search the sensory garden for sights,sounds and textures.

Our garden were made up grass, plants and flowers from the garden along with shredded paper, toy animals and slug slime ( a pot of goo!). For some pretend play, we had two trays for vegetable planting, one containing real soil and another filled with rice, stained with red and green food colouring, and both filled with toy vegetable and a variety of pots and garden tools. Lots of messy fun was to be had!

With play dough out for creative, squishy fun and paper flower making, there were lots of activities to keep everybody entertained. Our painting with twigs was particularly popular and resulted in a bath to two at home time. The list of activities to accompany a spring story time is endless but we finished off our session with planting sunflower seeds that will bring lots of smiles as they grow,