This virtual sensory room has been on my “to-do” list for a while. It’s a free slide deck that adds all the benefits of a calming sensory space in an online version. You can use this free virtual calming room as a sensory tool in teletherapy sessions, in the home, and in face-to-face classroom or therapy sessions. Let’s take a look at this virtual sensory room space and all of the calming tools it includes.
Virtual Sensory Room
Adding sensory diet tools to an online platform isn’t always an easy concept. Especially in a virtual space, the calming benefits of a sensory room can be difficult to integrate the senses of proprioception, vestibular input, and oral motor sensory input.
Many of the free online sensory videos out there are mindfulness videos, virtual lava lamps, and auditory videos like waves or rainforest sounds. But the virtual sensory spaces sometimes omit calming heavy work input and proprioceptive feedback that offer the calming and self-regulatory benefits of heavy work.
That’s why I wanted to create this virtual calming room.
Virtual Calming Room
In this virtual calming room, you’ll find the following sensory items that kids can click on and access videos:
- Fidget Spinner
- Water bottle
- Hoberman breathing sphere
- Sensory jar
- Plasma globe
- Kaledescope
- Rubic cube
- Bubble wands
- Lava lamp
- Slime
- Calming sounds headphones
- Koosh Ball
- Glitter jars
- Fish tank visual
- Online relaxing coloring activities
- Sound machine
- Yoga mat
- Kinetic Sand Bin
- Bubble wrap popping activity
- Heavy work exercises
- Light tube
- Nature grounding exercises
- Waterbeads sensory bin
- Brain breaks
- Deep breathing exercises
- Sequin pillow
- Light tube
- Kids crafts
When you click on the sensory objects in the sensory room, you’ll be directed to different online sensory tools. These include:
- Guided meditation videos
- Slime videos
- Yoga exercises
- Calming sounds videos
- Deep breathing exercises
- Craft ideas to involve the hands in fine motor resistive work
- Grounding exercises
- Calming visual images
- Relaxing vision and auditory input
- Brain breaks
- Calming videos
All of these are links to videos, exercises, and resources to promote calming self-regulatory input for kids of all ages. You can add these tools to a sensory diet or use them in Zones of Regulation activities.
Free sensory room slide deck
Want to add this online sensory room to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below and you can add this tool to your Google drive. It’s just one of the many free slides available here on The OT Toolbox.
NOTE- Due to an increase in security measures, many readers utilizing a work or school district email address have had difficulty accessing resources from the delivery email. Consider using a personal email address and forwarding the email to your work account.
Add heavy work with these heavy work exercises to incorporate many themes into therapy and play.
Click here to grab these heavy work cards.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
