It is that time of year when we start to dig up the dirt and grow our garden…all with the kids! Digging in dirt and kids go hand in hand so when we started our garden for the first time last year, the kids were all over it. They were my biggest helpers when it came to planting, weeding, and of course, taste-testing! This post includes pictures from last year’s garden, and we can’t wait to get started on our garden again this year!
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Sensory Fun Gardening with Kids
You know we LOVE sensory play, right? Gardening is the ultimate sensory activity when it comes to kids. There are so many of the senses addressed when a child is outside in the dirt. There is the calming and relaxing environment of quiet outdoors, soft dirt, cool colors, and the warm sun. Digging and turning dirt is a wonderful proprioception activity for kids (and adults) who need to address movement and grading of muscle use in activities throughout their day. The resistance of weeks that need pulling will provide feedback to muscles and joints. Kids can taste, see, feel, and smell so many textures, tastes, colors, patterns, and olfactory experiences depending on the fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs that are planted.
Make a Sensory Garden for Kids
Gardening is already such an amazing wealth of input to the senses. How can you make it even more of a sensory haven for kids to calm, relax, or provide stimulation?
Sight: Plant brightly colored flowers.
Plant flowers in a pattern order.
Use brightly colored garden markers.
Add flowers or bushes that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Garden Hanging Butterfly Feeder
or hummingbird feeders can easlily be added to gardens by hanging to branches or walls.
Add textures to borders.
Add height and depth to gardening surfaces by using wall hangers, raised potted plants, or tables. A Vertical wall planter
encouraged overhead reach and visual attraction to different planes.
Plant ornamental grasses or taller plants that will add a soft sound in the breeze.
Taste: Plant a variety of sweet, bitter, tart vegetables and fruits.
Add edible flowers to borders.
Touch: Plants can provide a variety of textures. Some leaves are soft and fuzzy, and others are sharp and prickly.
Pulling weeds in different soil experiences is a great sensory activity. Pull weeds from dry soil and wet soil.
Add rocks, pebbles, bricks, and gravel for texture.
Play in mud puddles.
Walk barefoot in the grass and dirt.
Scent: Dirt is such great scent! Add novel scents like mint, lavender, tomato plants, basil.
Proprioception: Add plants that require a bit of “oomp” to pick or harvest, like radishes, potatoes, carrots.
Have children dig! Moving soil provides heavy input to upper and lower extremities.
Push wheelbarrows with varrying weights of dirt. (I love the sze of this Kids’ Wheelbarrow!)
Lift and carry buckets of water.
Pull the hose from the hose hook-up.
And wind it back up when done!
Vestibular: Encourage children to get down on the ground to garden.
Jump in mud puddles.
How to incorporate sensory play into playing gardening with kids
Sensory diet activities can be specific to sensory system like these vestibular sensory diet activities. Sensory activities can be prescribed according to need along with environment in order to maximize sensory input within a child’s day such as within the school day. Using authentic sensory input within the child’s environment plays into the whole child that we must understand when focusing on any goal toward improved functional independence.
Many sensory diet activities can naturally be found outdoors. In fact, outdoor sensory diet activities are a fun way to encourage sensory input in a child’s environment and without fancy therapy equipment or tools.
It’s a fact that kids are spending less time playing outdoors. From after-school schedules to two working parents, to unsafe conditions, to increased digital screen time, to less outdoor recess time…kids just get less natural play in the outdoors.
Knowing this, it can be powerful to have a list of outdoor sensory diet activities that can be recommended as therapy home programing and family activities that meet underlying needs.
That’s where the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards and Sensory Challenge Cards come into play.
They are a FREE printable resource that encourages sensory diet strategies in the outdoors. In the printable packet, there are 90 outdoor sensory diet activities, 60 outdoor recess sensory diet activities, 30 blank sensory diet cards, and 6 sensory challenge cards. They can be used based on preference and interest of the child, encouraging motivation and carryover, all while providing much-needed sensory input.
- 90 outdoor sensory diet activities
- 60 outdoor recess sensory diet activities
- 30 blank sensory diet cards, and 6 sensory challenge cards
- They can be used based on preference and interest of the child, encouraging motivation and carryover, all while providing much-needed sensory input.
- Research tells us that outdoor play improves attention and provides an ideal environment for a calm and alert state, perfect for integration of sensory input.
- Outdoor play provides input from all the senses, allows for movement in all planes, and provides a variety of strengthening components including eccentric, concentric, and isometric muscle contractions.
- Great tool for parents, teachers, AND therapists!
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to create color identification and body part identification game. Write the names of body parts on the colored craft sticks. 
game a feeeew times, we gave our colorful birdhouses to the birds! They are now decorating the trees around our house. we are waiting to see if any birds decide they want to live in a colorfully painted house!
to chop and slice fruit safely.
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for their bright colors.
and have the kids snip little 2 inch pieces. This is fabulous scissor practice. Holding the wiggly yarn while snipping sections encourages bilateral hand coordination that is needed for managing paper and scissors while cutting shapes from paper and worksheets.
, encouraging 1:1 correspondence. Counting items is an important preschool math concept that is used in addition and subtraction in later grades. My first grader often uses counting manipulates as a technique for adding multiple digit addition/subtraction problems and counting too quickly can lead to errors. 
