The Best Sensory Development Toys For Babies

From the moment they are born, children use their five senses to explore and understand the world around them and is an important part of early childhood development. Providing ‘sensory play’ opportunities for children to use their senses is vital.

According to occupational therapist Sally Fitzgerald, engaging babies in sensory play, “helps to build nerve connection in the brain's pathways.” These pathways boost your baby's ability to complete complex learning tasks.

By stimulating your child's senses, you are helping their creative, social, emotional cognitive, linguistic and physical development, simply by playing with them!

So What is Sensory Play?

Sensory play is much more than picking things up and feeling the texture of an object.

It includes any activity that stimulates a young child sense of sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste and includes movement and balance.

The Benefits of Sensory Play

1. It stimulates brain growth and cognitive development.
2. It increases fine motor and gross motor skills.
3. It promotes creativity and self-discovery.
4. It builds nerve connections that boost your baby's ability to complete complex learning tasks.
5. It supports baby's play and language skills.
6. It can help calm your child.
7. It encourages your child to learn a range of sensory attributes.

How to Create Sensory Play at Home

Engaging your baby in sensory play can be as simple as playing with water, exploring plastic kitchen utensils or playing with rattles. You could also get hands-on and create DIY sensory experiences for your child.

Here are our personal favourite picks for the best sensory toys of 2018.

Baby Quiet Books

Baby quiet books are a great interactive soft toy for the early cognitive development of your child, as they flick through the colourful and interactive pages and learn. They are soft, lightweight and colourfully designed to help your baby develop their sense of touch, sight and hearing, as well as speech development when they are a little older.

Baby Maracas

Bring some musical fun to their toy box with these fun Maracas. These basic musical instruments are a great tool in sensory play, stimulating the majority of the baby's senses and helping to assist with hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

Baby Cot Toy

A fun interactive padding toy for your baby's cot. The mirror helps your baby learn how to focus, track images, and explore the wonderful things a face can do and to promote social development. The different fabrics help develop your baby's sense of touch.

Plush Baby Rattle Balls 

The bright circle design is easy for Bub to grab onto, and the high contrast colours and patterns are designed to help stimulate visual tracking in young babies.

City Roads Playmat 

This brightly coloured play mat will spark baby's visual sensory development!

Interactive Shape Playstation 

Providing hours of fun and stimulating play for toddlers as they explore the variety of activities. An ideal multi-functional toy for toddlers with different sides of activity learning to improve fine motor skills.

Beads Coaster 

A colourful coaster that will provide hours of fun and educational play, promote hand-eye coordination, help to build visual tracking, colour recognition and fine motor skills.

Wind-Up Turtle Bath Toy 

Bub will love splashing and playing with their new Turtle Bath toy. The little turtle will swim forward in the water providing hours of fun for Bub as well as improving their cognitive development.

Animals Baby Play Gym/Developing Mat 

This MamaDada baby play gym is very educational for inquisitive learning babies. It includes interactive soft musical toys, different textures for developing their sense of touch and bright colours to keep your baby engaged and entertained.

For more sensory and development products, explore our toy collection