How to awaken the senses?
As children grow, they seek to better understand the world around them. Growing up is a process of exploration and mastery of themselves and their environment.
As a parent, you can help your toddler to develop. How can you do this? By inviting them to use their five senses.
Why work on the five senses?
The primary aim of multisensory pedagogy is to develop and awaken the five senses in the child. The perceptual channels are the starting point for everything. Child discover the world through their five senses. They are what link us to others. It is through them that we are connected to reality. But it is also by using them that we can develop our intuition, innovate and improve our creativity
Sharpening the senses has a positive impact. Children can then live their lives more fully! This is one of the missions of “5 senses for kids Foundation“.
But how can we sharpen our senses?
Advice from neuroscientists to awaken the 5 senses
Stimulating the child is undoubtedly beneficial. However, it is not the quantity of sensory experiences that matters. Overstimulation can even be tiring for the toddler. What works is to stimulate the sensory abilities in a varied way.
Our brain is less interested in what is constant. Instead, it is particularly interested in what is changing. It detects changes.
This principle also applies to the sense of smell (PELLEGRINO, R et al – August 2017). When we enter a room with a particular smell, we notice it. Then, very quickly, we get used to it. The constant olfactory information disappears. Thus, the brain can maintain a level of detection of new things at very low thresholds. It eliminates everything that doesn’t change and concentrates on what does change.
It is therefore important to offer children variety to sharpen the senses.
You get them to smell a new smell or taste a new food. In this way, you will enable him to discover more things, to increase his range of perception.
You can play songs from all over the world to stimulate hearing. You can have them touch sand, ice, silk to develop their sense of smell and feel touch. For the sense of smell, you can gather olive oil, lavender and spices..
“5 senses for kids Foundation” recommends that you provide rich sensory experiences throughout your child’s first 1,000 days, when brain plasticity is at its peak. He or she will benefit from a greater openness to the world.
And the best way to conduct these experiences is through play.
Scientific bibliography :
The influence of emotions and the role of play
To cultivate and develop sensations, create games with your toddler. The notion of shared pleasure is fundamental to learning.
When the senses are awakened, the infant receives a multitude of sensory information. How do you know what to focus on? How do we determine what is important and what is not?
We sort out information by the value we place on it. But it is our emotions that give value to this or that data. Emotionally neutral things are the ones that will fade away first. And those that generate strong positive emotions or strong negative emotions are the ones that are most deeply imprinted on us.
In other words, emotion offers more effective memorization.
The best way to educate is therefore to make a moment a playful experience. But why is play so important? Because games allow you to teach in a positive way. There is social interaction and fun.
Positive emotion is a powerful driver.
Emotion is like a carrier wave. If the parent is enjoying showing the child a book, showing the child something or cooking with the child, the child will enjoy it.
Emotions provide pleasant sensory information
Facing the infinity of the world, emotion is central to learning and interaction with things. And children begin to awaken with their parents.
Through the dimension of pleasure, parents contribute to putting a value label on things for their child. They will indicate: “this is positive, we can get closer to it”. “This is negative, you can move away from it”. These feelings of security greatly enhance the child’s learning