What is a Sensory Diet?

A Sensory Diet means adding simple sensory or movement activities to your child's day to help provide their sensory systems with the sensations they need to stay calm, focused and happy. These activities, most of which provide 'proprioceptive input' (deep pressure/heavy muscle work) help to calm over-active or anxious kids down, and for those kids who are needing to be on the move constantly, help to fill their 'sensory tanks' up. There are many ideas you can include, but here are some simple ones that are easy to include in your day at home.

• Give your child a tight squeeze inside their duvet, wrapping them up into a tight 'hotdog'
• Wheelbarrow or crab walk (or do any animal walk) to the bathroom or kitchen
• Trampoline jumps before leaving for school
• Carry heavy objects to breakfast table e.g. Milk, or tray of plates/ cereal
• Pack crunchy and chewy lunch box snacks: biltong, dried fruit, carrots, as well as thick smoothies to suck up with a straw.
• Carry school bag on back
• Let your child help with cooking - cutting, mixing, mashing, grating, squeezing etc all involve proprioceptive input
• Let your child help with shopping by pushing a kids trolley (Spar and Builders Warehouse) 
• Let your child help carry the grocery bags inside
• A few Kids Yoga poses can provide a quick but very effective sensory top-up to the movement and proprioceptive systems.
• Gardening involves sensory rich tasks- digging, carrying watering can, pressing soil down.
• Include Swinging and jungle gym time
• Blow bubbles in the garden
• Draw with chalk on the driveway or patio, and squirt off with water in a squirt bottle
• Use blowing toys in the bath, such as straws and water flutes. This provides proprioceptive sensations to the mouth, great for kids who need to chew on things, and for fussy eaters.

More ideas from our Pinterest Board:

Follow Child Integration Centre's board Smart Sensory Strategies on Pinterest.

By Lisa Barrett