7 of The Best Sensory Toys for Kids’ Play Time

Toys weren’t just made to clutter your home. Sensory toys instill children with loads of valuable skills.

By Stacey Feintuch January 14, 2021

Your house may look like a toy store. Still, not all those toys filling your playroom are created equally. Some offer more benefits than others. Sensory toys for kids are ones that help stimulate young kids’ senses and engage them with textures, colors, and sounds. Sensory play holds an important role in growth. It helps promote problem-solving skills, fine-motor skills, gross-motor skills, and brain development.

Sensory play is how your child makes sense of the world. That’s why it’s helpful to offer them the ability to engage in sensory play. Here are some of the best toys for sensory play.

Bumpy Ball

Just about every child loves playing with balls. This isn’t your typical ball though, boasting colors, pattens, and bumps. The patterns and contrasting colors help baby focus, strengthening vision. The bumps promote motor skills like reaching, grasping, and transferring from one hand to the other. The rattle sounds create neural connections in baby’s brains.

sensory toys for kids

Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog

Kids can build fine motor skills, as well as counting, color, and pattern recognition when playing with this colorful hedgehog. It comes with 12 chunky, easy-to-grasp, peg-shaped quills that fit into numbered holes. The colorful quills help develop sorting and counting skills plus color recognition. sensory toys for toddlers

Laugh & Learn Smart Stages Chair

This magical seat knows when your little munchkin sits and activates sounds when he stands. Press the light-up remote control, or flip the book’s pages and he’ll hear numbers and see shapes. It offers more than 50 sing-along songs, phrases, and tunes. It even includes technology, so the content changes as your baby grows. The toy will help teach him numbers, shapes, colors, words, and more.

sensory toys for children

Kinetic Sand Beach Sand Playset

You don’t have to be at the beach to build sandcastles. Construct them anywhere with this kinetic beach sand. Unlike classic kinetic sand, kinetic beach sand is made with larger grains of natural sand, so it feels just like wet beach sand and flows through hands without sticking. Plus, it easily molds and won’t dry out. Kids can build sandcastles, towers, walls, bridges, and more. The sand tools build fine motor skills as kids cut, dig, rake, and shovel.

sensory toys for kids

Toddler Busy Board

Designed for kids by parents, this sensory board features ties, buckles, and buttons. The buckles and buttons have varying difficulty levels, making them suitable for various developmental levels. Plus, the soft felt-covered wood board is small and light enough for travel in a car or airplane.

best sensory toys

Sensory Shaker Musical Toy

Baby will go gaga for this rattle that delights all her senses. The jellyfish responds to baby’s movements and puts on a color-changing light show. Introduce your little one to reimagined classical melodies. Textured rope “tentacles” promote baby’s tactile development. Plus, its light weight and small size make it ideal for on-the-go fun.

sensory toys for kids

Sand and Water Table

Introduce kids to new textures, sights, temperatures, and sounds with this sand and water play toy. Splashing, for example, gets kids using their senses as they explore. They can see, hear, and feel something new with every movement. Here, one side of the table holds sand for digging, molding, and playing. The other side of the table is for water where kids can soak, squeeze, or float their toys.