Combining Sensory Input with Learning Activities

When your child has sensory needs, your to-do list grows exponentially.

Suddenly there are books to read, therapies to attend, medical bills to battle, sensory activities to do.

While your children need to get their sensory needs met, there’s still more to life and those things can’t be ignored either.

A child’s education is obviously a priority.

So what if you could multitask a little and get fantastic sensory input WHILE learning?

Scroll to the bottom for a VIDEO demonstration of these sensory tools in action!

A huge thank you to LakiKid for sponsoring this post! This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. 

Four Sensory Input Learning Activities

The following ideas are easily adjustable for different ages and subjects of study. Not only will you be saving time by multitasking, your child will actually learn and retain MORE because of the movement and sensory input! So even if your child doesn’t have a sensory diagnosis, they will benefit from these activities. 

1. Swing Narration

Whenever my son has to do a lot of speaking for a school assignment, I like to have him go on the swings.

We homeschool and instead of tests, we do something called narration, where, after a reading, my son will tell back to me all he remembered from the passage. There are all sorts of advantages to this, but standing still while giving a speech can actually be distracting to him. Instead of forcing him to put most of his focus into being upright and still, I invite him to get some movement and vestibular input by going to the swings in our backyard. His narrations are SO much better when I encourage movement!

Maybe you don’t do narration or homeschool, but you could practice spelling words or rehearse skip counting  while on the swings! Or work on memorization!

2. Sling Shot Sight Words

This next activity was such a hit that my son continued doing it even after the lesson had ended! I taped some sight words up on the wall and gave my son the bouncy bands from LakiKid. I’d call out a word, he’d have to find it, then shoot it.

This sensory activity is easily adaptable for all age levels and school subjects. Ask them math word problems and have multiple answers taped to the wall. Younger kids can do shapes, colors or letter recognition. Older kids can do vocabulary words or history questions.

3. Bounce the Math Facts

I like to get in some gross motor heavy work by doing a simple activity with an exercise ball (we use this one by LakiKid because it doubles as active seating!).

My son raises the large ball above his head and bounces/smashes the ball down as it is bounce-passed to me. Sometimes we go back and forth skip counting, other times spelling words, each taking a letter as we go back and forth.

4. Weighted Drawable Lap Pad

Many sensory parents know the benefits of weighted objects on their child’s proprioceptive system. It helps regulate the brain and improves sensory responses across the board!

LakiKid has come up with an innovated twist on the standard lap pad that is a total game changer! Usually lap pads are ignored in my home because my boys never want to hold still long enough to use them. But this pad can be drawn on!

Using this lap pad with schoolwork is a no brainer. Well, actually it’s a “whole brainer”! We used it for handwriting, math, music practice and while reading.

This is just a TINY sample to get your own juices rolling. The possibilities are endless! Share in the comments below ways that you’ve found to combine learning with sensory activities!

Don’t miss my boys demonstrating some of these ideas PLUS some NEW ones! Play the video below!