Sensory Activities for 5-Year-Olds

Set up a slime lab where your child measures, mixes, and experiments with different slime recipes — part chemistry experiment, part tactile paradise.

Build an indoor obstacle course with textured stations — bubble wrap, foam pads, wet towels, rice bins — for a barefoot adventure through different surfaces.

Set out mixed materials — cotton balls, pebbles, pasta, pom poms — and sort them by texture into labeled compartments. Touch, feel, then sort.

Assemble a personalized toolkit of fidget and sensory items — stress balls, textured rings, putty, and more — for calm-down and focus moments.

Fill pairs of opaque jars with matching hidden materials — beans, bells, cotton — and challenge your child to match pairs by shaking, smelling, and hefting.

Paint with scented gelatin mixes to create scratch-and-sniff art cards — once dry, scratching the surface releases bright fruity aromas.

Make batches of scented playdough — chocolate, lemon, peppermint — and let your child run a pretend bakery, shaping cookies and cakes that smell amazing.

Draw with glue, sprinkle salt, then touch liquid watercolor to watch color creep along the salt lines — a magical sensory art technique with stunning results.

Cut a hole in a box, hide objects inside, and challenge your child to identify each one by touch alone — a thrilling sensory guessing game.

Set up pots, pans, and utensils outside and let your child cook with mud, water, leaves, and sticks — a preschool classic for messy sensory fun.

Mix iron filings into sand and drag a magnet underneath to create mesmerizing moving spikes and patterns — science and sensory combined.

Mix cream and sugar in a small bag, nestle it in ice and salt in a big bag, then shake hard — a cold, physical sensory experience that ends in ice cream.

Mix baking soda, citric acid, and essential oils to mold fizzy bath bombs — your child makes them, then watches them fizz and dissolve in the tub.

Fill a bin with glowing water beads, fluorescent paint, and a black light for a neon sensory experience your child will never forget.

Layer cotton balls, glitter, and colored water in a bottle to create a swirling galaxy your child can shake, tilt, and watch settle — calming and beautiful.

Make ultra-fluffy slime with shaving cream and glue — your child will stretch, fold, poke, and squish this cloud-like sensory material for ages.

Line up cups of colored vinegar and drop baking soda bombs in for a chain of fizzy, colorful eruptions — a visual and tactile science spectacular.

Mound colored baking soda on a tray and squeeze vinegar over it — the fizzing, bubbling reaction is a multi-sensory science experience.

Sculpt a volcano from wet sand, pour in baking soda and vinegar, and watch it erupt — a dramatic sensory science activity kids beg to repeat.

Build tiny structures on a gelatin slab and shake the tray to simulate an earthquake — a jiggly, hands-on way to learn about building and force.

Fill balloons with flour, rice, or playdough to make squishy stress balls your child can squeeze whenever they need to calm down or keep hands busy.

Build a rain stick from a cardboard tube, nails, and rice — tilt it back and forth to hear the soothing sound of cascading rain inside.

Fill zip bags with hair gel and primary-colored paint, then squish and blend to discover secondary colors — a mess-free color science lab.

Mix flour and baby oil to make moldable moon sand that crumbles apart and packs back together — a unique texture your child can sculpt for hours.

Make homemade playdough with lavender essential oil — your child kneads, rolls, and shapes while the soothing scent turns play time into calm time.

Make butter slime with clay and glue for a spreadable, moldable texture unlike anything else — your child will knead, sculpt, and spread this all afternoon.

Blindfold your child and offer bites of different foods — sweet, sour, salty, bitter — for a taste-focused sensory experience and vocabulary builder.

Walk barefoot across grass, sand, mud, gravel, and leaves on a backyard sensory trail — a full-body texture adventure for adventurous kids.

Make four batches of playdough scented with coffee, cinnamon, rose, and mint — your child sculpts while learning to identify and describe scents.

Press leaves, shells, and sticks into clay to create fossil-like impressions. Kids explore textures, patterns, and how real fossils form.

Spread shaving cream on a table for drawing, writing, and squishy sensory play.

Spread sand in a tray and trace letters or shapes with fingers.

Fill jars with different scents and guess what each one is — a nose exploration game.

Mix cornstarch and water to make oobleck — it's solid when squeezed, liquid when released.

Blindfold and taste different foods, describing flavors: sweet, salty, sour, crunchy.

Make real ice cream by shaking bags of milk and ice. Delicious science that kids can eat.

Cook a simple recipe together. Kids learn math, reading, sequencing, and life skills in the kitchen.