Be Creative
The arts have a massive part to play in Sense Scotland’s work. Be prompted to nurture your natural creativity with these activities.
Be Creative
The arts have a massive part to play in Sense Scotland's work. Be prompted to nurture your natural creativity with these activities.
Be Creative
The arts have a massive part to play in Sense Scotland’s work. Be prompted to nurture your natural creativity with these activities.
Selina Squirrel and the Colours of Autumn
Autumn is here, and Selina is welcoming all the new colours on the trees that the season brings. Read a brand new colourful story with Selina and her friends here.
Selina Squirrel celebrates Easter
Selina Squirrel and her friends are back! This time, they’re celebrating Easter with an all-new sensory story. Take a look here.
We’ve also got a range of Spring-related activities for you to try out. Why not check out our themed Makaton bingo, Match The Pairs game, or our Draw The Line game?
Selina Squirrel celebrates World Book Day
Selina Squirrel and her friends are celebrating World Book Day with an all new story about reading.
Join Selina and her friends Henrietta Hedgehog and Tommy Squirrel as they bring their favourite books on an adventure.
Selina Squirrel celebrates Chinese New Year
Selina Squirrel and her friends are back with a new story all about Chinese New Year.
We’ve also created animal bingo, using Makaton signs, featuring some of the characters from the story and a sheet to help you work out which animal sign you are. Find the bingo board game here.
Selina Squirrel and the Christmas presents (Sensory Story)
This is the story of Selina Squirrel and her friends at Christmas. Watch the video, read along and learn the signs in Makaton, as Selina and her friends prepare for Christmas.
You can use some everyday items from your house to talk with your child about the story, as you read it together or afterward.
Improve your sound
We’re being more and more involved in acivities online, which means we need to sort out our sound!
Sense Scotland, PAMIS and Sound Lab have joined forces to provide top tips to help you improve the experience, no matter which device you’re using. Download the PDF here.
Nature Cards
Nature cards are an interesting way to explore the outdoors.
Take Bingo on the go, with hand drawn or printed things you find in nature and add a bit of spice, communication and joint attention to your daily walks.
Sensory Bottles
Got lots of plastic bottles? Want to reuse the things you usually recycle? Sensory bottles are a creative way to reuse things you’d usually get rid of.
Fill with water, glitter, and sensory items to create simple sensory toys, that can also provide calming proprieties.
Keep for in the house to use in stories, rhyme time or as part of a chill out routine. Or take on the go to aid in stressful situations out in the community.Take Bingo on the go, with hand drawn or printed things you find in nature and add a bit of spice, communication and joint attention to your daily walks.
Easter Cakes
Happy Easter! Join Lesley as she shows you how to make simple Easter Cakes. Chocolate, cornflakes, and mini eggs.
Celebrate Easter with these yummy, chocolatey, good treats.
Homemade Bird Feeders
Spring has sprung with lots of flowers and new born animals all around. This includes more birds in your garden or when you are out on walks.
Jayne shows you how to make a bird feeder that you can use to feed these new visitors.
Shaving Foam Print Eggs
It’s almost Easter, so put an egg on the boil whilst Jayne talks you through this fun activity to make colourful eggs using either paper or the real thing. This is a great activity for visual stimulation and a sensory squish of the foam.
Paper Mache Egg Decorations
Make your own Easter Decorations with this paper Mache egg making!
Grab the glue, the paper and get creating. A fun way to explore Easter and brighten up your own with your own creations!
Handprint Mother's Day Card
With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday we thought we would show you some simple and easy cards to make at home.
Make them for friends, family, mothers, fathers. Whoever you wish to thank.
Simple Mother’s Day Card
With Mother’s Day coming up this Sunday we thought we would show you some simple and easy cards to make at home.
Make them for friends, family, mothers, fathers. Whoever you wish to thank.
What’s In The Box?
What’s in the box? What’s in the box? Knock, knock, knock. What’s in the box?
A great way to explore senses and rhyme, build trust, anticipation and can be used for stories, songs and rewards.
Making Pancakes
It is Pancake Tuesday, and in traditional fashion we thought we would share some pancake recipes with you.
First we have a traditional pancake recipe.
Second we have a sugar free recipe for a healthier option.
Get mixing and flipping!
Chinese New Year Activities
Today is Chinese New Year and it is the Year of the Ox.
This resource has different links to some fun activities which will allow you to celebrate Chinese New Year in the home and with some fun art.
Drip Painting
Drip painting is a fun way to enjoy painting in an active way. Set this up inside with plenty of paper or take it outside to have more space.
Watch the bottles spin, and see what patterns you can make!
Tartan Painting
It is Burns’ night and this is a really fun activity for all the family.
Simply grab some paint and a toy car or bus and get creating your own tartan with this Tartan Painting idea.
Tin Can Wind Chimes
Wind chimes can be a fun and relaxing activity, all made with recyclable material.
Decorate however you wish, and either place outside, use in a sensory room, or find the best spot where it will help you relax.
Homemade Garage
A Homemade Garage allows you to have fun with any toy vehicles you have. This personalised garage helps explore fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and sorting by size, colour or type.
Penguin Print Picture
Looking for an idea for making Christmas cards, or even just a cute keepsake? Then we have the idea for you.
Penguin feet prints is a fun way to create a Christmas picture, whilst having a sensory experience.
Bubble Wrap Painting
We thought it was time to share a really fantastic activity – bubble wrap painting.
Not only is it fun and easy to do, you can make it winter-themed, use greens, reds, add glitter, sprinkle tinsel! Take it outside to enjoy the fresh, crisp air, do it with wooly socks on, or wellie boots.
Pom Poms
Pom Poms are a fun sensory item that can be used in many different activities.
Here we show you how to make your own Pom Poms, just keep your eyes peeled for the activities to follow!
Homemade Advent Calendar
With Advent just around the corner we have a fun homemade Advent Calendar you can make.
Make it as sensory as you want, with tinsel, lights, glitter, bells, fill in Santa’s beard and count down the days to Christmas.
Stop Motion Studio
Stop Motion Studio is an free app on Apple products, that allows you to create your own stop motion movies, create characters, make the movie then sit back and enjoy it.
Share with friends and family too!
Spooky Hands
Continuing on our Halloween theme this week, this next activity allows for some spooky fun!
Spooky Hands are a fun and sensory experience, that allows you to explore Halloween and sense at the same time. Add creepy critters, pumpkin seeds, spooky ghosts.
Firework Painting
With Halloween approaching, we though we would share some fun activities to do in the home this Halloween season.
Today we are sharing Firework Painting, do for Halloween or save it for the 5th of November!
Travel Sensory Bags
Travel Sensory bags are a great tool to have. Take them on holiday, to school, or just out and about.
Add all your favourite sensory items to take with you anywhere. Allowing you to enjoy sensory activities anywhere and everywhere!
Sensory Story: The Hungry Caterpillar
Sensory Stories are a great way to make reading accessible. Making it fun, sensory and immersive.
The Hungry Caterpillar is well known, we have shown how to turn it into a sensory story. A good guide for how to turn any story into a sensory story!
Sensory Umbrella
Sensory Umbrellas provide a fun, and different way for sensory exploration.
Using things connected to the umbrella, paint or water you can create a sensory environment that can be explored on the floor, sitting, or outdoors.
Singing Fingers
Singing Fingers is an app for Apple products (£0.99).
Use your fingers to paint a pattern and make music as you go. Encourages fine motor skills, creativity, and vocalisations.
Dundee Science Centre: Shaving Foam Planets
Dundee Science Centre have made a wonderful, fun video. Exploring planets through shaving foam painting.
Space has never been so fun!
Dropophone
Dropophone is a free app that allows you to produce simple, and beautiful tunes.
Tap the rain drops to make a 6 second tune, mixing them all together. Allows you to explore music, in a simple yet fun manner.
Fluffy Dough
Make a fun sticky slime like dough, adding different scents can make it become a great sensory exploration task. The texture of this dough is soft, and fluffy and can be relaxing to play with. Keep it up to a week in an air tight container (in the fridge is best) to keep the fun going.
Bloom
Use this apple based app (£3.99) to create dynamic atmospheric sound and colour scapes with these Brian Eno inspired apps.
Great when used with tablets, and iPad. And, if you have one, it works well with a projector.
Thumbjam
Recreate a myriad of instruments from ‘Hang-Drum’ to Tabla to Theremin to Banjo using high-quality samples. This app (£8.99) allows users who have limited movements achieve great results. Record and sample vocalisations and map them across a scale – great for singing, and extending non verbal vocalisations.
Beatsa box
In this short film Mathew, from our Sensatronic Lab team, demonstrates our invention, the ‘Beatsa Box’ a musical percussion instrument created with a few simple electronic components and a cardboard box.
Bebot
This friendly robot character fronts a polyphonic synthesiser with a set of presets guaranteed to engage users. Bebot is a £1.99 app (Apple only) and is a hit with our Sensatronic Lab team and people we support. The iPad screen is used as a playing surface, making easy access.
Beatmaker
Don’t you love it when you try something and it just works? Beatmaker allows you to make your own music quickly and simply as you choose from colour coded sound samples to create your own dance beats.
Make your own instruments
Want to play music at home but don’t have any instruments?
Or just bored and want to try something new?
Don’t worry. Libby from our Sensatronic Lab shows you how to make instruments at home! Now let’s get jamming…
Typedrummer
Create your own drum sample beats, simply by using your phone text-keys or computer keyboard! Typedrummer is so simple and fun it can keep you amused for hours.
Sensatronic Lab – Demo of Free Apps
Our Sensatronic Lab folks have put together a quick video demo of the ‘Speak Up‘, ‘Speak Up-2’, ‘CineVox’ and ‘Mica’ Apps. Music tutor Jacklyn guides you through what they all do.
Glasgow Science Centre
Glasgow Science Centre has some videos and a virtual classroom for any aspiring boffins. Turn your living room in to a lab of exploration.
VisitScotland
If you could be anywhere in Scotland right now, where would you be? Thanks to VisitScotland’s link to live webcams you can see what’s happening in Millport on the west coast, on the Pentland Hills in the east or Eilean Donan Castle in the Highlands. There’s also a fab section with cameras pointed at wildlife hot spots – the squirrel cam is recommended.
Sensatronic Lab Website App
We have created our own simple app on the intro page of our Sensatronic Lab website.
Click on the link , then on opening the Yellow intro-page, see icon on right side labelled ‘Play Me’
Clicking on this opens the audio-visual, interactive app, where the user can control a variety of sound-loops by clicking on each square panel and also control corresponding visual patterns.
STEM stars
This Facebook page from STEM Stars UK gives ideas for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) activity sessions for babies through to primary school aged children.
