Car Wash Sensory Play

Blog
Written By Ashley Thurn

So, let me introduce you to your new best friend, Car Wash Sensory Play. Your kids are going to eat it up! Not to mention keep themselves thoroughly occupied for at least an hour.

Here’s how to play:

You and your kiddos line-up all the toy cars in the household, spray them all over with shaving cream, fill up a sensory bin with water and a little blue dye for some extra pzazz and give them some old toothbrushes to help “scrub the cars squeaky clean”. They brush them off with their toothbrush and them dip them in the “soapy” water to get them rinsed off before lining them up to dry.

There are three primary objectives in this fun outdoor game:

  1. To squeeze in some messy tactile sensory play: Messy tactile input is important for so many reasons! To stimulate the tactile senses in a fun way, to decrease or eliminate any hypersensitivity to touch or textures which can impact a whole number of things (the most important being future acceptance of new food textures), to increase awareness of the hands and body and to let kids realize its OKAY to get their hands messy. If your little has an absolute meltdown when their hands get messy, this might be a good activity to try with them. Having a barrier between the hands and the shaving cream (the toothbrushes) help for those who are hesitant to touch the messy texture.

  2. To promote imaginative and parallel play (side by side play) with siblings

  3. To get kids outside!

    The greatest part is you probably have ALL of the items you need to play this game laying around somewhere in your house. Isn’t it cool that its the simplest things in life that keep kids busy and their brains working? (some of my favorites are old boxes, tissue paper, tape, shaving cream, empty water bottles and old containers, just to name a few)

So what are you waiting for?? Go put on your mom pants on and get ready to G E T M E S S Y!

**Clearly we did this outside so I could spray them down with a hose when we were done :)

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

  • Large container for water

  • Toy cars

  • Shaving cream

  • Old toothbrushes

  • Food dye (optional)

Ashley Thurn

Ashley Is a pediatric Occupational Therapist based in Miami Florida and is more importantly a wife and a mother of two amazing kids.  Ashley has a Master's degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Florida and specializes in normal and delayed childhood development, fine motor skills, handwriting, picky eating/food aversions, childhood nutrition, sensory processing and autism spectrum disorders.  

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