In recreational spaces, soft play equipment serves as a safe medium for children to exercise their physical abilities while engaging in social interactions with their peers. While these benefits of soft play translate to its application in multi-sensory environments, soft play equipment promotes the development of many core skills that children with autism, ADHD, and other learning difficulties might otherwise struggle to gain. In this article, we will discuss some of the benefits of soft play activities, while highlighting sensory products from the Experia range that target specific skill development.
From
improving your users’ motor skills through dynamic and precise movement
activities to encouraging social interaction between multiple simultaneous
users, sensory soft play equipment can be employed in various ways to nurture
different types of sensorimotor development. These include:
The
cushioned foam and durable vinyl fabric that covers each piece of sensory soft
play equipment in our range heightens the safety of these sensory products
while reassuring your users that they will be protected in the event of a fall.
This is crucial to encouraging the development of gross motor skills,
especially in children or adults with physical difficulties such as cerebral palsy, or who struggle with spatial
awareness due to conditions like dyspraxia.
Lining
the surfaces of your soft play room with floor pads and wall pads gives your users the freedom
to navigate the space without fear of injuring themselves, while our custom
soft play solutions allow you to create obstacles designed to challenge their
existing gross motor skills. For an interactive sensory experience, your users
can change the colors or sounds being emitted by any of the products in our IRiS Wireless range by standing on the
corresponding colored section of the IRiS Balance Beam. This allows them to explore cause and effect while strengthening their balance.
Much
like wooden building blocks, smaller pieces of soft play sensory equipment
require precision movements in order to rotate, stack, or place them in their
desired position. This engages the smaller muscles in the fingers, hands, and
wrists of the user, strengthening their fine motor skills while the smooth
vinyl fabric provides pleasant tactile feedback.
At
Experia, we recognize the potential to incorporate this fine motor activity
within the immersive experience of our sensory room packages, combining innovative
gyroscopic technology with an unassuming soft play block to produce our
flagship IRiS Qube controller. By rotating,
flipping, or throwing the IRiS Qube, your users can manipulate any IRiS
compatible products in your space, the colors or sounds produced matching the
upwards-facing segment of the soft play block.
While
much of our soft play sensory equipment has been designed to motivate physical
movement, there are several products in our range that promote stillness and calm in their users. The plush
quality and generous dimensions of the LED fiber optic softie invite users to sit or sprawl on it while
they interact with the integrated fiber optic strands. Handling and
watching the slowly color changing fiber optics allows users to soothe
themselves, regulating their emotions while strengthening their concentration
skills.
Much
like our other custom soft play solutions, we offer an IRiS fiber optic softie that can be paired with any
of the IRiS Talker controllers produced by
Experia, such that your users can freely switch the colors of the fiber optics
to increase or minimize the amount of visual stimulation they receive. The
colored buttons that dot the soft walls of our interactive ball pool similarly give their users
the ability to manipulate their surroundings, the integrated LED lights
diffusing through the clear ball pool balls to immerse the user in their
preferred color.
Populating
your sensory room with varied soft play equipment encourages unstructured
exploration of space, stimulating the prefrontal cortex of the brain and
supporting the cognitive development of younger users. The sense of autonomy
experienced by users, as they move freely from one sensory activity to the
next, is encapsulated by many of our interactive wall panels, particularly the IRiS soundboard. By connecting the soundboard
with the IRiS Qube or your users’ preferred controller, they can elicit sounds
and illuminate images of their choosing, simultaneously engaging the tactile,
auditory, and visual centers of their brain.
Depending
on the coloring of your custom soft play equipment or the themes you project onto the walls or ceilings,
you can facilitate different role-playing scenarios between multiple users
within the space. From swashbuckling escapades to intergalactic adventures, our
effect wheels will transport your users to
fantastical landscapes, encouraging them to create characters and stories with
others within the space.
For
less confident users, the cushioned platform that surrounds the interactive LED bubble tube corner serves as an inviting seating
area for multiple users to bask in the gentle glow of the central bubble tube. The soft buttons embedded in
the platform encourage users to take it in turns to change the color of the
lights, facilitating communication between users without the need for
vocalization.
Explore Our Sensory Soft Play
Equipment Collection
We
hope this article has brought your attention to some of the sensory benefits of
soft play and that we have inspired you to integrate our soft play equipment
into your own sensory room. For guidance on how to create a soft play sensory room in your school or healthcare facility, or more information about
any of the sensory play equipment mentioned in this article, please get in touch with us today or arrange your
free room design consultation via our online
form.
