We can perceive stimuli with our senses and thus experience our environment. Sensitivity is no coincidence. The accuracy of our perception sometimes depends on how well our senses are trained. This is why sensory experiences should be gained regularly from an early age. Parents and carers can actively contribute to this by offering children different stimuli and giving them time to engage with them. The playground is a good place to promote perception. We explain why this is the case in this article.
Table of contents
- Why should children’s perception be encouraged?
- Promoting perception: What are the human senses?
- Promoting perception in the playground – with examples from eibe
Why should children’s perception be encouraged?
Perception is the basis of all learning. By gathering impressions from our environment, we develop knowledge and form skills. This is especially true for children, because at the beginning of their lives, all impressions are still new. Perception therefore plays a decisive role in cognitive, emotional and social development and should be encouraged as much as possible. For example, hearing and imitating parents’ voices is essential for learning to speak. They use their sense of sight to observe natural phenomena and their sense of touch provides information about their – for example, that water is wet and sand warms up in the sun.
By specifically promoting perception, children can sharpen their senses, expand their general knowledge and discover new interests, which in the long term will help them to become competent and self-confident adults.
Promoting perception: What are the human senses?
Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting – everyone knows the classic five senses. We use them every day, sometimes more and sometimes less consciously. However, we also have senses that help us to cope with everyday life without us realising it, such as our sense of balance. This consists of several individual senses such as spatial perception, vestibular perception – which serves to orientate and balance your own body in space – and the sense of sight. We have summarised the most important senses below for an overview.
The five classic senses
- Sense of sight – visual perception
- Sense of touch – tactile perception
- Sense of hearing – auditory perception
- Sense of smell – olfactory perception
- Sense of taste – gustatory perception
Other senses
- Sense of balance – vestibular perception
- Temperature perception
- Visceral sense/visceroception – perception of internal organs
- Spatial perception/depth perception (proprioception)
Promoting perception in the playground – with examples from eibe
There are many ways to encourage children’s perception. One of the simplest is to take them to the playground. As long as it is well equipped, it offers plenty of sensory impressions for the little ones to engage with. In the following, we use products from the eibe range as examples to show which sensory impressions play equipment can promote.
Visual perception – colours and details
One of the most important sensory perceptions is the sense of sight. It helps us to gather visual information, orientate ourselves and categorise objects, recognise places or people, as well as non-verbal communication in the form of facial expressions and gestures. Attention and a good eye for detail need to be trained just like any other skill. For children, this means that promoting perception from an early age pays off.
In the playground, colourful and detailed play structures can train children’s sense of sight. To do this, they must use shapes, colours and decorative details to arouse children’s interest, invite them to discover and motivate them to take a closer look. If children actively engage with the visual appearance of play equipment, it promotes colour perception and provides an incentive to learn.
Tactile perception – materials and surfaces
Children learn a lot about their environment through touch. In infancy, object play is therefore an important step in the development of play. Children touch objects and feel their surfaces to test their properties. There are numerous materials in the playground that offer great sensorimotor experiences. These typically include:
- wood
- metal
- rope
- sand
- water
- stone
- rubber granulate
If these materials have different surface textures, this results in further stimuli that promote perception. Such surface textures can be, for example:
- smooth
- rough
- grooved
- studded
- braided
- and much more
The temperature of the materials also offers exciting sensory experiences. For example, metal cools and heats up depending on the sunlight and outside temperature. The situation is similar with sand and stone, in contrast to wood, which does not conduct temperatures. The sense of touch therefore also tells children something about the relationship between objects and their environment. It is therefore worth using different materials in the playground.
Please note: This is all about child-safe playground equipment, such as that from eibe. These are made of safe metals that only heat up a little at most. At the height of summer, children should never touch surfaces that are very hot. Parents and teachers have a duty of supervision here.
Children love to get muddy and splash around – which is great. After all, playing with sand and water offers valuable tactile sensory experiences. That’s why a visit to a water playground is worthwhile.
Auditory perception – sound games
A special highlight in the playground are sound games, which not only allow children to get creative with sounds, but also promote their auditory perception. Creating and combining sounds independently trains the sense of hearing and helps children to develop a better sense of rhythm and musical sensitivity. Sound games are available integrated into play systems or free-standing; they can be individual elements, but can also form entire islands of sound in combination with other instruments. Examples of such sound games are:
- xylophones
- chimes
- tone bars with mallets
- skipping stones that produce sounds when stepped on
- music balls
- bongo stations
- steel drums
Sense of balance – balance exercises
The better our sense of balance, the safer we move through life. However, good balance is not innate, it has to be learnt. The playground is an excellent place to promote this type of perception, for example on balancing tracks specially designed for balance training. If these are not available, alternative play equipment can also be used, such as the edge of the sandpit, benches or a seesaw on which children can balance from one end to the other.
