Collection: Teacher’s Take On Doodle Hog Craft’s Sensory Kit In The Classroom

My name is Elizabeth Gogolin, and I have been a first-grade teacher in the St. Cloud, Minnesota area for the past two years. Teaching first grade has been such a rewarding experience for me. My students are like sponges and are constantly absorbing everything! Because sensory learning is extremely important in any early childhood classroom, I was eager to see how a craft sensory kit could help them.

Students use their senses in order to engage, explore and learn. At this age, six- and seven-year-olds are working on developing their fine motor skills, which is an important aspect to incorporate in the classroom.

An example of this is learning to write or hold and use a pencil consistently. There are many muscles in fingers and wrists that are required for writing. Oftentimes, when students complain about their hand hurting after a writing task, it means they need some more fine motor skill development!

In addition to fine motor skills, students in first grade are learning to regulate emotions as well. Taking a sensory break and allowing students to clear their brain and focus on a task teaches them valuable life skills in regulating their emotions. I have a few students who struggle greatly when it comes to learning time and staying focused. The pipe cleaners are a great, simple fidget for students that are not invasive to student learning time.

The sensory kit has a lot of great options listed, which my students thoroughly enjoyed doing in the classroom. Some of these include sorting colors, sorting shapes, playing I Spy, and much more! It was such a great idea to use rice in addition to the objects in the sensory kit. Students would enjoy writing words or letters in the rice as well.

We used the sensory kit in our classroom as an indoor recess option for students. During free time, they enjoyed being creative and building materials or finding new ways to use the sensory objects. Some of my students used the beads and pipe cleaners to make jewelry pieces! For learning time, we used the sensory kit during our shape unit in small groups in order to sort shapes by their sizes and number of sides. The sensory kit has also been used for students to sort objects by their texture. My students’ favorite activity was playing I Spy. We used a box of rice in the container and hid items in the grains of rice. I had them use clothespins and tweezers in order to grab and pinch different shapes. The clothespins are helpful in students working on their fine motor skills. Additionally, the lacing in the kit is also a great way for students to work on building these skills as well. As first graders are learning to tie their shoes, the lacing cards are also valuable in helping teach life skills related to shoe-tying too!

As an educator, my students and I agree. We loved using Doodle Hog’s Sensory Kit! It was definitely made with kids in mind. I am so glad to have implemented this kit in my classroom. - Elizabeth Gogolin, first grade teacher