Engaging children in sensory play is vital for them to develop an understanding of their immediate environment and the world around them.
One of Helping Paul's first projects in Ghana was creating a sensory room for children with special needs who were living in a Children’s Home. These children are not currently attending school and therefore this is a place where these children could go to feel safe and calm and to provide them with various learning and developmental opportunities.
Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates the senses: touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Sensory exploration is a child's way of examining, discovering, categorising and making sense of the world. Multi Sensory Environments offer people with cognitive impairments and other challenging conditions the opportunity to enjoy and control a variety of sensory experiences.
Sensory Rooms
Helping Paul has visited different establishments to build sensory rooms to benefit children with special needs. We provide training to their care givers or teachers to use sensory activities and play to aid the child's development and improve their quality of life.
Garden City Special School
Garden City Special School is one of the only school's outside of Accra (Ghana's capital) that is specialised for children with special needs. Therefore, a lot of children with special needs attend this school and it is largely oversubscribed. This school has children with a range of disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, and many who display Sensory Processing Disorder.
Helping Paul were able to build this school a high tech sensory room, thank you to the kind support of CEDA. CEDA is a charitable organisation in Exeter who work with children with special needs. They kindly donated sensory equipment from their old sensory room, this included two sets of fibre optic lights and a bubble tube.
The sensory room is built within the main school area and will be added as a daily part of the children's routines. When I was in Ghana I went to the school and worked with the teachers to give a range of training and examples on how to use the sensory room to benefit the children. The school were really excited about being able to use the sensory room and the children will benefit greatly from this stimuation.
