The Sensory Aware Early Years Toolkit

Sensory wellbeing is central to everything in the early years. This practical toolkit helps you understand how sensory experiences impact young children’s ability to play, learn and connect, and turn that understanding into everyday action, across your whole setting. Written for busy early years teams, the book accessibly explains the eight senses and shows how sensory profiles can look very different for each child or adult practitioner.

With everything you need to create a setting where all children feel safe, regulated, and ready to learn and thrive, it:

• Helps you spot when behaviour is really a child communicating, “this feels too much”, or “I need more”.
• Encourages the reader to explore their own sensory preferences and triggers, because regulated adults create regulated spaces.
• Is packed with resources, including a self-assessment tool and audit, universal and targeted strategies, and suggestions for tweaks to the environment.
• Provides realistic, easy-to-implement next steps that can be adapted for different settings.
• Supports staff with their own sensory wellbeing.

Whether you’re a key worker, room leader, SENCO or nursery manager, this book will help you embed sensory inclusion into your routines, culture, training and leadership, without needing to be a sensory expert. A companion to the bestselling Becoming a Sensory Aware School, this book brings the same clarity, compassion and practical wisdom to the early years sector.