[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Chrissy Mack from Radio Northern Beaches and you've just tuned in to the Listen and Chat with Chrissy Mack podcast. This is the space where we pull no punches, sometimes a little controversial, sometimes downright outrageous and sometimes just packed full of information that is interesting to know. Listeners today I have in the studio with me Kayla Cunneen and she is from Sensory Inspired.
[00:00:24] Recently we had a playground interview and we're going still back into the sensory and learning systems of children with Kayla. So welcome Kayla to Radio Northern Beaches. Thank you Christine, thanks for having me here. My background is over 20 years in childcare and I've seen over the years lack of ability from children to build on their fine motor.
[00:00:50] My recent group of children really struggle with grips and touching, tactile things like that. So from that I decided that I would start off this small little business to build up in the community and expose more families about the benefits of sensory play and what that looks like. And why we do it and that children actually enjoy it but at the same time they're learning.
[00:01:16] Exactly. So children learn by experience, by feeling, by touching. They're so wrapped up in cotton ball at the moment that they're not learning and we're seeing a lot of difficulties develop. So tell us about how you get them to learn and what you give them, how your business works and how it benefits these children. So my business gets down to the gritty, the messy play, the stuff the parents don't really want to do at home and I bring that to them.
[00:01:43] So whether that might be at a park or at their home, whatever that looks like for the particular parent or what they expose to. But getting them back to the old traditional when I was growing up to get more tactile play embedded in their daily lives. Getting them messy, allowing them to feel and touch and taste and create using their imagination. Which is something that I've also noticed over the years is a lack of that coming through.
[00:02:13] So my business helps to build that and I do try to stay as natural as possible with my products. So what sort of things do you use? I use naturally stuff like clay is one of my favourite resources that I use. Natural woods, I stem away from all the plastics and those sort of toys because I believe wood is quite a sustainable source. I do get my wood very sustainable from a local business as well.
[00:02:41] And I use taste safe products. So it would be something like adding a bit of lemon into the flour and the water and the oil. Changing it from vegetable oil to coconut oil. Using rice but coloured and I reused it. So also keeping very sustainable as well. I reuse the products when it's safe to do so. Potion play is my most popular activity. And that's just a basic science experiment.
[00:03:10] But the children learn so much from that. So explain that one. How do they do it? What do you use? So what they do is they have a product called bicarb soda. And it's something you'd use in the kitchen or cooking or cleaning product. Very red wolf available from the supermarket. You can stick that with some vinegar and it creates like a chemical reaction where it explodes. Oh cool. The children just love it. We add colour to it.
[00:03:37] We add a mecha powder that makes it all sparkly and moves around in the water and stuff like that. So it's really interesting to see their hands and bodies move through the feeling and touching and feeling of the product. While it's exploding and then they add more and then they're pouring and they're scooping and their fingers are grasping that spoon or that little pipette back and forth. And it's just, it's measuring, it's mass, it's relativity, it's everything.
[00:04:06] So it's great for their learning as well. So tell me a little bit about some of the best reactions you've got from some of the kids. The best reactions are that they're so curious about what happens. So they ask why is it doing that. So I explain to them about how the chemicals in each of the thing react to it or what they create in it. So one of them was going, oh, look, this is my, wow, look at it. It's exploding. It's bubbling.
[00:04:36] It's doing this. I'm making a frog potion and they hand it off to their parent and go, you have to drink this. You're going to turn into a frog. Oh, how awesome. What an imagination. So it creates a lot of imagination in them as well. Yeah. Okay. What about the other types of play? How do they experience that? What are the reactions you get from the kids? The other stuff is like messy. So they're like, oh, my hand's sticky. My hand's gooey now. What am I going to do? How am I going to fix that? So I'll offer a tub of water on the side where they can fix that.
[00:05:05] Or they just really get into it and they squish it and they mold it. And they're like, I'm making a snowman or I'm making a lizard. And they stretch it out and they pull it and they rub it. They mold it with their hands back and forth by rolling. And they turn it into a game. Sometimes they have their two little clay monsters walking with each other. They might add. So sometimes I offer sticks, pebbles that sit on the table and they add eyes to it.
[00:05:33] It's just anything that's naturally there for them to pick up. And then they turn it into lizards, dinosaurs, dragons, all sorts of fun. It really gets not only their creativity happening, but also their imagination. Correct. And they're learning tactile things as well. So again, as you say, the volume can be masked. You know, there's different learnings. Yeah. It's great for the neurodiverse as well. That really helps them.
[00:06:02] Some neurodiverse children don't like a lot of sensory play. The more they're exposed to it, the more they get used to it slowly and always offering them an alternative if they have had enough that they have an option to then wash their hands or wipe it off. Some people have not heard this term. So can you explain that to them? So neurodiversity is one of my other passions. Over 20 years, I've noticed an increase in the industry of childcare.
[00:06:28] Neurodiversity stems from someone with ASD, which is autism spectrum disorder and ADHD in both forms of the hyper side or the lower side, which is a concentration or also unable to benefit from sitting still for too long. So they need a lot of things like brain breaks or sensory input, calm corners, which is a tent or a calmer area where they can go and deregulate from their emotions or they're
[00:06:55] on a high, which is like they're too much sensory input is coming into their body. And they don't cope. And they don't cope. So they tend to either go hypo and they might be lashing out at another child because they can't regulate that emotion. So then they need to come down from that, which means they need a calmer area to come down or some quiet space where they can express those emotions, but in a safe way away from other children. Okay. So that's a really good explanation. Thanks for that.
[00:07:24] So if you're going to put something together for a particular group, first of all, how do they contact you? What age groups do you cover? And then how do they organise it? Best contact is through my website or Instagram account, which is www.sensorinspiredmessyplay.com.au. Or once you reach that site, there is a link to click onto my Instagram. All my details on there, my mobile number, which is 0433 750283.
[00:07:53] Or email me at sensoryinspired24 at gmail.com. What do you put together when you go out? Anything. I can DIY packages for any particular thing. I have a DIY package that works very well. If you'd be interested in that, where that's you come and collect it, I put the products together and then you set it up. Most popular one is I Come To You and I set up anything from Elsa. Or I also had a birthday party, which was about the Gruffalo child.
[00:08:23] And that was all a bit of a tea party with lots of messy mud, taste safe mud. Taste safe mud. That sounds really interesting. Which was very, very popular with the children. And we do some play groups, which I'm going to start up very soon on a Monday. So you do themes. How many different themes do you have? At the moment, I have probably about four different themes. And they are?
[00:08:50] So the themes are Elsa, Dinosaur World or Reptiles. Kids love dinosaurs and they love reptiles. And you've got the Gruffalo. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, that sounds really interesting. It sounds like the kids have a lot of fun. They sure do. There's also quite a few other themes that you can have a look through on my Instagram page, which might give you some ideas of if you want something a bit different. Kayla, it's been absolutely wonderful talking to you. It's a very interesting project you've got happening there.
[00:09:19] And I know the kids are going to really love it. Kindergarten and the young age group love to get into those sort of things. And I think it's just so much fun getting dirty for a start. But what age group do you go up to? Well, at the moment, I've got to five. But my 10-year-old daughter, she is in love with it when she plays the potions. So I would really like to hopefully get into some more schools, school-aged children.
[00:09:43] I'm sure she's 10, but I would hope for them to experience a bit more at the incursions that way through Woosh and also any local businesses that just want to have a little bit of extra family time. I'd also like to eventually get into some family activities that are around, such as little local pubs that might be interested in a little play group happening while their parents are entertained elsewhere.
[00:10:12] That sounds like a really good idea. It's been great talking to you. Thank you for coming in. And we'll get in touch with you again sometime to talk about some of the particular groups that you've had. And we'll talk about what sort of reactions you get. Thank you so much for having me, Christine. Don't forget to follow, like and share. Stay safe and I'll catch you next time. Bye.