great therapy ideas: sensory room page 2

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each from Premier Lighting & Production Co. Click on the Product Sales, then “C” for Curtains. You’ll find them under Curtains, Decorator.

I also installed a suspended swing I purchased from Southpaw Enterprises. There are several ways to install suspended swings, but basically you need an eye hook made out of forged steel. Because I have especially high ceilings, I had to buy some supplemental accessories, which cost me several hundred dollars, not to mention the cost of the swing.

If the smell of freshly baked bread enlivens your sense of smell, imagine an entire room that appeals to each of your primary senses.

Built with bubble tubes, smell boxes, relaxing music, light walls and mirrored balls, multi-sensory rooms are designed to promote awareness and positive behaviors in children with learning and developmental disabilities.

The idea is to gently stimulate the primary senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell in a trusting and pleasurable environment so that children feel free to relax, explore and express themselves.

Lesley Haigh, an occupational therapist at one of the first large-scale multi-sensory rooms in the United Kingdom, describes their benefits this way: "The stressed are relaxing, the silent are speaking and the withdrawn are coming out of themselves."

Increasingly, multi-sensory rooms are gaining in popularity across the United States and other parts of the world, including Asia and Africa, but the majority of them are still in Europe where the movement began.

To learn more, flip back the calendar to the 1970s. "Soft play" was beginning to take off in the United Kingdom. At that

time, Ad Verheul, a Dutch psychologist, took note of these soft-play environments filled with flouncy cushions and cushy mats and blocks, and began to introduce other elements — visual effects, smell, music and taste.

His efforts to create relaxing and interactive environments marked the birth of multi-sensory rooms. He later called the concept Snoezelen (pronounced snooze-lin), a blending of two Dutch words meaning to "sniff" and to "doze."

By the mid-'70s, Snoezelen rooms began to grow in popularity, thanks to another movement — Disco. Disco was instrumental in promoting multi-sensory rooms because it spurred the production of a wide variety of sensory equipment, namely projectors and sound-to-light activated lighting.

For more on the history of multi-sensory rooms, see the Hirstwood Training site. This site also describes the three main types of sensory rooms and some of the more popular equipment used in them.

Low-cost Solutions for Building A Sensory Room

Disco Spurred Sensory Movement