While companies like Experia and Fun and Function offer ready made solutions to setting up a sensory room in your home for your child with special needs, these options can often be a bit expensive. Constructing a sensory room on your own may be time consuming and tedious but you will be able to save considerable money and with a little help from family and friends it can actually be a great exercise in bonding.
Make the sensory room fit your budget
You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars building a sensory room, even a few hundred is enough to get you started. You can always add more features and equipment to the room at a later date based on how your special needs homeschool student progresses with the interactive room. Take a look at the ready made tools and equipment and get creative about adapting them into your sensory room by making the parts yourself. Get your more artistically inclined family members and friends to help.
Improvise with material already available at home
You don’t have to buy everything you will be using. In any home there is a considerable junk pile in the garage or in the attic that can be reworked into good equipment for a sensory room. Old mattresses, quilts, pillows, wooden doors, and just about anything that you have lying around can be used in the remodelling for the sensory room. New fabric to cover up the old tears and a few coats of paint can truly transform your waste material into something useful again.
Lighting can change everything
Have different types of lights installed in the sensory room. This will allow you to switch the purpose of the room as well. For an action room get the nice bright tube lights and place all the play equipment in the centre of the room. To convert it into a calm room just clear out the equipment to the side walls and convert the lighting to something softer and diffused. Supervise the actual building of the room and you will be surprised at how many ideas come up even as you begin constructing the room.
