Resource

Sensory Spiders™

Create a Sensory Spider™ to notice sensory patterns, understand everyday experiences, and support more thoughtful next steps.

Sensory Spiders™ are visual tools from The Sensory Project that help people, families, therapists and schools understand sensory integration and processing patterns through co-produced, participation-focused conversations.

Sensory Spiders™ help us notice sensory patterns, make sense together, and support participation with care. A simple visual tool for children, adults, families, schools and therapists.

Created by Occupational Therapist Kathryn Smith and taught across the UK and Ireland since 2003, these are a simple, visual way to notice sensory patterns, support shared understanding, and open up co-production of solutions and conversations about participation.

We are all sensory beings.

Every person experiences the world through their body, brain, relationships and environment. Sometimes those experiences feel organised, steady and supportive. At other times, they may feel confused, overwhelmed, exhausted, or hard to put into words.

Sensory Spiders™ were created to help people notice and talk about sensory integration and processing patterns in a clear, visual and person-centred way.

They are not about labelling a person.

Watch: Making a Sensory Spider™

They are about making sense together.

A Sensory Spider™ can help a person, family, therapist, teacher or support team explore how different sensory systems may be contributing to everyday experiences, including attention, movement, emotional safety, communication, sleep, eating, learning, relationships and participation.

What is a Sensory Spider™?

A Sensory Spider™ is a visual mapping tool.

It helps us explore how a person may experience input from different sensory systems, including:

• visual
• auditory
• tactile
• vestibular
• proprioceptive
• interoception
• taste
• smell

The spider or other shape like a flower or star helps us see patterns at a glance. It can show where sensory input may feel too much, too little, confusing, seeking, avoiding, or simply different depending on the person, activity, environment and relationships around them.

The aim is not to create a fixed score.

The aim is to support curiosity, conversation and co-produced understanding.

Why Sensory Spiders™ matter

People often know that something feels hard before they can explain why.

A child may avoid the dinner hall.

A teenager may shut down after a busy corridor.

An adult may feel exhausted after meetings, shopping or social events.

A person in crisis may not be able to describe what is happening inside their body, but their body is already telling a story.

Sensory Spiders™ help us slow down and ask better questions.

What is the person sensing?

What is the environment asking of them?

What activity is becoming difficult?

What relational response would support safety, dignity and participation?

This links closely with the PEAR TREE™ Lens.

PEAR helps us think about:

• Person
• Environment
• Activity
• Relational response

TREE helps us act with care through:

• Triage
• Relationships – Infrastructure and intenionality
• Embodied Evaluation
• Ethical Choice

Together, these ideas help us move away from “What is wrong?” and towards “What is happening, what matters, and what support makes sense now?”

Who are Sensory Spiders™ for?

Sensory Spiders™ can be used with children, young people and adults.

They may be helpful in:

• homes
• schools
• clinics
• mental health services
• learning disability services
• neurodiversity-affirming practice
• community settings
• care planning
• staff training
• therapy conversations
• family support
• reasonable adjustment planning

They can support people who are autistic, have ADHD, experience anxiety, trauma, learning disability, developmental coordination difficulties, sensory integration differences, or simply want better language for understanding their body and everyday participation.

A diagnosis is not needed. A person’s lived experience is enough reason to listen.

How Sensory Spiders™ support participation

Sensory Spiders™ help us connect sensory patterns with real life.

Rather than stopping at “this person is sensitive to sound” or “this person seeks movement”, we can ask:

How does this affect learning?

How does this affect sleep?

How does this affect being with other people?

How does this affect eating, dressing, travelling, working or playing?

How does this affect the person’s sense of safety?

How does the relational response around the person make things easier or harder?

This is important because sensory support should never be reduced to a list of strategies.

Good sensory-informed support is thoughtful, relational and responsive. It respects the person’s voice, culture, preferences, body, identity and environment.

How to use Sensory Spiders™ and Sensory Ladders® together

Sensory Spiders™ and Sensory Ladders® can work beautifully together.

A Sensory Spider™ helps us notice sensory patterns across the different sensory systems.

A Sensory Ladder® helps us understand changing states, energy, alertness, stress, shutdown, readiness and participation across the day.

Together, they can help people and teams understand:

• what is happening
• what it feels like
• what helps
• what makes things harder
• what the person wants others to notice
• what support is needed at the right time

This creates shared language that is practical, respectful and easier to use in everyday life.

Sensory Ladders for Families

Sensory Spiders™ can help families notice patterns without blame.

They can help explain why a child may manage in one place but not another, why transitions are hard, why food, clothing, noise, movement or sleep may feel complicated, and why connection matters before correction.

They can also help families share information with schools, therapists and support teams in a way that feels clear and grounded in real life.

For schools

In schools, Sensory Spiders™ can help staff understand that behaviour is communication, but also that communication is embodied.

A child’s body may be showing us that something is too loud, too fast, too unpredictable, too still, too confusing, or too much.

Used well, Sensory Spiders™ can support reasonable adjustments, classroom planning, movement opportunities, relational safety, transitions and better participation across the school day.

For therapists and practitioners

For therapists, Sensory Spiders™ can support clinical reasoning, formulation, co-production and communication with families and teams.

They do not replace skilled assessment.

They can support therapists to organise observations, listen to lived experience, frame sensory integration and processing patterns, and make recommendations that are meaningful, ethical and participation-focused.

They are especially useful when linked with the PEAR TREE™ Lens, Sensory Ladders®, Sensory Grids™ and wider Ayres Sensory Integration® reasoning.

How to make a Sensory Spider™

• Start with curiosity.
• Choose the sensory systems you want to explore.
• Talk with the person, or with people who know them well.
• Notice what happens across different activities and environments.
• Map the sensory systems visually.
• Look for patterns.
• Ask what helps.
• Ask what feels respectful.
• Agree small, practical changes.
• Review together.

A Sensory Spider™ should feel like a shared conversation, not a test.

Download a Sensory Spider™ template

Explore Sensory Ladders®

Learn about the PEAR TREE™ Lens

Join a workshop

Sensory Spiders™ | Visual sensory pattern tool for participation and support