More sensory activities, and today, I wanted to focus on the sense of touch.

This is a simple activity that takes hardly any time for you to set up. Take a cloth or canvas bag (not a plastic or transparent one ), and fill with a variety of things that you can find around the house – toy cars, nuts, spoons, an apple, a stone or pebble from your yard, pine cones etc. Your child should be familiar with all the things in the bag, and should be able to name each without difficulty.

Ask your child to close her eyes, put her hand inside the bag, grab an object, and guess what it is.

As it gets easier for her to identify objects, increase the difficulty of the items – playing dice, coins etc. Increase the variety of tactile experiences for her – include satin and velvet ribbons, a feather, glass beads or small jars, small pom poms, a bell, a shoe brush.

Another activity is to have pairs of different fabrics – silk, velvet, cotton, plaid, corduroy and wool and mix them up in a basket. Ask your child to close her eyes, pick up a patch of fabric and find the other one that feels just like it. It’s not always easy, but once she gets more familiar with the difference in sensation when she touches silk and wool, she’ll be able to match more accurately. This is a great activity because she uses her sense of touch and her thinking powers to match fabrics.

Another touch activity - Sit in the yard or out in the open, and ask your child to close her eyes. Rub different objects one by one on her arm – a dry leaf, a stone, feather - and ask her to guess what they are.

Have fun!