Tactile Perception - Page 10 of 13

Balance the Beans

Place a container full of beans on one end of the room or the area you work in and an empty container on the other end.

Use the tape to mark a straight line between the two containers. Have the child hold the spoon in one hand (preferably the child’s preferred hand) and ask the child to scoop a spoonful of beans.

Instruct the child to walk on the line that you’ve marked and transferred the beans on his spoon from one side to the other side, placing the beans in the empty container.

Repeat the activity until the empty container is filled with beans.

To provide proprioceptive input, ask the child to use animal walks (i.e. bear walk, crab walk, frog jumps, etc.) to get back to the starting point side (where the container filled with beans is).

You can also mark a curved path or a crooked path with the tape or you can use a balance beam to make the activity more challenging.

For strengthening purpose, you can put a weighted wrist bend on the child’s hand (the one used to hold the spoon).

It’s also fun to do this activity in a group session. Have a spoon rally to see who can fill up the empty container first.

Marshmallow Stamper

Place paint in a shallow bowl or a paper plate. Have the child dip a piece of marshmallow or foam in the paint and stamp it onto the construction paper.

You can let the child create his own picture or if you would like to work on visual-motor skills, you can have the child trace lines, shapes, and letters.

You can use small or big marshmallow for this activity.

For children that tend to place objects in their mouths, you might want to try using Jell-O mixed with a small amount of water and use it as your paint.

Pom pom Bird

For this activity, you will need 3 pom-poms in different sizes. You can use almost any pom-pom color.

Start by instructing the child to cut an oval shape out of the cardboard (length should be about 2″ – 3″).

Glue the large pom-pom (red) to the oval-shaped cardboard. This will be the bird’s body.

Glue the medium pom-pom (red) on top of the large pom-pom. This will be the bird’s head.

Glue the smallest pom-pom (yellow) to the medium pom-pom forming a bird’s beak.

Glue the wiggle eyes above the beak.

Motor Spider

For this activity you will need to use black paint and black pipe cleaners.

To make the spider’s body, help the child use the scissors and cut out two cup sections from an egg carton. Trim to create even edges.

Using the paint brush, let the child paint the bottom of the cups with the black paint. Let the paint dry.

To make the spider’s legs, take four black color pipe cleaners and align them together. Find the middle point by slightly bending the pipe cleaners in half. Straighten the pipe cleaners and attach all pipe cleaners together, by wrapping a piece of tape around the middle of the pipe cleaners.

Once the egg carton cups are dry, stick the middle section of pipe cleaners in the slit between the two cups. If needed, put another small piece of tape to secure the pipe cleaners from falling out.

Instruct the child to slightly spread the spider’s legs and then bend each leg in half, so the spider can stand. Use red or white paint to draw the spider’s eyes, or use googly eyes if available.

Felt Bird

The first step is to cut all the shapes out of the felt. Using a pencil, draw the shapes onto the felt so that you know where to cut. You will need two of each the bird’s body, eyes, wings, and beak.

The bird body can be as detailed or as simple as you would like. For the wings, cut out two heart shapes, and for the beak, two small triangles. For the eyes cut two slightly larger circles out of white felt and two smaller circle out of black felt.

Once all the pieces have been drawn and cut, take a few cotton balls and lay them on top of one of the body pieces.

Place some glue all around the edge of the bird shape and stick the other body piece on top, pressing around the edges so that the cotton balls are in the middle, creating stuffing.

Stick the two wing shapes on either side of the body.

On the head of the bird, first stick a white circle on each side of the head, then on top of this, stick the black circles.

Take the beak shapes and stick these on the front of the bird. You will need to stick the two beak pieces to each other as well as the head of the bird.