Skill: Tactile Perception

Tactile Perception (sometimes referred to as touch perception) is the brain’s ability to understand (perceive) what the hands are feeling.

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.

Fish Bowl

Download and print the fish bowl and fish templates.

For this activity use green yarn or tissue paper.

Ask the child to color the images.

Instruct the child to cut out the fish bowl and fish images.

If child has difficulties cutting, provide thicker lines/boundaries. For the fish image, you can outline the picture/draw a circle or a square around to grade down.

Glue the fish bowl on a piece of construction paper.

Use the sand and instruct the child to glue it at the bottom of the bowl.

Have the child glue the fish into the bowl. Using the string of yarn of pieces of tissue paper, create the seaweed and glue into bowl.

Paper Roll Sheep

Cut out an oval for the head of the sheep from the construction paper using the scissors.

The oval should be about half the length of the toilet roll tube.

Stick masking tape on the underside of the head and stick onto the inside of the tube. Then put some on the top of the head and onto the top of the tube.

Paint the head using black paint and stick on the wiggle eyes.

Take the masking tape and stick two of the sticks on each side of the tube to create legs.

Cover the tube in glue and stick on the cotton balls.

Egg Carton Fish

Using the scissors, carefully cut around each egg cup, so that you are left with half a ball shape.

You will need three eggs cups for each fish, so cut as many as you would like, depending on how many fish you are planning to make.

Take the paint and the paintbrush and paint the fish.

When the paint is dry, use the glue to stick two of the egg cups together edge to edge, to create a whole ball shape.

Take the third egg cup and turn it around, stick it end to end with the ball. It should now start to look like a fish. Then wait for the glue to dry.

Once the glue is dry, stick on the wiggle eyes onto the front of the fish.

Take the paper and cut two small triangles out for each fish. The paper can be any color that you would like, or it could match the color of the fish. These will be the fins.

Stick one fin each side of the fish.