Skill: Tactile Perception

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

Yarn Painting

Draw a geometric shape or a picture on the paper and fold it in half (i.e. square, pumpkin, a person, butterfly, etc.). Let the child cut out the picture and open the paper.

Cut a piece of yarn (about 6-inch long). Put paint into the container and ask the child to dip one end of the yarn in the paint while holding on to the other end. Instruct the child to place the painted end of the yarn on one side of the paper, at the top. Fold the paper again and tell the child to pull the yarn out, from the bottom.

Open the folded paper, place the painted yarn at the top again, fold the paper, and pull the yarn out. Repeat these steps until the picture is painted.

You can use different colors and cut a piece of yarn for each color the child is using.

Touch and Match

For the purpose of describing the activity, we chose beans and foam sheets. You can use any media you would like to fill up your container (i.e. corn kernels, cotton balls, macaroni, bird’s seeds, send, etc.)and any objects to hide (i.e.buttons, pom-poms, pegs, coins, etc.).

Use the foam sheets and cut pairs of different shapes (you can also use different color sheets and cut a pair of the same shape in each color). Fill up the container with the beans. Hide one shape from each pair inside the container and place the other shape in front of the child.

Have the child dig his hands through the beans and find the matching shapes, taking them out one shape at a time.

Tactile Container

Fill up the plastic container with beans, rice, or sand.

Add coins or beads to the container and mix with the selected container contents.

Ask the child to use his hands and pull out the different objects you hid inside the container.

To grade this activity, you can hide a variety of items in the container and ask the child to sort the items and put them in separate smaller containers.

Sensory Puzzle

Fill the plastic container with rice and/or beans.

Hide the puzzle pieces in the rice/beans mixture.

Have the child search for the pieces using his hands (if the child is tacitly sensitive, you may try to put gloves on his hands or let him use tongs or tweezers).

Once the child has all the pieces, ask the child to put the puzzle together.

Stickplane

Use the wooden sticks or craft sticks as the airplane wings.

Let the child paint or color the sticks with markers and decorate with stickers.

Once sticks are dry, instruct the child to glue on stick at the bottom of the clothespin and one stick at the top.

Using pincer grasp, instruct the child to pinch and open the clothespin while placing the third wing in the middle.

You can have the child glue the middle stick or do not glue the middle wing to allow the child to practice his grasp by removing the middle stick for a two wing airplane model.