The five senses: Touch

First.... a shot of my messy boy!

Various slimes/goops/dough is great for experencing the sense of touch.

Gluten Free Playdough:

1/2 cup rice flour (you can use regular flour instead)

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup salt

2tsp cream of tarter

1 TBS oil

1 cup of water

Cook in a saucepan on medium until it forms a ball, let cool and kneed

Another dough:

1 cup cornstarch

2 cups baking soda

1.5 cups water

cook until it looks like mashed potatoes, let cool, kneed. This can also be rolled thin and baked in a cool oven for an hour or so to make things like ornaments. Has a different texture than most playdough.

Gak (pictured)

8oz of elmers glue

1/2 cup water

1tsp of borax

Mix water and borax, add glue and stir/kneed well. pour off extra liquid.

Oobleck

cornstarch

water

start with a bunch of cornstarch, slowly add water stirring as you go (it will end up about 1/2 water, 1/2 cornstarch), when you stirr slow it will feel like liquid, but if you move fast, its like a solid!

Here is Landis and Levi fingerpainting! Great for both touch and sight (and a mess)

Finger paint:

3 cups water

1 cup cornstarch

Put in a saucepan on medium heat, bring to a simmer and cook until thickened (it will thicken more as it cools, add water as nessisary and stir often while it cools), color as disired (food coloring, kool-aid packet, add a little bit of kid friendly paint...)

Sensory box ideas:

- shredded paper (Levi likes this one!)

- sand

- moon sand

- lentils

- beans

- coffee grounds

- dirt/mud

- ice

- water

- packing peanuts (use the cornstarch ones only, not the styrafoam)

- buttons

- leaves

- rice (you can color it if you want)

- pasta

- shaving cream

- straws cut into small lengths

- bird seed

- polymer crystals and water (from the garden store)

First 'sample' meeting

At our first meeting, I planned all of the activities just to give everyone an idea as to how things could work.

This one is a ‘crab craft’ project:

Materials:
Paper plates
Red or orange paint/paintbrushes
Pre-cut strips of paper (legs)
Google eyes or round stickers (eyes)
Stapler
White Glue (I put this in a small paper cup w/a popsicle stick, this makes it easy for the kids to spread)

What to do:
1. fold paper plate in half
2. paint the outside (back of plate)
3. glue legs to the inside (top) of the plate, on one half – 4 legs on each side
4. fold again and staple shut
5. add eyes



Other activites included:
'the fishing game' with magnetic fishing poles/paper fish, the kids counted the fish as they caught them.
Rice box - colored rice with sea animals hidden inside, the kids found the animals and matches them to pictures of real sea animals, they LOVED playing in the rice, it was almost worth the mess it made!

We also always have lots of books for the kids to look at!