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Sensory Inspiration!

Ideas to Stimulate the Tactile System

(Touch)

Arts & crafts are excellent tactile activities: explore paints, glitter glues, foamy soap/shaving cream, clay, sand, wood shavings, shredded paper, water, playdoh and different textured fabrics and material. 

Listening to meditation teaches calmness, and develops understanding of thoughts, feelings and emotions helping to build confidence.

 

A quick online search will open a library of free meditations, suiting a range of audiences.

 

Young children can visit secret treehouses, meet sleepy sloths, or go on magic carpet rides. Teenagers can explore the cosmos, meet their spirit animal, or enjoy a relaxing body scan.

Explore dried foods such as lentils, pasta, pulses, and rice.

Explore items that provide good sensory feedback with a range of textures: bristly, bobbled, bubbly, bumpy, bushy, carved, chunky, coarse, cold, corrugated, carved, damp, distended, downy, dry, elastic, enamelled, engraved, etched, flat, feathery, flaky, fleecy, fluffy, foamy, frothy, furled, furry, gravelly, gritty, grainy, glossy, gooey, grooved, hard, hairy, icy, indented, knitted, knobbly, limp, malleable, matte, metallic, moist, mosaic, mushy, padded, patterned, pitted, plastic, pleated, pliable, pointed, polished, prickly, puffy, ribbed, ridged, rough, rubbery, runny, sandy, shaped, shiny, silky, sleek, slimy, slippery, smooth, smudged, soapy, soft, spongy, springy, stiff, stodgy, stubby, syrupy, tickly, tingly, tweedy, viscous, velvety, warm, wet wooden, woolly, woven.

Provide the use of hand fidget toys, give a blanket wrap, massage with or without cream and explore the use of body brushes.

Baking is tactile: knead dough, make pastry, cake mix and batter mix. 

Tip! if the individual is touch sensitive, offer the use of lightweight gloves or provide a tool e.g., a paintbrush to create a barrier.

Ideas to Stimulate Vision

Track and locate moving stimuli such as light from torches and watching the movement of spinning tops, fidget spinners, spinning handheld lights, bubbles.

Explore kaleidoscopes.

Watch the movement of wax in lava lamps.

Make a projector.

Cover one end of a cardboard tube with cellophane, draw an image/shape onto the cellophane then shine the torch through the open end projecting the image onto a lap tray, the wall, floor, or ceiling.

Stimulate the visual system by presenting familiar and new visual stimuli.

Explore colour hues, shiny, bright, brilliant, cloudy, colourful, dark, dim, dull, flickering, fuzzy, gleaming, glistening, glowing, hazy, sparkly, shadowy, pale, rippling, shimmering, shiny, translucent.

Stimulate the Auditory System

(Listen)

Listen to bubbles pop and to the sounds of nature