Our entire bodies are covered with touch receptors that sense different types of sensations—pressure, pain, and temperature. Let your children explore their sense of touch with the following activities.
Grab Bag
How good is your child’s sense of touch in helping them identify objects? You will need a box with two small holes cut out, a selection of items in all sizes (cup, spoon, ball, apple, sponge, rock, feather, pine cone, etc.), and socks or rubber gloves.
Step 1: place a few items in the box. Ask your child to put his or her hands inside the box and try to identify the objects from touch alone.
Step 2: now ask them to put socks or rubber gloves on his or her hands and touch the items. See how this changes your success rate.
*By covering your hands, it is harder to tell what you’re touching. This is because you are reducing the amount of tactile information being sent to your brain.
Artist at Work
Can you judge the size, texture, and shape of an object by touch alone? You will need a box with a hole, some objects such as a feather, apple, book, and wallet, and a pencil and paper.
Step 1: Have your child place a hand inside the box and pick an item.
Step 2: With eyes closed, ask your child to feel the object and then sketch the shape and dimensions of the item. Ask him or her to describe the texture of the object, too.
Step 3: Compare the finished drawing with the original item. How accurate was your child?
*We have different types of receptors under our skin. These enable us to find out a lot about an object by touch alone—whether an object is soft or hard, its shape, and how big it is.
Sensitive Touch
This activity demonstrates how some parts of the body are more sensitive than others. You will need a paper clip.
Step 1: Straighten out the paper clip. Then bend it so that the tips are ½ inch apart.
Step 2: Have your child close their eye or look away. Have them run the paper clip from the tip of their index finger, along their palm, and up to their forearm. Could they feel both points of the paper clip on their forearm?
*Our forearms are not as sensitive as out fingers, so it feels as if the points of the paper clip are together—or you might feel only one point.
Do you know of any different types of Brain Games that other members can share with their children? Share examples and you could win a copy of DK’s How to Be a Genius: Your Brain and How to Train It. Comments must be posted by Sunday, October 18th. Gather will draw one respondent to win.
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Comments: 47
for example: topic....professions
a for artist
b for baker
c for custodian etc....
other great topics are foods and animals.
Hearing + memorization: Say a silly sentence with a lot of alliteration before an event like a grocery trip or a trip to church or pretty much anything that you/your child might attend. After the event, have the child repeat the sentence.
An example: Giggling geese flew over my goosebumps and got goofy.
Smell Using a blindfold--I like those winter headbands--have your child smell different scents from your spice cupboard and fridge and identify either the scent or a memory it evokes.
Examples: lemon, cinnamon, pepper, berries, sage, cumin, yeast.
My 4 year old likes to do puzzles and we play rhyme games.
For my youngest we do a lot of touching to see how things feel (hot, cold, soft, hard). And we read lots of books.
As you drive to do errands or whatever, have the kids find the letters of the alphabet on street signs or store signs. They have to take turns and say them in order from A-Z. The catch is that they have to do it in one car trip. We've done this one with license plates also.
They had a big Christmas tree and lots of decorations and tinsel, plus breaks for cookies and eggnog (some of the eggnog didn't have alcohol in it.) With that the game would last for 3-4 hours, taxing the mind on coming up with harder and harder responses, since we had the "no repeat" rule, too.
The nephews and niece have grown-up and have their own children. They're children have the same tradition, now.
We've been doing this for several months now, reviewing the ones we've already done and she can locate the following places on her globe:
USA
Ireland
Mexico
Cuba
Brazil
Peru
Venezuela
Spain
Italy
Australia
Japan
China
Laos
India
Madagascar
Botswana
Kazakhstan
Mongolia
Russia
Chile
Argentina
Poland
Portugal
Norway
Sweden
Czech Republic
Turkey
Egypt
Tanzania
Chad
Sudan
Algeria
Papua New Guinea
Nepal
Mongolia
The Equator
The Atlantic Ocean
France
Uruguay
Ukraine
Somalia
Iran
Ethiopia
Fiji
Saudi Arabia
Canada
..... and more that I can't remember right now. She's not even 3 1/2
Of course, the one thing at the bottom of the list was always the same "something the other teaam isn't likely to find/the most unique thing seen." That almost got us in trouble one autumn when we went up into the mountains to enjoy the foliage. We found a perfectly intact beehive on a limb. I was trying to knock it down with a dead branch, when we heard a low sound. Thankfully, we stopped to figure out what the sound was. That's when I learned bees don't go south for the winter, they merely close up their hives. Good thing. Gave us enough time to get away without them following us. lol
It starts with one person saying, "I'm going to build the entire Eiffel Tower out of..." and finishing the sentence with the name of an object not normally associated with construction, such as basketballs, tootsie rolls, or picture books. The more descriptive you are, the better you're doing. The use of adjectives and adverbs to modify your building materials is encouraged. For instance, building out of shoes is funny, but building out of red polka-dotted clown shoes is even funnier.
The game is an exercise in creative and imaginative thinking, creative visualization, and use of humor. The kids always end up laughing as they visualize the building made out of whatever strange objects they come up with. We don't "win" or "lose" the game, but some building materials are better than others, and we do make sure to give kudos where kudos are due!
The rules by which we usually play are:
1) The material must be something of small or moderate size, no bigger than a microwave oven.
2) The material must not be anything normally used for building, such as bricks or lumber.
3) Each person must come up with something unique... players are not allowed to repeat each other's materials. Once an object is used, another version of that object cannot also be used, but similar objects can. For instance, if Raven "builds the Eiffel Tower out of lime flavored Popsicles, I can't build it out of another flavor of Popsicle, but building it later out of chunky monkey ice cream in cones doesn't break the rules, even though they are both frozen desserts.
Any known building can be substituted for the Eiffel Tower. We've also "built" the White House, our school, Grandma's house, the Nutter Center (a local college's arena,) and the mall.
There's some great ideas posted that I will be trying!
A few ideas off the top of my head....last year I taught 5th grade and decided to teach my students how to do Sudoku puzzles - the kids LOVED them. It's important to start with a basic square of 9 and let them figure out which number is missing, then do the same with a horizontal line, and a vertical line. Finally, put it all together and help them work through a couple puzzles. It might take some patience, but once they get it, it's amazing!
I also have my kids do 'beats and rhythms.' Using claps, snaps, pats, verbal noises, etc. I create a beat for them to repeat. I did it last year with my 5th graders, and do it this year with my 4 year olds! It can be adapted to any age just by changing the length, speed, motion, etc. It's an easy activity to do anywhere, including the car - and I use it often when I need to quiet down my class.
Scavenger hunts are always a big hit. They start with a direction on a piece of paper, which gives a clue to help them find the next piece of paper, and the next, until they reach the 'prize' - whether it's a sticker, toy, or just a congratulatory certificate that I drew.
Rather than having your child just draw a picture or color in a book, try giving them an object to place in front of them, and ask them to draw a picture of it. Having the visual in front of them adds new skills to the task!
We also do a lot of stacking.
drew different objects and asked if they knew what they were. And
all of them knew everything. At nap time/bedtime I would draw with
my finger on their backs, letters of the alphabet not in order. Or draw
simple objects for them to guess and all of them got A's. We would do
a color game, naming things that were red, green, yellow and so on.
We always had a great time doing arithmetic problems they all did so
good with those even at the young ages. I've so many more but need
to get going now, have house work to get done. Living alone is good
but not when it comes to doing all this be myself !! *smiles*
Just Me,
Barbie
My 15 month old's favorite game is to dig in the storage bin we use for Easter things -- we kept it out for her! She takes several Easter themed plastic buckets and sorts the plastic eggs from one bucket to another -- an important skill for this age. We name the colors of the eggs and buckets, we count the eggs as she moves them around.