Tactile Book (My House)

 A tactile book made for a homes project.

The group did not have children with visual impairment but made tactile for interest and would support if there was a child in future.

Scented Playdough

So on a mission tonight to make scented playdough with what I had! Ended up with, coconut and ginger spice, vanilla, peppermint, and in the process came up with what may be a serious time saving new recipe!

I made Coconut playdough using body shop coconut body butter, and this is how I came up with a way of making playdough that I can't believe I hadn't realised before (There are plenty of examples of this method over the internet now I have searched). I simply followed the recipe that I posted a few days ago, but substituted the oil for body butter. In order to ensure I didn't have clumps of butter I boiled the water and added the body butter to that and then added each of the ingredients to that, in order to avert any potential chemical reactions (you never know). When I finally added the flour to my shock it simply got thick very, very quickly and hey presto playdough, no cooking at all. I hope it will keep the same as the cooking, but whatever I will defiantly be using boiling water again.

The coconut dough has turned out a VERY different consistency/ texture, rather crumbly and almost like short crust pastry, I am wondering if the body butter acted like shortening? Who knows?

In order to check that the crumbliness wasn't due to the boiling water method, I made vanilla playdough using the same method but adding the boiling water last (this way children can join in the making and adults simply add water). This time the consistency was not crumbly at all, so must be due to body butter?

The ginger spice one was the basic playdough recipe (on a pan- pre coconut revelation!) and simply adding copious amounts of dried spices, the ginger seemed to turn it the best colour so it has more ginger in!

Lastly pepermint, as above but adding pepermint and blue colouring to preferred strength after cooking, more flour was added to deal with the extra liquid.

OHP Creations

The possibilities of the OHP for creativity are endless and parallel and extend the possibilities of the light boxes that are common place in many preschool environments.

The resources to create "art" with were available on the table the OHP was on these included: string, pipe cleaners, lollypop sticks, colour paddles, cocktail stirrers, colour blocks, magnifying glasses, clear acetates and white board markers.

Given freedom children created some amazing compositions, and here are a couple of them.

There is more explanation on the designs at All Play on Sunday

And there is SO many cool ideas for using lightboxes at Play at Home Mom

Playdough people

Wanting to make playdough that resembled skin skin colour, I decided to add cocoa to the playdough. I haven't ever done this previously but seems to have worked well except the original response of "What is that brown stuff?"

I separated the body pieces into limbs, facial features, hats. This allowed for easier, quicker and thus more thoughtful and imaginative creations.

Oh, on creativity! Did you know kings have four eyes? "Well they do now!"

A rethink on the four eyes creation, the king changed his mind!
And some people even have hands for noses "That is funny isn't it?" Don't you just love little people!!!

More another day on how this developed...

Tea Painting

I've been out of blog world circulation for a while as I have been busy organising my sister's hen party!!! Fun and very creative (been attempting to come up with ways I could add the photos to the genre of the blog). But anyway when thinking of some thank you cards for people who helped saw this wonderful idea at Creature Comforts blog.

Think this would be a fabulous idea for mothers day particularly for children with visual impairment. Obviously you could use bigger cups with no design. You could even enclose a tea bag in envelope.

"There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea." Bernard-Paul Heroux

Odd one out tactile activity

Perfect for kids with vision impairment or simply as a sensory activity. Children feel/ look at the three items and identify the odd one out, sticking a golf tee in the hole below to identify the odd one!!!

"I can see, and this is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a man made world." Helen Keller

Sensory Play

I love sensory play!! (Except Mashed Potato, and possibly tinned peas mashed, if you introduced me to this you know who you are!!!) Anyway, it has so many benefits, to name a few:

• Encourages creativity, there is no particular purpose so motivation, engagement and play is entirely intrinsically motivated and is process driven rather than product.
• Children often feel confident to experiment when there is no obvious adult directed purpose.
• It can be therapeutically engaging, relaxing or releasing aggression (e.g. large amounts of playdough)
• It can help alleviate anxiety around getting messy (including difficulties around eating/ mealtimes) if handled sensitively.
• Encourages imaginative play, so often shaving foam becomes food, spaghetti becomes...
• Teaches children about properties of materials and if children are included in the setting up of several types of sensory play materials e.g. cornflour (cornstarch to American friends) and water, children will learn about changes.
• Supports early communication skills e.g. Ready, steady...splash, requesting more or rejecting as case may be.
• Supports descriptive language development particularly creative, rhyming, onomatopoeic and alliterative vocabulary e.g. squelchy, melchy; squiggly, squirmy, spaghetti.
• But most of all it is inclusive, it engages all at equal levels.

One thing to note though is that some children are defensive to sensory materials this is particularly common in children with Autistic spectrum disorders, visual impairments and specific diagnosis of sensory processing disorders. When children have difficulties in this area it is important to present sensory opportunities sensitively e.g. incorporating interests: Thomas is the snow (shaving foam), presenting in small quantities, providing tools to reduce need to touch in initial stages, supporting child with hand under hand approach (rather than over), presenting messy materials in ziplock bags etc.

Regarding children with severe visual impairment it is important to remember that touch can be their "vision", therefore reticence to engage in messy play can be due to this interfering with their ability get precise touch feedback from thier environment (like fogging up ones glasses when opening the oven). Also their fingers are likely to be extra sensitive, when this is the case start with dry sensory materials and again present in small quantities.

I have created a Sensory Play booklet of ideas, to download Sensory Fun click here.

Preschool Education also have a nice range of ideas (be aware of risk assessing some of the ideas, using common sense).

"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play" Heraclitus (Greek Philosopher)