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You are here: Home / Fine Motor Activities / Sensory Tactile Boards

Sensory Tactile Boards

March 17, 2016 by Amy Smith

Sensory tactile boards provide a sensory experience for your child that may help to calm or soothe them when feeling anxious, or could arouse them when feeling sluggish through the sense of touch. This activity works because while the child is touching the texture, the tactile input elicits a body response such as calming or awakening.

Learn how to make a sensory tactile board with various textures to help your child calm or soothe themselves

Each sensory tactile board will look and feel different as they are supposed to be tailored to your child’s unique sensory needs and preferences. Generally, rougher textures like burlap, sandpaper, and velcro elicits more of an awakening or alerting response.

Sensory Tactile Board

Softer textures like cotton, felt, yarn, and foam textures elicit a calming response. Try various textures out with your child to determine which ones he likes best. After the textures are selected, cut them out into various shapes and transform them into these sensory tactile board flowers. You may even want to check out the great deals from Writey as they offer whiteboard paint which is another texture that can be used to create smooth whiteboard walls that can be drawn and scribbled on, then simply wiped away.

Sensory tactile board

This activity can be used in a wide variety of different ways with all sorts of children to address many different learning concepts. Here are some ideas…

1. Use with kids who are tactile defensive – These flowers are welcoming and non-threatening and can provide a safe experience for a child who struggles with touching new types of textures.

sensory tactile boards

2.Use with kids who are learning about texture concepts- This project is a convenient way to have a wide variety of descriptive texture concepts such as rough, prickly, bumpy, or soft to help illustrate what those words mean.

DSCN4977 (2)

3. Use with kids who need tactile mediums for calming strategies– Quite often, children use tactile mediums to help them cope with anxiety, stress, anger, or frustration. Sometimes, children use destructive tactile mediums such as picking at their skin, scabs, clothes, nails, hair, or ripping up papers to manage those anxious feelings. This project allows for kids to handle a tactile medium but in a healthier, more appropriate manner.

Sensory Tactile Board

4. Tape this to your students’ desks- As mentioned above, many kids need a tactile medium to help them manage their stress and anxiety, and some will resort to using whatever is closest and most readily available (like picking at their skin, nails, clothes, hair, etc…). Tape this project to the student’s desk (you can even tape it underneath the desktop so its out of the way but still readily available) to give the student a chance to manage their stress and anxiety in a healthier manner.

Sensory tactile board

5. Use this with kids who need to improve cutting skills or fine motor strength- Have the child cut out the various textures because it will require more fine motor strength than cutting out traditional paper. Also have the child squeeze a glue bottle to get the flowers to stick onto the page to develop fine motor strength.

Sensory Tactile Boards

Project Construction *You can use any types of mediums for the flowers. I used soft felt, rough burlap (from an old wall paper sample), yarn, fine sandpaper, crumpled up tissue paper, and spongy foam (for the bird). Some other ideas are cotton balls, feathers, bubble wrap, and aluminum foil.

What did you use in yours? Leave me a comment to let me know!

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Filed Under: Fine Motor Activities, Sensory Regulation, Therapist's Tips Tagged With: fine motor activities, sensory regulation activities

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Disclaimer

Kids Play Smarter is a blog about general ideas, theories, and concepts related to the field of occupational therapy and the growth and development of all children. The information presented on this blog is not intended to serve as or replace occupational therapy services for your child. The information on this blog is for entertainment, informational, and educational purposes only. This blog is not meant to replace formal professional consultation or evaluation from a qualified clinician. All children need to have the approval of a physician to participate in physical activities, including those described on this blog. In addition, children need to be supervised by a responsible adult at ALL times when completing activities that are illustrated and described on this blog. The author of this blog is NOT responsible or liable for any damage, injury, accident, illness, death, or adverse reaction due to participation in the activities described on the website.

Welcome to Kids Play Smarter

Amy Smith I am an occupational therapist with over 10 years of experience working with children. I created this website to offer parents, teachers, and therapists FREE ideas, strategies, and activities that they can do with their children to improve their fine and gross motor skills, handwriting, academic learning, and regulate their sensory system all while "playing" (just playing smarter)! Read More…

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