![]() ![]() The next step for the child who loves “color by numbers” style tactile play has to be creative craft beads. Challenge your child by inventing their own tessellation designs. Speaking of artwork with shapes, grab a bag of wooden pattern blocks and design cards to let your child follow a pattern and create designs. Magnetic interlocking pieces in a variety of shapes let kids construct 3-D structures or create patterns and artwork. Plus, these magnetic construction tiles introduce mathematical thinking through geometric shapes. Magnetic building tiles are the definition of awesome for the builder and designer in your child. Go beyond the typical jigsaw and cube style manipulative puzzles to test your child’s concrete reasoning skills. ![]() Brain teaser manipulative games present another kind of puzzle that come in all kinds of shapes and allow for continual experimentation as a child learns through trial and error to complete the task. You can find some with your child’s favorite characters so they can access prior knowledge to visualize the completed puzzle. Kids who find traditional jigsaw puzzles a breeze will further develop their strategic thinking as they consider how to interlock pieces to form the 3-D object. Manipulative puzzles really test your child’s thinking if you go for the latest three dimensional types that demand some serious problem solving. They may even find that disconnected play is more fun and less stressful than those video games they can’t live without. So what to do if you want to introduce more tactile experiences to your child’s playtime? Take some time to scout out the low tech options out there for preschool and elementary age kids. These activities give you a chance to see which of a child’s multiple intelligences, as defined by Howard Gardner. Even more exciting is the potential for craft play to turn into an imaginative experience for kids who want to use their newly designed Play-Doh cave to house the noodle animals they made yesterday. This is also the time for child-directed craft play as well and nothing is better than a kindergartener armed with pom-poms, glitter glue, finger paints, or foam shapes. Think squishy, sticky, splashy! We’re talking squishy play as with Play-Doh or putty, as well as splashy play with a sensory bin filled with objects a child can grab using a pair of tongs or spoons to scoop items out. Playtime for pre-kindergarten and elementary school means bringing out the big guns to keep your child’s hands busy and brain stimulated. The wonderful thing about a tactile approach to play is that parents can give a child unstructured time to play with the right tools.I mean.toys and kids create the fun. A little creativity can infuse a regular daily activity with tactile innovation. Telling a story with puppets can bring their ideas to life in a way just writing or talking cannot. Math problems using candies or small manipulatives give children ways to interact with real live math so they can have a firm grasp on the numbers. Kids who develop gross motor skills as toddlers transition well when their fine motor skills become more important as they enter elementary school.īecause tactile and sensory experiences can improve mathematical reasoning and allow kids to visualize better, give kids a chance to use manipulatives to figure things out. Nudging your kid to develop gross motor skills like running, jumping, and catching as toddlers makes it easier for them to learn harder tasks. ![]() Parents who work to keep smartphones and tech gadgets out of children’s hands can offer kids alternative tactile approaches to learning. Tactile learners need activity, movement, and the chance to use their senses while learning and the need for tactile learning ramps up when kids reach the preschool and elementary ages. We need to do a better job to encourage tactile experiences since it’s central to how we are programmed to learn and comes at the expense of time spent with gadgets. I get it, and it is totally appropriate at times, but what if the experiences we create for kids actually don’t ask kids to use their sense of touch enough? Especially since smartphones and devices have infiltrated the parenting world, tactile learning receives less and less attention. Sit in the hallway of any elementary or middle school long enough and you’ll hear a teacher instruct a student to “keep your hands to yourself.” It’s such a common direction delivered without thinking that advises kids to respect others by not touching everything or everyone in sight. ![]()
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