Name of Activity
Dining Preparation and Touch
Sensory Related Skills
The sensory-related skill that the children acquire from the tactile learning activity includes fine motor, pincer grasping.
Learning Objective
- To enhance the development of fine motor and grasping skills.
- To help learners differentiate between different and identify food through texture and temperature.
- For children to be able to acquire individual experience through learning (Hong et al. 2020).
- To achieve emotional regulation of children through affectionate touch (Cekaite & Bergnehr, 2018).
- To encourage a competency-based curriculum which involves a partnership between the teacher and learners (Nair et al. 2020).
Materials Needed
The materials needed for this activity include water, cooked pasta, margarine, and coconut. The other set of materials will include liquid soap and a towel (serviette). In addition, the teacher will need tools, including a small driller, hammer, and utensils (bowls and cups). The teacher can ask the parents to provide their children with some of the items when bringing them to school.
Description of Activity
The teacher will group learners into sets of four or six children and make them sit around a table. Each table will have bowls containing warm water, cold water, margarine, and a whole coconut. The teacher will then instruct all the children to hold a person’s hand so that they are in pairs of two within their small groups. The next instruction is for the children to take turns washing each others’ hands within their pairs. Instructions for washing hands include pouring soap on hand and rubbing to foam before pouring water, as in a tap to clean off the soap. Once each child has completed washing, they take the towel and wipe their hands. Asking questions immediately after the experience is vital as it helps learners associate their responses with the activity (Hansen, 2018). Thus, the teacher then asks how they feel once they rub their hands with soap, pour water on their hands, and wipe.
Next, the learners sit at their respective tables, and each is served pasta and margarine, which they have to touch with their hands and eat. Once done, the teacher asks them to state how it felt touching the food. They wipe their hands and then touch the whole coconut and feel the rough texture and give responses on how the touch feels. The teacher can be more specific and ask whether it is rough or smooth (Catherine, 2021). Next, the teacher drills through the three eyes of the coconut and pours the water out. The children touch the water and feel the temperature. Using the hammer, the teacher breaks the coconut, removes the husk, and gives each child a piece to feel and eat. The activity ends with the children clearing the table, washing, and then massaging each other’s hands.
Adaptation for Children with Tactile Sensory Concern
It is essential to understand that mainstream classes have students with special needs, such as the visually impaired, who do not see the materials. The adaptation for them will be to pair with other learners who have no disability such that they help in guiding them through materials that they need to touch. For students who do not have limbs, are in a wheelchair, are on crutches, or do not have hands, the teacher adjusts the tables and asks them to use the functioning limb. For example, they can wash their feet and grasp the meal using their toes.
References
Catherine, M. (2021). Coconut five senses activity. Fun-A-Day!. Web.
Cekaite, A., & Bergnehr, D. (2018). Affectionate touch and care: Embodied intimacy, compassion and control in early childhood education.European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 26(6), 940-955. Web.
Hansen, A. (2018). Primary professional studies. Learning Matters.
Hong, J., Ye, J., Ho, Y., & Ho, H. (2020). Developing an inquiry and hands-on teaching model to guide steam lesson planning for kindergarten children. Journal of Baltic Science Education, 19(6), 908-922.
Nair, P., Keppell, M., Lim, C., Mari, T., & Hassan, N. (2020). Transforming curriculum through teacher-learner partnerships. IGI Global.