Skill shelf · looking, handling and telling things apart · 2 activities
Senses and Sensory Play
Work where the answer comes from the eye or the hand rather than from being told: which shade is darker, which pot is heavier.
Both of these hand a child a set of things that are alike in every way but one, and ask her to put that one way in order. Five squares of a single colour go in a line, darkest first. Ten pots that look identical hold five different weights, and the only way to find the pairs is to pick two up and decide.
The useful part is that neither of them needs you to say whether she is right. The paint chips come in two strips, one cut up and one left whole as the answer. The pots get checked on a coat hanger with a yoghurt pot hung at each end, which settles any argument without a word from the table. Naming the shades, or saying warmer and cooler, gets in the way of work the eye is doing perfectly well on its own.
For tonight: one colour per sitting, a plain light ground under it, and the light coming over her shoulder rather than yours. Five squares in a mint tin turn a café table into this activity, which is why it also sits on the travel and waiting shelf.
The two
Ordered by the age each suits best. Both are table work, both cost nothing, and both can be set up and then left alone.
- Color Shade Grading Your child lays a handful of squares in a line, darkest at one end and palest at the other. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Weighted Pod Sorting Your child picks up two pots that look exactly alike, decides which one is heavier, and keeps going until all ten are in pairs. 15 min, once · 5 to 10 min · household only
The pots take about fifteen minutes to make once, and then last for years in a box.
The sensory work filed on other shelves
Most of the touching, pouring and looking in this library got filed by what the hands are doing or where the feet are going, so it lives elsewhere. These five do the same work and are worth having here too: water going from one jug to another, a warm sponge wrung out bowl to bowl, a rope found through a sock with the eyes shut, a torch beam turning a tin into a rectangle, and a bar of soap that gives under a blunt knife.
- Sponge Squeezing Your child soaks a sponge in one bowl, carries it dripping to the other, and squeezes it out with both hands until the first bowl is empty. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Water Pouring and Transfer Your child pours water from one small jug into another, and then back again, and again, until the table is wet. 3 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Blindfold Rope Path Walk Your child follows a rope laid along the floor with her eyes closed, finding the turns with her feet while your voice tells her what is coming. 2 min · 5 to 10 min · household only
- Shape Shadow Match Your child stands a solid shape in a beam of light and works out which of the outlines traced on the paper its shadow belongs to. 2 min · 10 to 20 min · household only
- Soap Carving and Safe Whittling Your child cuts a shape out of a bar of soap with a blunt tool, slowly, and the shavings go everywhere. 5 min · 20 to 40 min · household only