Activities to encourage exploration of different textures

Encourage your child to touch a variety of textures such as clay, paint, mud in the garden, sand, play dough, food during meal preparation, different sponges (soft and rough in the bath), craft material in the making of collages, or anything you can think of to allow your child to experience the feel of different materials and textures.

If your child is sensitive to messy play, start with harder tactile objects e.g. loofas, and then move to exposing hands to dry substances which flow, e.g. rice, lentils or polystyrene bits. Then progress to wetter substance, e.g. sand mixed with a little water to make it damp, bread dough, or pastry. When your child can tolerate this, move on to wet slimy substances like shaving foam or ‘gloop’.

Soap flake foam recipe

Ingredients:

Soap flakes

Hot water 
 
Method:
Pour 1 - 2 cups of soap flakes into a bowl and add hot water until the soap flakes are completely covered and the water is just above their level in the bowl. Beat the mixture until the soap flakes dissolve and the mixture becomes soft and foamy.

The finished product has the consistency of canned shaving foam, can be coloured with tempera paint powder, and keeps well.
 

Gloop recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups cornflour

1 cup cold water
 
Method:

Pour the cornflour into a bowl. Add the cold water slowly, stirring constantly and stop when the water is barely absorbed by the cornflour.

The resulting solution is fascinating to play with. It can be scooped up with the fingers as a mouldable material, but flows like liquid back into the bowl. It will brush off clothing as a dry powder.