Ideas for setting up experiences for children to touch and feel

[odinlash]

Hi there,

My task is asking me in relation to this topic, to select either manmade or natural resourses for children to touch and feel and set them up in an attractive way,.
having trouble coming up with ideas for this, i dont want to use pinecones as im sure everyone else probaly will..

would appreciate your idea, these items must be safe, interesting and reflect art elements (such as texture, pattern, tone, colour etc)

cheers Lauren

[Lorina]

Hi Lauren,

There are an endless amount of possibilities you could provide for these experiences. Some ideas are:

- Sand
- Shaving cream
- Leaves
- Dirt
- Noodles
- Pasta
- Goop (corn flour + water)
- Rocks
- Shells

Most of these aesthetic experiences can be set up in a trough for the children to manipulate with. It's less messy that way. Think about adding other elements to the above ideas. For example: adding buckets and spades to sand, placing rocks in water with toothbrushes (for scrubbing), adding animal figurines to dirt etc..

Hope this helps!

,
L.A

[odinlash]

hey thanks, the assesmment is just about selecting some objects and displaying them in an asthetic way, like on a shelf for the children to become inspired
not planning an actual experience,
i was trying to use some unique items, but its hard to come up with any ideas other than plants and shells

[Lorina]

Hi Lozzy,

I have thought of a few more ideas for you. Why not have a vase with flowers in the middle of the table in your drawing area.

You could have a fish tank on a table that the child could explore. Add the same things you would in a normal fish tank except the water or the fish. The children could use magnify glasses to look at the objects in the tank.

Have a table with smelling sachets. You could use a little mesh bag and add flowers, lavender inside each one. You could also add some smelling stuff on cotton wool and put inside a mesh bag. Add pictures of noses and pictures of what the smell actually is (for e.g. an orange). The children have to smell to match their smelly bag with the pictured object.

Create a textured wall. Collect materials of different textures (soft, hard, rough, bumpy, etc) glue them onto a canvas or a square piece of wood and place them at children's height on the wall (or table). The children can freely touch and feel each texture.

Hopefully this gives you a few ideas,

,
L.A

[odinlash]

thankyou so much for your ideas
i esp like the fish tank idea

[simone.moon10]

Hi I got a distiction in this subject. I set up a minature desert learning centre with books on Uluru, Posters of Indigenous people, Boomerang, small desert animals made from plastic. You can do this on the ocean too, I bought desert sand from a pet store, but had lots of resourced because I lived in the Red centre for a while. Now I am up to stage 3. Goodluck hope this helps.
CHEERS SIMONE

[Brooke1987]

Hi,
I'm doing this module at the moment so I feel your fustration! lol
I collected
beach materials for our nature corner (shells, sponge, seeweed) and added it to the trough in the nature area
Gumnuts, rocks, flowers, pinecones ect and had them in small baskets.

[fchaudari76]

You can set an area up with ornamental objects made from various materials - glass, metal, wood, plastic etc I had this in my classroom and the children loved it I then linked it to a lesson with tablets of the same size in wood, plastic, metal, foam, felt etc and the children felt the differences in textures, weights & temperatures (eg metal feels colder & heavier than foam)