Today we are putting together a texture basket, box, bag and popping in 5 toys that feel and touch different. Bonus points if your little one would need to hold them differently.
Our photos are of texture tubs that we’ve created for lots of little ones to use at once, please pop your five items in a much smaller area! Try not to be tempted to add in lots of toys, we really want our little ones to focus on a small selection of toys helping them practice skills, extend play and build up concentration.
For our toddlers this is great for starting to discover and name toys. You can put things together in themes, around a book is an amazing idea, and pull out toys that relate to the book as you read a story together.
For our preschoolers we can name the toys, feel and touch them through a bag to identify them. We can pop them on a piece of paper and draw round them to do some matching games and we can remove one from the paper as a memory game too asking our little ones to identify the missing item. We can also ask for their help for choosing 5 toys and ask them to describe textures too.
Each area of their brain is used too as they use their frontal lobe for their motor functions, their parietal lobe for their touch and sensory input, occipital lobe for their vision, cerebellum for their co-ordination and temporal for their memory & auditory processing.
So much benefit from one little activity, once you are finished, put them back in their bag, box or basket and repeat it over the coming days, repetition is amazing for brain development!