Sensory development is the most important aspect, especially in the period from birth to 3 years, when the child develops the most basic and useful skills and abilities. One of the development options are various sensor boxes that are easy to make with your own hands.
Contents
What is a touch box?
Multifunctional sensor box is a small box filled with different texture, color and shape of small objects (cereals, liquids, toys, fabrics, plants) and other materials). Feeling the contents of such a box and relaying as convenient to him, the child at an early age develops fine motor skills, attention, memory and even logic. Older children can play different subjects, training imagination, memory and self-care skills.
What are sensory boxes?
Such educational boxes can be divided into two groups: according to the plot and content.
In the first case, before creating a box, a plot is selected, after which suitable materials are used. The plots can be as follows:
Seas and oceans
Space
Insects
North pole
Sand workshop
Zoo
Home and comfort
Flora and fauna
Starry sky
Desert dwellers
Forest and field dwellers
Among other things, you need to take into account that it is better to use large components for training with young children so that the child can not harm himself and the game is interesting and useful. With children from one year and older in the presence of adults, you can already use smaller materials that perfectly train fine motor skills. You can also read about interesting anddevelopmental experiments with water.
What can be the contents of sensory boxes:
- dry-leaf
- cereals (milten, rice, peas, buckwheat, oatmeal, etc.)
- pasta
- coffee-beans
- stone
- sand
- bumps
- nuts
- shells
- jelly
- cotton
- yarn
- texture
- rustling texture materials (foil, sponges, colored paper, cardboard, etc.)
Additional content:
- plaything
- baby cubes
- designer
- balls
- cardboard
What devices to choose for games with a touchbox:
- spatula
- spoon
- funnel
- robbery
- glass
- plates
- bowl
- pots
An example of creating a touch box “Adventures at the North Pole”
To create such a touch box, you will need a convenient box of cardboard or plastic. Plastic will be preferred when playing with older children, as in this case it will be filled with jelly, but will not get wet as in the case of a cardboard box. Let's look at both options.
The bottom of the cardboard box should be laid out with white paper and supplemented with cotton wool and rice grains. Thus, we get snow, and in order to reproduce the effect of the icy sea, you will need a small mirror and blue cardboard, from which you can even cut the “ice”. As residents will need figures of polar bears, walruses, seals, killer whales and reindeer. In toy stores you can find whole sets on similar topics. From pieces of refinade, you can build a needle in which northern hunters and families will live.
In a more complex version, when using a plastic box as a sea, you can prepare jelly using blue and blue dyes. Thus, killer whales and other marine life will be able to swim in improvised conditions.
As ice, you can use real ice floes created with water with blue dye and molds for ice cubes. For greater effect, the base of jelly can be poured with cool water and offer the child to organize a rescue expedition in which he will move animals from one shore to the other, on a small piece of ice. As snow, you can use rice grains that do not lose shape when in contact with water.
Touchbox "Zoo"
You can walk around the zoo and get acquainted with its inhabitants using a touch box on this topic. Fill the box with oatmeal or wheat flakes, simulating paths with sand. With the help of twigs or a designer, we will create pens for animals and add materials to each corresponding habitat zone.
For hippos and polar bears, it can be pebbles painted in blue, for deer and horses - dry leaves or a green designer, yellow sand or buckwheat is suitable for a camel. After everything is ready, you can conduct a tour of the zoo for little men, telling where the native habitat of each animal, what it prefers to eat and how it winters.
Touchbox on the theme "Space"
For kids who love fantastic cartoons and imagine themselves as astronauts, you can make a whole space station or box with an imitation of Martian soil and its inhabitants. In this case, sand or any cereal of a yellowish-red hue will be useful. As well as beans or peas suitable in shape for Martian rocks or rocks.
In addition, you need to prepare small toys on the theme of space: flying saucers, planets, stars, astronauts, funny figures of aliens and space rockets. Part can be made independently from kinetic sand or sculpting dough. Encourage your child to begin his cosmic odyssey by landing on a planet and studying the surface and the inhabitants. You can even make notes in the “on-board log” and sketch new objects and phenomena.