Tactile Play- Dry and Messy

I have posted on this topic before, but I recently received an email from Fun A Day blog (I'm a subscriber), and I thought I'd share. My team recently has had some interesting responses from students with tactile sensory defensiveness in regards to not wanting to touch anything messy. The issues came up while working on daily living skills tasks that included making a simple snack using peanut butter- one student in particular was so distressed about getting peanut butter on his fingers that he refused to pick up the snack to take a bite, but rather brought his mouth to the edge of the plate to take a bite. With a situation like this, I would start with dry tactile input intervention/exposure, progress to tolerance of wet (but not sticky) tactile input, and finally to messy/sticky input. Fun A Day has the following blog posts that have some great tactile activity ideas, and you can find them here-

Dry:

https://fun-a-day.com/dry-messy-play-ideas/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%F0%9F%99%8C%F0%9F%8F%BC+Tons+of+Messy+Play+Ideas&utm_campaign=Tons+of+messy+play&vgo_ee=AEHVg7LvQ%2FsMgUmgQVgRplBNjIl2q6kUcKeCvmCOYDQ%3D

Messy:

https://fun-a-day.com/messy-play-recipes/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%F0%9F%99%8C%F0%9F%8F%BC+Tons+of+Messy+Play+Ideas&utm_campaign=Tons+of+messy+play&vgo_ee=AEHVg7LvQ%2FsMgUmgQVgRplBNjIl2q6kUcKeCvmCOYDQ%3D

Mother's Day Art Activity

Here's a cute, quick Mother's Day activity to try- You need:

• paper
• black marker
• tempera paint

Draw a line for a stem with lines extending from the top. I had my students imitate me drawing. Have the students dip their finger in tempera paint and make small dots along the lines. Simple! Simple and yet, some of my students had difficulty with grading the amount of pressure to use to make the dots, some of them did not like to get their hands messy, and some of them had a hard time motor planning where and how to place the dots along the lines. We had fun making them!

My example is on the right