Play Doh Hide and Seek

                                                          

This activity has been originally taken from one of the most popular and user-friendly guides, the Out of Sync Child Has Fun. I have done a couple of modifications according to own working experience. You may follow the book link to know more about Sensory Activities where there are great fun and learning activities have been described. 

This is a fantastic activity especially for little ones however teens would also enjoy it. It improves motor planning, fine motor skills as well as bilateral coordination (ability to synchronise both right and left sides of the body, for example, making a sandwich or playing throw ball). 

It improves the ability to discriminate objects with and without vision (tactile discrimination), proprioception sensory processing skills, midline crossing, and fine motor control, along with visual perception skills. Mainly it improves sensory awareness in the fingers required to provide information about the grasp of the tools, toys and surface. Reduced sensory awareness will require greater visual monitoring. 

The activity also improves attention span and concentration on the given task, along with hand and intrinsic fingers strength. Feeling, recognising and understanding about physical characteristics of objects (size, shape, density, texture, and weight) is an integral part of tactile discrimination which can be difficult for our kids with sensory issues.

We aim to make their fingers ‘feel’ of different textures in a fun way and improve their learning about various objects even when they are not seeing them! So let’s start!

Activity Requirements:

Play-Doh

Plastic or rubber toys (such as Lego, plastic apple, small-sized ball)

Large and small buttons

Safety pin or hairpin

Different size coins

Rice or Lentil Box 

Container for sorting- Cup or jewellery box

    

Procedure:

1. Wrap the Play-Doh around the toy to make and make sure that it is not completely covered. The child should be able to see the colour of the toy which will work as a clue for her to recognise it easily. Once the toy is covered you may ask the child, “Do you know which toy is it.

2. Once the child is master in the above-mentioned task we can switch to the next level of effort. This time to increase the level of difficulty, pack the toy thicker and leave a small portion unpacked to grade the activity to the next level. Once the toy is packed you may ask the child, to recognise the toy using his fingertips and visual sense. 

3. The further variation could include covering small objects in the Play-doh such as coins, hairpins, beads, buttons and asking the child to feel the shape of the object covered with Play-doh and guess what it could be. These objects can be,

• Different sized buttons
• Safety or hairpins (make sure it does not injure him)
• Different sized coins
• Rubber
• Small Lego pieces
• Pen caps

• Pack these objects fully. Now we can play treasure hunt. Hide the packed things in a box of rice or lentils. Initially, he can recognise and discriminate them without being time farmed or blindfolded. Later, on mastery of task gradation of activity will be great fun and challenge too! 

Activity Gradation:

Time Framed:

The activity can be challenged by grading it according to time. An adult may ask the child to recognise the toy within a set time limit such as 60 seconds or two minutes. Time should be allotted depending on the child’s abilities and needs. It is important to understand that activity should enhance his level of motivation to peruse and complete the given task successfully.

Target should be achievable. The child might lose interest in activity if she is unable to complete the task within the time frame. So make during the first attempt child should be provided sufficient time to complete the activity successfully. This will increase his level of motivation and self-confidence.

Time can be reduced, gradually, say, from 3 minutes to 30 seconds.

Blindfold: 

Once the toy is packed, leaving a small portion as a clue, ask the child whether she would like to do this activity being blindfolded.

If both child and parent think, it will be achievable, to recognise the toy, then go further and blindfold him. The child might take longer than usual time to recognise since his visual sense has been occluded. Parents should encourage her to use his fingertips sliding them around the edges and corners of the toy, to learn about shape, and size of it.

Help her to feel the toy where it is unpacked. This will help in improving tactile recognition and discrimination of the object. On the repeated practice of feeling different shapes, sizes, textures, density and weight (physical characteristics of objects) child’s touch discriminating abilities will improve to the maximal possible extent. At this level, pack the toy completely and thicker to increase the level of challenge.

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Benefits:

· Tactile Discrimination: Playing with different textures which have varying viscosities increase tactile perception, exploration and discriminatory sense as well as visualisation skill along with In-Hand-Manipulations skills which involve translation.
·  Vast Tactile experience = Improvement in Tactile perception + discrimination 
·   Visualisation Skills
·    Body Scheme
·  Speed, Accuracy and Precision 
·  Fine Motor Skills
· Self-Esteem