Stimulating the Sense of Touch- Activity 5

Baby Massage

The human touch is amazing. It is believed that human touch such as a hugs can lower levels of stress hormones.For your baby, a full body massage will help your baby give your baby a sense of security. It also helps your baby to relax and sleep better. In fact, when you are massaging your baby, you are stimulating your child's central nervous system. I enjoyed giving daily massages to my babies as I see it as bonding time.  

Let me share some simple steps to massage your baby. Usually, I massage my baby at night on my bed to help the baby sleep better and for longer hours. You can massage your baby with baby oil/ baby lotion or simply just with nothing. The length of the time of the massage is also up to you. 

Back

First, start with the back. Lie your baby on his/her tummy. Massage the back in a circular motion. It helps to relax the body and helps improve blood circulation as your baby lies on his/her back most of the time. 

Stroke the baby's back from side to side and then up and down. 

Gently rub down the spine in one motion. Repeat this several times. Next, follow the spine and press down gently in a tapping motion. 

Once the back is done, turn your baby to face you. 

Hands and fingers

Wrap your palm around your baby's wrist. Gently move your palm upwards. When doing this action, you are actually moving the blood towards the heart and this will make your child more energetic. Next, gently move your palm downwards towards the wrist, moving the blood away from the heart. This action will calm the child down.So if you massaging your baby to help with better sleep, remember to do the downwards motion more often. You can also stroke the arms up and down. 

To massage the fingers.

First, use three of your fingers to grab the end of a baby finger, grip the finger and then move towards the tip. Repeat this 3 times. Next, press along the fingers gently. Finally, shake the little finger. Repeat these steps with other fingers. 

Once you are done with one hand, move on to the next. 

Legs and feet 

Doing the legs and feet is like doing the hands and fingers. 

Hold your baby's heel and wrap one of your hand around it. Move your hand up and down, gently squeezing the leg as you move along. 

Next, hold on to your baby's feet. Use three of your fingers to grab the end of the baby toe, grip the toe and move towards the tip of the toe. Repeat this 3 times. Next, press along the toe gently. Finally, gently shake the toe.

Chest and tummy

Massage the chest in a circular motion. Then stroke the baby's chest from side to side and then up and down.

With your fingertips, massage the baby's tummy in a circular motion. Then move your fingertip to below your baby's belly button and massage in a circular motion. Move only in clockwise for this part of the body as it is the natural path of digestion. Sometimes, you may feel something solid and long, it could be your baby's motion.

Head and face
Use the sides of your index finger, place them at the tip of the baby's eyebrow and move your finger outward from the center. Assert a little pressure. Repeat this several times.

Repeat the motion below the eye. Feel for the edge of the eye socket.

Use your thumb to massage your baby's cheek, stroking outwards from the center.

Massage your baby and discover where your baby likes you to massage. Have fun.

Sense of touch- Activity 4

Sand Sensory Play

Many parent frown on their kids playing sand as they deem it to be dirty and difficult to clean up afterwards. 

However, I love to bring my children to beaches or even to the nearby playground to just play with sand. My kids started playing sand when they are about 10 months old. Old enough to sit and stand. Parents just have to make sure your child doesn't eat the sand. 

Not all the kids will like sand at first as they are used to concrete grounds and some children maybe afraid to even stand on sand due to the different texture. Encourage your child by placing some of his/her favourite toy some distance away and get your child to try and reach for it. Or you can try burying the toys slightly so that your child will have the incentive to touch and brush away the sand to get the toy. 

There are in fact some benefits for sand playing. 

First of all, it develops the sense of touch and also promotes physical development. Your child would practice gross motor skills by digging, pouring and scooping the sand. Also, fine motor skills and eye hand coordination is at work when your child learns to manipulate the sand toys.  

Secondly, sand play encourages creativity and imagination. There is no limits to what you can create with sand. You can cook, dig wells, build volcanoes, dig tunnels or roads. With some sand toys, you can build sand castles and any other items with your child. When your child is too young to build, build it for your child and see what your child does. Most of the time, they will either step on it or sweep it to destroy it before giving you a grin.

Thirdly, sand play at the playground promotes social interaction. As your child grows older, you will see your child approaching other children with other sand toys and they will actually play cooperatively to build something or they may just exchange their sand toys. This is where your child can pick up social skills such as how to approach another child, how to share, how to compromise or negotiate. Remember, as parents, try not to interfere too much when your child is at play at the playground. Give him the opportunity to approach others and to communicate what he wants. Even though your child may not be able to speak, your child and the other child will be able to reach a level of understanding. 

Sense of touch- Activity 3

Fruits and vegetables

Busy cooking dinner or going to cut fruits after dinner? Get your baby involved, clean the skin of the fruits of vegetables and allow your child to touch them. Teach them the name of the fruit/vegetables and describe the texture. 

You can even cut the fruit to allow the baby to smell it or even taste it.

Stimulating Sense of Touch- Activity 2

What's in the bag?

Get a clean cloth bag. 

Look for different items of different materials to put into the bag. 

Get your child to put his/her hand into the bag to feel for things. Do allow your child to pull out the item to see what it is. You will be surprised that your baby will love this simple game. It stimulate a different part of the brain as your child is interpreting through only the sense of touch, instead of sense of sight first. 

Depending on the age of your child, you can choose different items of different materials to put into the bag. For younger children, bigger items would be better. For older children, you can choose to put in smaller items and in fact, get them to guess what's inside the bag. My older children still love to play this game. 

Suggested items: 

For younger children, 

• Plastic bottles ( perhaps yakult bottle)
• sponge
• a piece of plastic bags cut into a square
• comb
• socks( rolled into a ball) 
• spoons

For older children 

• coins
• pencils
• toothpicks
• erasers
• cotton balls

Simply look around you and i'm sure you can find lots of things to put inside your little bag. 

Stimulating the sense of touch- Activity 1

Stimulating the sense of touch is important to a baby as sensory experiences help to develop the cell connections in the brain. This is how your baby learns. A newborn infant has about 100 billion brain cells. Playing with your baby helps your baby to connect the neutrons.

So what can you do to help your baby make those connections? You can do it through the sense of touch. This is how a baby learns. Basically, you will realise that your baby will look at a thing(perhaps a toy) and he will naturally reach out to them to touch them, then smell or shake them. Finally, your baby will put that thing in his/her mouth to try and taste it. This is perfectly normal. This is how your baby learns through his/her 5 senses.

So for the sense of touch, you can collect items of different materials for your baby to felt. Of course, there are many touch books available but still, I prefer to give the kids what I can find around the house.

Activity 1

The following are the different types of materials you can give to your baby:
1 ) Fabric- example: Clean Kitchen cloth / clothings / handkerchief.
2) Plastic- Plastic bags ( Cut a square piece out for safety reasons / plastic bottles )
3) Sandpaper
4)Cotton ( Cotton wool)
5) Fur
6) Metal ( Metal spoon / Metal scrub)
7) Wood ( Wooden Spatula)
8) Silk
9) Sponge

Allow your baby to feel each item one at a time. Encourage your baby to feel as you talk to them about the colours and describe the texture ( e.g. Smooth, rough)

You can explore your own kitchen to look for safe and simple items for your child to play. Remember, you don't always have to buy expensive toys for your child. You have enough items at home for your child to play. Always check to make sure it is safe for your child.

Ways to play with roll manipulative

Ways to play with the Manipulative made of Toilet Rolls

How to make these roll manipulative? click here

1) Teaching 1, 2 , 3 with it.

You can get the child to count and stick the number of rolls together.

Having fun building a number pyramid.

Faith is proud of the number tower that she has built.

2) Teaching multiplication. 

The rolls can make abstract concepts concrete and visual for the child and hence it aids understanding. 

4) Teaching A, B, C
Get your child to form the alphabets. Forming the alphabets will definitely interest kinesthetic and visual learners.

Faith have just finished forming letter A.

3D Letter A. 

Form and re form letters in just a few secs.

Emmanuel is forming the first letter of his name. 

Letter S. With these manipulative stuck in a straight line, you can form different letters in just seconds.
There is no need to stick them one by one. 

5) Creative Play

What I really like about this manipulative is that it one set of materials that can be play in many different ways. This is where your children can let their imagination go wild. 

Christmas Tree

Pyramid

I used this opportunity to teach them about the different triangles. 

Attempting to build a palace.

Emmanuel's Robot. 

Faith, deciding on something as simple as a binoculars. 

And of course, Emmanuel's favourite train. 

2 D Robot. 

Robot. 

These roll manipulative are really simple to make. To learn how to make them, click here.

I really believe in teaching my children to recycle and save the environment. Especially in Singapore where we have limited resources. We have to learn how to maximum the resources that we have. Reducing, reusing, and recycling is a very important part of our lives.

Recyclables can be turned into something really useful and fun for the children. Do look out for more ideas for using recyclables. Will be put up soon.

Roll Manipulative

Manipulative made of toilet roll

What you need: 

1) Toilet Rolls

2) Adhesive Velcro tape

3) Coloured Tape

4) White glue

Step 1: Tape the Velcro at the top and bottom of the toilet roll. 

Step 2: Tape the coloured tape around it. 

Step 3: Depending on how strong the adhesive velcro tape is, you may need to glue the end to make it stronger.

 click here  to see the different ways to use it and have fun with your children. You can teach 1,2,3 , A, B, C, Multiplication and play creatively with your children with this simple set of manipulative.