My Sense of touch

Sensory integration

﻿Hi, my name is Anele and I'm one of the occupational therapists working at Oak National Academy. In this module, we're going to look at the sense of touch. And in this lesson, we're going to explore what it is, and also we're going to make, a little feel bag and we're going to play some games together. We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used, alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. Our sense of touch, is a really important sensory system. And it's one of our biggest systems as well. So in today's lesson, we're going to learn a little bit more about my sense of touch. We're going to play some tactile word games. and we're also going to make a feely bag. So before we begin with the lesson, let's get everything ready that we need. So pause the video here and let's have a look. First, we're going to play a tactile word game. So, what you're going to do is, ask your parent or carer to join in and see how many words you can list that describe touch or texture. So, touch and texture words are, describing how things feel. So have a go, and then once you've done that, press play and we will carry on with the lesson Wow, how many words could you think of? A lot? I'm sure there is a lot of feeling words that describe how things feel. So you can think about hard and soft, smooth and rough. There's lots of word. I've added some words in this picture here, and it's supposed to be a person, but it actually looks a little bit more like a flower to me but hey, there you go. There's lots of words in here and you can maybe spend some time, in looking at some of these words and see which ones you've come up with, and whether there is some of the ones that are similar or not. Let's move on to our next activity. In our next activity, I'm going to ask you to pause the video here to collect all of these items that we'll need for our next game. So in the rest of this lesson, you're going to need two pillowcases, 10 pairs of different objects. So you can use your word list that you've just created with your parent or carer to help you find items that are hard, soft, smooth, silky, gooey, any of those feeling descriptive words. See if you can find 10 pairs of things. So it has to be 10 things that look the same, but have all have different textures. Once you've gathered all of those things together, press play and we'll carry on with the lesson. Brilliant, now, let's have a closer look at the sense of touch. The sense of touch is based in our skin. Now, if you think about your skin, your skin covers all of your body. So what that means is, it's actually one of our biggest organs and it's the biggest bit of me. So there's a lot of feeling going on and therefore, there's lots of words to describe it as well. So you can feel with all parts of your body, but you especially, your hands and also your feet to some degree, is specifically designed to feel with much precision, and especially in your hands. So your hands can pick up something and it will know exactly what that feels like, it can discriminate, so that's the big word for today is discrimination. Discriminate means that you can feel, the difference between things. You can know when something is smooth, or when something is not smooth. But you can also feel the degree of how smooth something is. Is it very smooth? Is it only a little bit smooth? All of those things, you can do with your touch sense. But with our touch sense, there's also, like with all of our senses, you can be over responsive, or you can be under responsive to touch. A lot of us are kind of in the middle. So let's explore that a little bit more, in today's lesson. Your sense of touch helps you to recognise and interpret touch. So it will tell you, as I've just said about soft, hard, it can tell you about pain, and it can also tell you about temperature. So, you can really, it's such an important part of who we are. And it really helps us to stay safe, in the same way that our eyes and our ears all work together to keep us safe. So let's find out a little bit more and we're going to play some games now. The first game is the Touch Spy game. So this is what you're going to need for your Touch Spy game. Ask a parent or carer to join in with you, and what you're going to do is, all the items that you collected, you're going to split them into two piles. So I've got one, two pens, and I'm splitting them into two piles. I also have two hairbands and I'm splitting them into two piles. So what you are going to do with them is, I've got my, my one, two pillowcases, and I'm going to split them. So, I'm going to take my pen, I'm going to put it in this pillowcase. There we go. I should have used different colours, I'm sorry, I've only got the same ones. And then in my other pillowcase, I'm going to put my other pen. And, so once you've split all these items, you've got two pillowcases with the same amount of items. Next, the first game that we're going to play, is you going to pick out, one thing from the back. So I'm going to pick out. Can you see it? Don't say the word, don't say the word, because I'm going to ask my pretend partner that I'm playing with, to see if they can feel in the other bag and see if they can find this. So I'm just going to use this hand. So this hand is holding it, to this hand. I'm just feeling, I'm having a good feel. Can I find it? Oh, I can find something really hard. Oh, I think, I think I found it. Yes, I found the matching pair. So this is how this game works. So what you're going to do is, you're going to pause the video here to complete this game with your parent or carer. Once you've found all 10 items, press play, and we'll carry on, enjoy. Well done. Now, here's a few other ways that we can play this Touch Spy game. You can change the objects in the bag. You can, yeah, rummage them around, move them around, find some different things that you can, that you want to add. Instead of showing the item like I've done, you can describe it. So I'm going to have a go at describing it. You could say something like, it has a kind of a plastic handle, on the one end, and it has a metal tip at the other end. A spiky, quite sharp piece, sharp metal bit at the other end. See if you can find it. So, with this, I will not show it to someone, I will just describe it, and then I will see if, in the other bag, they can find something. So I'm going to have a go, find something that has a, kind of a round plastic bit at the top and a spiky metally bit at the bottom. Let's see if I've got it right. There we go, two matching, matching items. Thirdly, you can ask your parent or carer to use a blindfold and or you can just ask them to close their eyes. And then you can put something in their hands and ask them to describe it first, and then to tell you what it is. So if I put this in my hand, I can have a good feel. So my hand is trying to tell me this is something that's quite bendy, and it's round, oh, and it's stretchy as well. So I think it's a hairband. So there's lots of different verses, you can play the Touch Spy game. Now have a go and let me know how you get on. Well done. That was brilliant. So I hope you've got lots of ideas now to play the Touch Spy game and in next lesson, we will be looking a little bit more, at touching and especially, when touching things or being touched is a tricky thing for us to do.

My Sense of touch

My Sense of touch

Slide deck

Lesson details

Key learning points

Licence

Lesson video