Tactile Board

I’m excited to share this "Tactile Board" that my students and I made during our therapy sessions. Making it turned out to be tons of fun and an amazing multi-sensory experience! Here are the instructions for making a “tactile board”.

What you will need:

1 foam board, poster board or large painting canvas

Hot glue gun

Finger paints, water colors or acrylic (if you use a canvas)

Scraps of various types of fabric (make sure that they have a variety of textures)

Scraps of string/ribbon/yarn

Cotton balls

Sponge

Pipe cleaners                

Aluminum Foil

Rice/beans

Beads

Glitter

You name it…get creative!

Decide on a theme for the board. We chose an ocean/Little Mermaid theme. Use your imagination and come up with something really cool. Some examples are a vegetable garden theme, a flower theme, a city theme, etc.

Paint the background on the board. You can have the children finger-paint it for a multi-sensory experience. Use the scraps of fabric, foil, sponge, etc. to create the components of the picture and glue them on using the hot glue gun. Here are some examples of what we did.

·      Cotton balls for the clouds

·      Shaggy fabric for the whale, a bead for the eye and string for the mouth

·      Silky fabric for one of the fish, corduroy fabric for the fins, a bead for the eye, and satin ribbon for the mouth.

·      Green glitter for Arial’s fin and orange string for her hair.

·      Aluminum foil for the eel and a bead for the eye

·      Sponge for the shell

·      Silky fabric for the octopus body and pipe cleaners for the tentacles

·      Rice for the sand

·      You get the idea…the final result is a sensory board that is a really cool piece of art and the best part is that the students can touch and manipulate the various textures on the board.