Tactile Defensive Children & Fall Crafts

School for our younger, less able children and preschoolers has been focused around the fall theme.  Having children with differing abilities we work with them at the level they are functioning at, encouraging and challenging them with the hope of advancement.

 I found these fall themed play dough mats, alphabet  mats and more, that we have been working on.  I laminated the play dough mats and we use play dough, dry erase markers or wiki sticks with them.  As fine motor skills are a challenge we have found this is another way to learn skills and build up hand strength while developing our pre-printing skills.




Being pumpkin season, we have been including them in our play.  Hammering golf tee's into anything is always a hit - this week we have been hammering them into our pumpkins, building our hand eye coordination and strength.  To extend the life our our pumpkin play, we later bring out the Mr. Potato Head parts and decorate our pumpkin over and over.



 



I found these sewing cards which have been a welcome challenge, building our skills.

 While outside exploring and looking for signs of fall, we found apples that had fallen from the tree, not suitable for eating, so we brought them in for craft time.  Dipping the apples in paint and stamping them was fun for some, the tactile defensive children liked this project as they were able to stay relatively clean.  We have also been stamping with bingo dabbers making a variety of pictures which helps our less willing participants expand their limits.








The weather has been extremely wet the last few days so we set up an obstacle course for burning off the excess energy.  After our energy has been expelled we have been curling up with a stack of fall themed books from from the library.