Feely Sack

from 24 months · 10-15 min · Sensory

What you need

a pillowcase
four or five things that feel different: a big pine cone, a plastic bauble with the metal cap and hook taken off, a woolly sock, a wooden spoon and a soft toy

Hold up each thing and feel it together first, finding a word for each: prickly, smooth, soft, hard.
Pop them all into the pillowcase while your toddler watches.
Let them reach in without looking, feel one thing and guess what it is before pulling it out.
Swap over: they hold the sack and you reach in and guess.

Finding something by touch alone makes them think about how it feels, and that gives them new words to describe it.

Describing words: Prickly, smooth and soft are words they learn best when their hands are feeling them.
Feeling to find: Working out a thing by touch alone builds the link between hands and thinking.
Taking turns: Swapping who holds the sack and who reaches in is turn-taking with a clear rule.

Listen for a describing word before they pull the thing out: prickly, soft, cold. Stay close, nothing in mouths.

Check the pine cone for loose bits first, and use a plastic bauble only, with the metal cap and hook taken off.

Easier: use just two very different things, like the pine cone and the sock

Harder: ask them to find a named thing by feel, like "find the prickly one"