Tactile mats.

I've been trying to encourage a couple of children with limited sight, to use their hands to explore. One is reluctant to handle messy stuff, and only cautiously and briefly investigates our tuff spot. The other seems to actively enjoy different textures such as fur fabric or messy play such as cornflour paste touching his hands. He has little movement but seems to be starting to move a little more. For both boys I wondered if they would find a tactile board interesting to explore.

I decided to make one large enough to to have several textures and areas to to enable them to reach, but not cumbersome. I also wanted to give them the best chance of seeing the contrast between the background and the textures. I found a sheet of card that had been in a large ikea picture frame and cut it in two. I covered the board with cloth tape. To get the visual contrast I made one black and white, and the other white to use with neon and a uv light.

Textures - I found buttons, feathers, sticky carpet tiles that had corded ridges, felt, ribbon, Pom poms, a stretchy cord and a sponge. This all came from home or from pound shops. The pound shops also had neon fishnet tights, and fluffy neon cleaning mitts.




I intend to place it on a table for one child to use when he is standing, and the other to have when lying over a wedge.

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