Is your child’s learning routine at home getting repetitive and rather mundane? Spice it up with some amazing multi-sensory activities! Your child will not only love participating in these activities, but will also retain the material they are learning. Multi-sensory techniques involve all of the senses of the body (seeing, hearing, moving, and touching) and help produce connections in the brain which are essential for learning!
Incorporate these multi-sensory methods to keep your child engaged at home and to enrich their learning experience!
Practicing sight words in shaving cream!
Shaving Cream
Find a tray or flat surface like a glass table to spread shaving cream on. Add some food coloring for some pizazz! This gives your child a canvas to practice letter formation, spelling, and simple math problems. While they are practicing, make sure they are saying their letters or numbers aloud so they are seeing, hearing, and feeling simultaneously- what a multi-sensory experience!
Cross Crawls
Incorporating movement is so important to multi-sensory activities. One of our favorite ways to move around during lessons is with cross crawls. Cross crawls can be great with practicing spelling, math facts, memory work, you name it! It is a cross-lateral movement, bringing your right elbow to your left knee and vice versa. It is important to make sure they are alternating from one side to the other because they are being challenged to cross their midline. Your child can chant their addition facts like “3 plus 3 equals 6!” or practice syllable counting in words like “bum-ble-bee” with each cross crawl. If this movement is too difficult for your child, an easier alternative is a knee tap. They can tap their right hand to their left knee and then their left hand to their right knee. Your child is still working on crossing the midline and exercising their coordination skills!
Orton-Gillingham finger tapping method.
Tapping It Out
If your child is currently working on sound blending words, they can use finger tapping as a way to segment individual sounds in words. For example, let’s say your child is trying to read the word “fog”. They would tap their index finger to their thumb and say the f sound, tap their middle finger to their thumb and say the o sound, and then tap their ring finger to their thumb and say the g sound. Once they have said each individual sound in order, they can practice blending all of the sounds together and say the word.
Wet-Dry-Try
If your child particularly struggles in handwriting, Learning Without Tears has an amazing multi-sensory technique called Wet-Dry-Try. All you need is a chalkboard, chalk, a small sponge and a paper towel. You, the parent, will write a letter on the chalkboard and name that letter. Next, your child traces the letter with a damp sponge (Wet). Then, your child traces the letter with a small piece of paper towel (Dry). Lastly, your child will write the letter with chalk on the chalkboard (Try). Your child will have their letter formations down in no time. Learning Without Tears also has an app for Wet-Dry-Try. Learn more at https://wetdrytry.com/.
Practice all kinds of academic material with ball bouncing!
Ball Bouncing
Do you have a kickball somewhere in your house? Did you know it can double as a learning tool? You can use a ball to practice spelling words. Write a spelling word on paper or a board in front of your child. Make sure you tell them what the word is. Next, your child will look at the word and simultaneously bounce and catch the ball while saying the word out loud. Then, they will bounce out each individual letter in the word while saying the letters aloud. Finally, your child will bounce and say the word one more time. Your child will be seeing, hearing, moving, and touching in order to learn their spelling words. By pairing simple ball bouncing (drop and catch) with an academic activity, multiple neural circuits are working at once, strengthening connections, and increasing cognitive efficiency!
For more ideas and resources, check out our other blog posts here. For more information about how our team can support you with home learning, visit our website.