With the New Year upon us, many folks are resolving to cut their budgets, whittle their waist lines and, of course, spend more quality time with their children. Well, today’s challenge can help you attend to all of these things. Get ready to don you SPD lenses and to look at something you likely have in your kitchen or recycling bin with new vision.
Today’s Challenge: Plastic Lids
Original Purpose: keeping ingredients in mayonnaise, nut butter and other such jars
With SPD Lenses: an economical prop that can help you and your family get mouths and bodies moving while spending time together enjoying sensory-based activities
Shower Paint Palette
Warm water has a way of chasing winter cold away. However, our sensory child sometimes needs a little extra encouragement to get into the bathtub. One of his favorite budget-friendly motivators is shower paints. And, this is where lids come in handy. Spray some shaving cream or squeeze some shower gel into a lid. Add a few drops of food coloring and stir. Instant, economic shower paint!
For the next ten to fifteen minutes or so, our child happily uses his fingers to paint the tub, shower walls and, sometimes his body. (In his more tactile-defensive days, we provided tools, such as cotton swabs or bits of sponge, for him to paint with.) Then, it’s clean up time – time to turn on the water and to wash the paint down the drain in one way or another. Depending on the day and mood, our child does this by showering it all down (thus, beginning a personal shower) or by filling the bath and using the lid to splash whatever paint remains on the wall off (thus, beginning a tubbie).
Food Study Motivator and Option Trays
The New Year can often mean an increased awareness about eating healthier foods. Unfortunately, many children with sensory challenges do not welcome unfamiliar nutrition-packed foods with the same gusto that their parents do. They need to become familiar with the sensory experience of the foods before agreeing to actually eat them. To help with this, we break out lids and use them for two purposes:
First, for foods my child has never seen before and is extremely reluctant to try, I sometimes set out a number of lids and a motivator, such as Legos, small animal figurines or some other multi-part favorite. Then, for every time my child is willing to smell, touch, lick, kiss, bite or swallow a target food, an item goes in a lid. When all lids are full, my child can choose to take the items to go play with or to do a second round to earn more playing parts.
Second, for foods my child is already learning to tolerate better, we sometimes use lids as option trays. We put three lids in a triangle shape on the table and, then, place small bites of the food, prepared in different ways, in each lid. For example, for peas, one lid might contain a few frozen peas, one might contain a few cooked ones and one might contain a few cooked ones with a blob of mayonnaise next to them. (Our child sometimes prefers frozen bites over cooked ones and seems to be more willing to taste any food with mayonnaise on it.) Then, we have our child test a bite from each lid to see which his mouth thinks is best. He scores each option with a one to five and, the next time we include the food in a meal, we include it in the form that earned the highest score.
One of our favorite ways to release energy after dinner on cold winter evenings is to head to our hallway with a couple broomsticks and the lid of a nut butter jar. The broomsticks become hockey sticks; the lid a puck; and, the following minutes a fantastically fun family time. We get in some pre-bedtime heavy work with overtones of visual tracking (by keeping an eye on the puck), coordination (by connecting stick to puck) and proprioception (by maneuvering all about the hallway.)
Movement Ideas
Other ways we focus on movement with lids in the hallway include:
- stacking a bunch of lids into the tallest tower we can.
- laying many lids out in a line or curve and using them as a balance beam.
- seeing who can roll a lid down the hallways and back the fastest or with the lid falling flat the least times.
- spreading a number of lids out in a zig zag course down the hall and trying to jump over each.
- using lids as a prop for scooter board games, such as placing the lids at one end of the hallway and a tray at the other before challenging our child to collect the ldis one-by-one, scooter them down to the tray and construct an interesting structure with them.
With a bit of creativity and imagination, lids can be the center of innumerous sensory-based hallway games.
How do you envision using lids to help you achieve New Year goals while staying attuned to your child’s sensory diet this year?
Martianne Stanger is a homeschooling mom with over 20 years of experience in education, youth work and dramatic arts, both in the United States and abroad. With certifications as a Middle School Generalist and English 8-12 teacher, plus a drawer full of certificates from a wide variety of professional development workshops and graduate courses, she brings a comprehensive “traditional” background to her present-day creative pursuits. Visit Martianne at Training Happy Hearts where she blogs about life and learning with her son who is gifted with ADHD and SPD and her two other children.
About Martianne Stanger
Share Your Thoughts...