Take one – make five!
This blog offers ideas to help you make the most of resources that you have, or can easily acquire, to create a range of related activities for your students. Making several uses of the same resource, or sensory input, allows for cyclic learning, generalisation and consistency across a topic or period of time.
This blog post is all about… Water!
Water is a marvellous sensory resource with so many options for activities and it is something that so many students are attracted to, and choose to engage with. It is cheap and although things can get messy, everything dries so no great management issues are created, especially in the summer term!
- Listening fun. Start by recording, or downloading from a free sound effect website, a few distinct water sounds, for example, a splash, waves on a beach, rain, pouring water, thunderstorm, dripping and then use these for sound discrimination. You could link them to pictures on a PowerPoint and play matching games; put them on single recording devices such as Talking Points or record them on coloured sections of an app such as Keezy.
- Touch and splash. Playing with water is always fun. The water can be contained in a bowl or in a blow-up paddling pool – or any size in between. The water can be coloured, have bubbles added or have toys added to pour, mix and splash. However, it is so much fun even if nothing is added! Don’t forget that it’s just as much fun to explore with feet as well as hands… helps with body awareness!
- Water painting! If it’s a hot day, then painting with water outside is excellent fun! Have a variety of brushes, and don’t forget to include big decorating brushes as well as finer, painting ones. Paint on walls outside and watch as the water creates a picture or pattern then dries away to nothing.
- Water trails. Add water to empty washing-up liquid bottles, or similar. Make a trail with the water, can your friends follow it around the playground? Start with straight lines but then make sure it is twisty and interesting!
- Transfer game. Can you move water safely, without spilling from one container to another? This game can be made very easy with big containers, a short space in between and a good choice of items to collect and transfer the water. Equally, it can be made much more difficult by varying the container sizes, offering less obvious transfer options, for example, cotton wool and putting obstacles in between the origin and target containers. A great activity to run as a timed race.
Carol Allen
