Sensory: Understanding the Sense of Touch and Activities to Improve Body Awareness

These instructions for Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) patients offer activities to develop their sense of touch and body awareness.

Important information about touch:

Understanding information about touch is a basic part of most activities. Children with difficulties in this area may show a variety of behaviors. They may look clumsy. Their behavior may be withdrawn or aggressive. They may have a hard time sitting still or standing in lines, may seem very shy or have angry outbursts. They may want to be touched and reach out to others or may seem to touch everything. These children may also like the feeling of deep pressure more than light touch.

Children who have trouble understanding the touch signals from the skin may also have difficulty with the other senses. For example, loud noises, odors, or bright lights may bother them. They may also have trouble planning movements for an activity because feedback from their joints, muscles, and touch sensors is not always correct.

Instructions for practicing body awareness and the sense of touch:

Fine motor activities

• Allow your child to use their hands to draw in a pile of shaving cream, whipped cream or paint. Add sand or rice for texture.

• Draw numbers, letters, or shapes on your child's back, arm, leg or hand and ask your child to name them.

• Find objects hidden in a container of rice, sand, beans, noodles, foam or shredded tissue paper. Use scrabble letters or letters and words written on small pieces of cardboard to work on spelling and reading when they are found.

• Play with putty, clay or gel bags.

• Play with fidget toys that have moving pieces or mushy textures.

• Use thicker paper when writing to provide support. Gluing writing paper to construction paper works well.

Gross motor activities

• Provide a supportive surface for sitting. Have your child sit in a chair or beanbag, not on the floor. If your child must sit on the floor, support their back against a wall.

• Lie on stomach propped on elbows while reading, playing a game or watching TV.

• Roll over different surfaces: carpet, blanket, grass, leaves, sand, and tile.

• Push and pull heavy objects like a wagon, wheelbarrow, boxes or vacuum.

• Walk like the animals: crab, bear, seal, bunny, frog.

• Do activities that require bearing weight on hands: wheelbarrow walking, chair push-ups, holding up the upper body while the lower body is supported by a large ball, chair or cushion.

• Enjoy roughhousing and tickle play.

• Play steam roller: have your child lie on the floor and roll a large ball over the length of the child's body with firm pressure.

• Jump on a trampoline, mattress or inflated inner tube.

• Bounce while seated on a large beach ball or Hoppity ball.

• Play Twister.

• Make up an obstacle course that has your child climbing, hanging, crawling, jumping, balancing, and squeezing around and through objects.

• Play ball with a heavier ball such as a medicine ball.

Other sensory activities

• Drink thick milk shakes or fruit mixes through a straw.

• Chew stiff materials like gum, taffy, caramel or beef.

• Cuddle stuffed animals or a favorite blanket.

• Dry your child off from a bath or shower with an air-dried terry cloth towel. An air-dried towel has more texture than a machine-dried one.

• Apply body lotion with firm pressure.

• Rub parts of the body with a variety of textures such as feathers, carpet samples, dry washcloths, felt or fake fur.

• Apply vibration from a small handheld massager.

If you have any questions, please contact your therapist.

Reviewed on January 10, 2022, by Diana Lansinger, MOTR/L