What's Inside Santa's Workshop? Holiday Stereognosis Game
12.07.2014
There are countless times throughout the day that a person relies on their hand’s ability to discriminate the features of the objects, materials, and other matter that is being touched and held. Let’s think about it…
- After washing your face with your eyes still closed, how do you determine that you are grasping onto a towel?
- How do you find the coin in your pocket?
- How do you know that your fingers are properly placed on the keyboard?
- Without looking, do you rotate your pen properly into place to contact the paper?
- Without looking, can you use an elastic band to put your hair into a pony tail?
- How do you tie your shoes without looking at the laces?
Haptic perception or stereognosis plays a very important role in such functions. Haptic perception is the ability to recognize objects and the object’s properties via touching by hand. Haptic perception deals with the retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of the tactile properties and identity of objects through manual and in-hand manipulation. Using the hand for tactile scanning is known to be complex. Researchers have found the process includes the blending of feedback from tactile, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive sensations. To actively retrieve somatosensory sensation from the environment during active touch, the individual must be able to sequence hand movements and modulate force during object manipulation.
Haptic perception emerges in early infancy and matures into adolescence. Initially, infants use oral exploration to learn about objects. Later the hand becomes the primary tool for haptic object exploration. Manual manipulation of objects begins with grasping and is later replaced by more patterns (e.g., fingering and banging) that are adjusted to the physical properties of the object. This is followed by a long period of development where the accuracy of haptic object recognition improves and the complexity of manual manipulation and exploratory strategies increases. During childhood these manipulation strategies grow in complexity with increasing age. Research states that by six to seven years of age the many aspects of haptic perception, which include perception of spatial orientation and identification of three-dimensional objects, are well developed. By adolescence, these skills are fully refined and developed (Exner, 2005).
According to Case-Smith (1991), one of the most common sensory integrative disorders is poor tactile perception. If tactile perception is inaccurate, difficulties result in terms of the child's ability to distinguish between different properties of objects and materials. This results in the child having difficulty completing tasks such as fastening buttons, snaps, and zippers, connecting pieces of toys, braiding or tying shoes. Children with poor haptic perceptual tend to have associated difficulties with hand-eye coordination, motor planning, in-hand manipulation, visual perceptual skills (Coté, 2014) and compensation strategies (such as using visual guidance). Feedback that is normally used to guide motor tasks such as handwriting, scissor skills, and feeding are also affected by inadequate haptic perception (Parham & Mailoux, 2005).
Yu, Howe, & Hinojosa (2012), found that haptic perception is a significant predictor of handwriting speed and legibility. The authors state the importance of therapists providing intervention aimed at haptic perception when working on a child's handwriting speed. This includes activities that require the child to regulate pressure during manipulation, and to discriminate and perceive shape, size, and texture of various objects and materials. They suggest for those children that rely on visual cues rather than haptic ones, to provide activities that heighten tactile sensations. This could include a task such as manipulating objects with occluded vision in order to improve performance.
So as to offer your students/children a fun way to develop this important area, Tools to Grow has a Holiday game that we believe is sure to catch the interest of those children (and adults!) that wonder… “What’s Inside Santa’s Workshop?”
What's Inside Santa's Workshop? Holiday Stereognosis Game
This fun Holiday themed game addresses all of the following:
Tactile Perception:
- Provides the opportunity to recognize the properties of an object through active touch and manipulation without the benefit of using vision
Tactile Discrimination:
- Children use their hands to perceive the size, shape, weight, texture, hardness and spatial orientation of the object
Finger Isolation:
- Encourages the ability to isolate individual finger movement, or move one finger at a time
- Well developed controlled finger movements are needed for tasks such as using a pencil, typing, using musical instruments & tying shoelaces
In-hand manipulation:
- Promotes a child’s ability to adjust and move an object around in his/her hand without assistance from the other hand
- Well developed in-hand manipulation skills are important for optimal use of the hands for dressing (ex: buttons, zippers, snaps), using school tools (ex: pencils, scissors), leisure time (ex: knitting, embroidery), feeding oneself (ex: mealtime utensils), and food preparation
Visualization:
- Provides opportunity for the formation of mental visual images
- Visualization skills can help a student with their memory
- Visualization can help a student improve their reading comprehension
Vocabulary:
- Provides opportunity for expanding a child’s expressive and receptive language skills
There are two levels/versions of this fun holiday game, one targeted at preschool and younger children, and the other for school aged/older children. Detailed instructions, game cards, cover sheet, and variations of the game are included in both PDFs.
The items that are required to play the game are all items that are found in Santa's workshop! These items (to be supplied) include:
- Bow (on top of presents)
- Puzzle piece (part of a puzzle)
- Cotton ball (part of Santa’s beard)
- Crayon (decorate the toys)
- Bolt (Holds toys together)
- Small bell (Santa rings this)
- Pencil (write list)
- Key (opens the door)
- Paper clip (holds papers)
- Piece of ribbon (used tie up presents)
- Mini candy cane (elves eat it)
- Wooden Block (the elves make this)
- Button (from Santa's suit)
Once the game cards and bag are assembled and the previous mentioned items are collected and placed in the bag, it's time to play "What's in Santa's Workshop?" Preschool/younger children will look at the visual depiction of the items and school aged/older children will have written descriptions of the items found in Santa's workshop.
The child(ren) must pick a card and reach into the bag with only their hand and fingers to locate the object on the game card. No peeking! Continue this process for each game card until the bag is empty.
As Occupational Therapists, we often engage children in multi-sensory learning experiences. This activity is a great way to incorporate haptic exploration into therapy sessions.
You can find "What's In Santa's Workshop?" Stereognosis Game here.
References
Exner, C. (2005). Development of hand skills. In J. Case-Smith (Ed) Occupational therapy for children, 5th Edition (pp. 324-325). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.
Coté, Carol A, PhD, OTR/L. (2014). Haptic exploration in elementary school age children. OTJR, 34(1), 4-11.
Henderson, A. PhD, and Pehoski, C. Sc.D (1995), Hand Function in the Child. Mosby.
Parham, D. & Mailloux, Z. (2005). Sensory integration. In J. Case-Smith (Ed) Occupational therapy for children, 5th Edition (pp. 380). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.
Tzu-Ying Yu PhD OT, Tsu-Hsin Howe PhD OTR & Jim Hinojosa PhD OT BCP FAOTA (2012), Contributions of Haptic and Kinesthetic Perceptions on Handwriting Speed and Legibility for First and Second Grade Children, Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, & Early Intervention, 5:1, 43-60.
Related Topics: Christmas/Holidays
