For young children, exploring aluminum foil can be a very new and interesting sensory experience…
Aluminum foil can go from being very smooth to very bumpy which creates a unique texture experience for young children and a great opportunity to expand descriptive vocabulary….
Wy started off with a sheet of aluminum foil and as he rubbed his hands across the foil, I used terms like shiny and smooth. Then I showed Wy how we can scrunch it all up to make a ball…
After Wy finished scrunching up his foil, I asked him to try and open it back up. Getting the foil “unscrunched” without ripping it all up was a good challenge for Wy but he did a nice job with only a few torn off pieces in the process….
Once the foil was unscrunched, Wy used his hands to smooth it back out on the table and I used the terms like bumpy and rough….
Next, we added a little bit of paint on the foil and Wy used his finger to rub the paint around the bumpy foil…
It didn’t take long until he discovered that it would be fun to use his whole hand to rub the paint. The combination of the paint and the bumpy foil is a terrific exploration in texture…
I think when I do this again with all the children, we will paint on the smooth foil and the bumpy foil so the children can explore painting on both textures side-by-side. I didn’t think of doing this today but I will have to remember that for next time!!