CECsci.153


TITLE:    The Touch n Feel Box

AUTHOR:   Charles Gutierrez, Sierra Vista Elementary
          Las Vegas, NM

OVERVIEW:  This lesson is used as an introduction to the
study of living and non-living things through the use of
tactile perception or the sense of touch.

GRADE LEVEL:  I have used this lesson with second, third,and
fourth grade level students. As the grade level increases
the objects must have unfamiliar surfaces to the students to
keep them interested or guessing.

OBJECTIVE: The object of the lesson is for students to
identify one or more living and non-living things through
the use of tactile perception, better known as the sense of
touch.

RESOURCES/MATERIALS:
1 round ice cream container, hat box,or even shoe box.
1 set of different textured rocks.
1 set of various fruits or vegetables.
1 set of nuts such as pine cones, acorns, pinon nuts,
  etc.
1 set of leaves found in the school yard.
1 set of seeds found on the pant legs of the students.

The list could go on and on by using your imagination.

ACTIVITIES AND PROCEDURES:
     In the classroom, have students put their hand in the
hatbox and attempt to describe to the other students what it
is that he or she is feeling.  This is a great place for the
use of adjectives and to tie it to your language component.
Also a great place to use words like fuzzy, smooth,
jagged,etc.
     You might also ask your older students to go out into
the school yard and find a leaf or a rock or a seed that
matches what he or she felt and bring it in to compare to
the one in the box.
     This leads to classifying and more use of words like
rough, hairy, smooth,etc.
     An extension of this lesson would be for the students
to each make their own touch n feel box.  Encourage them to
come up with difficult things to identify. Have students
make a list of describing words used to identify the object
in the box.
     Caution must be used as to the objects used in the box.
Nothing that could be dangerous to fellow students is to be
used.  This is a great place to introduce awareness for the
environment.  Also never allow any student to put a live
animal in a box.

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER: This is a very good experience for
the second grader who has not done very much classification
but can also be used with fourth and fifth graders with a
little bit of ingenuity and a variety of sets of objects
suitable for the different grade levels.