Work on Stereognosis with food.

The other day I was eating a cup filled with blueberries, cherries, and tiny grapes, while driving. I would reach into cup holder with right hand and keeping eyes on road, so it was all via stereognosis, ie eyeballs on my fingers, that I would know which gruit it was. I realized it was a great way to work with kids on stereognosis in an efficient and motivating and fun way. For example you could fill a cup with items like small twizzler bites and cocoa puffs and have the kid figure out which one he was grabbing if he couldn’t see. You could incorporate a lot of descriptive words and ask questions about whether it feels long and skinny and soft or hard and circular and small, etc. If they are more advanced you could use more objects or more similar ones such as two types of cereal. Think about how often kids need to grab a pencil out of their desk or how often we grab stuff without looking. Most kids learn this naturally but many of our occupational therapy kids need to be taught how to do this skill and how to break it down into manageable chunks. By using food they want or need to eat anyway, you can do things like indirectly incorporating counting or graphing or fine motor skills while also teaching stereognosis skills in a fun OT way. Win win. And a thousand variations are possible. This could be great for a joint OT and speech therapy session! I wrote this on my phone sorry if it is weird. 🙂 ps this pic isn’t quite accurate since I don’t think wet fruits would work on a plate like that but you see the shape variations!!