Get Ready
Suggested Supplies
- Collect a few safe, clean natural items such as leaves, feathers, pine needles, sticks, acorns, seed pods, or bark pieces.
- A small box with a lid (shoe boxes work well), paper bag, or sock for hiding objects.
Before You Begin
"Today we’re going to explore nature with our senses—especially our sense of touch! Let’s use our hands and fingers to feel the different textures of natural materials. We have to be careful to only touch things that won’t hurt us. I wonder what we will find today!”
Step-by-Step
Step 1: Collect your materials.
You can gather materials outside ahead of time, or invite children to help you collect them in a park, backyard, or along a sidewalk.
Challenge children to locate materials that have a variety of textures and sizes. How many different textures can you find?
Safety tip!
Check exploration areas for poison oak or ivy, or anything that could scratch, prick, or poke children. These items should be explored with eyes only!
Step 2: Explore using your sense of touch.
With babies and toddlers, gently explore how materials feel:
- Use pine needles or soft leaves to “tickle” toes, hands, and cheeks
- Let them hold and crinkle leaves, tap sticks, or feel smooth stones
- Use words like soft, rough, tickly, cold, or bumpy to describe what you feel.
For preschoolers and older children, have them touch the different items and describe how they feel. Invite children to sort objects by how they feel—all the soft things, all the rough things, etc. This builds early science and math skills like comparison and categorization.
Weinstein Jewish Community Center
Weinstein Jewish Community Center
Step 3: Play a guessing game.
Place one natural object at a time into a mystery box, paper bag, or sock. Invite children to:
- Put their hand inside without peeking
- Feel the object and describe what it’s like
- Guess what it might be before pulling it out
Ask: “What do you feel? Is it smooth or rough? Big or small? What do you think it is?”
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Step 4: Extend the fun with art!
Create art with your natural items is by repurposing the box or bag from the guessing game in an activity that combines art and movement:
- Place a blank piece of paper in the box or bag. Heavier weight paper works best.
- Drip in some paint (a few drips will do)
- Drop in 1-2 natural objects (like stones, cones, or seeds)
- Close the lid and have the child shake away! (Hold that lid tightly closed!)
This activity is similar to marble art, but creates different patterns due to the natural textures of the items you collected.
Weinstein Jewish Community Center
Weinstein Jewish Community Center
Children Are Working On
- Using senses to explore and describe
- Strengthening motor skills by gripping, squeezing, and holding
- Building vocabulary
- Asking questions and making predictions
- Practicing patience, listening, and turn-taking
- Feeling confident exploring nature through play
Variations
- For older children, provide paper, pencils, and coloring utensils so they can record the different items they found. With help or on their own, children can write down a few words that describe each item they draw.
- Make it a group game! During the guessing game, have one child use descriptive clues to try to get others to guess the mystery item.
- Add in language learning by introducing Spanish words for the natural items or descriptors (e.g. stick/palo, leaf/hoja, soft/suave, rough/rugoso)
More to Explore
Word Bank
- Texture - how something feels when you touch it
- Prickly - feels sharp or pointy, like it could poke you (ex. A cactus)
- Spongy - feels soft and squishy; bounces back when you press it (ex. moss)
- Bumpy - has little lumps or raised spots (ex. Tree bark)
- Rough - not smooth; might feel scratchy or hard (ex. A rock)
- Smooth - feels flat, even, with no bumps or sharp edges (ex. A glossy leaf)
Background Information
- A tree’s bark is like its skin, protecting it from the elements.
- Rough bark offers more protection for trees with harsh seasonal weather changes as well as areas prone to forest fires.
- Smooth bark can act as a defense against insects by reducing their ability to grip to its surface. This is more common on tropical trees.
- Leaf textures also protect plants!
- Desert plants often have waxy leaves, which prevent water loss.
- Glossy leaves thrive in bright, sunny conditions by reflecting light and protecting the plant from overheating.
- Sharp or spiky leaves can deter animals from eating the plant.
Even More
- Family, Friends, & Forests: Talk about the different textures you might find in a forest. Are they different from the textures you explored during the activity?
- Do Your Part: Not everything in nature is safe to touch. Learn together about things to avoid touching like poisonous plants or sharp objects and encourage children to teach others.
- Career Exploration: Invite children to explore a green job that involves tree textures—ARBORIST. Arborists (or “tree doctors”) are trained to care for individual trees. They inspect trees for signs of disease and may even climb into the branches as needed.
Weinstein Jewish Community Center
Weinstein Jewish Community Center
Texture Detectives
Download a one-page version of the activity. The download includes a list of materials, shortened steps, what children are working on, and a suggestion for adapting or expanding the activity