Using Games and Art to Learn about Texture

I’m going to talk to you about how I teach another element of art, which is texture, to young children. And what I have here are just some dominoes that have different samples of texture. You could do the same thing in your classroom with a card, and just glue some different kinds of objects onto the on your cards. But this one is like, this is smooth, and this is rough because it’s like sandpaper. This is fuzzy, and then this is bumpy. As the children are feeling these things I use the word that goes along with the texture that they feel, and then if you want to, and you want to play dominoes, you can just put the dominoes together the way you would a game of dominoes. So, not only are you reinforcing the words of element of arts of texture, they’re also playing a game, which is always very fun. Then I also sometimes have the children make a book. And in the book, they can put fabric, or sandpaper, or anything they find in nature. And they have the sample of it with the word, always reinforcing the word, and bumpy, and weavey. So, you can use anything you have in your classroom whatever they have in nature. They can also go outside and find things in nature that have that same texture, and make their own book. They can draw pictures of things at home, that they have at home, that might be smooth, like the bedspread is smooth, or like the sidewalk is bumpy or rough. So, I encourage them to just be exposed to as many textures in their environment, and put the word to it and help them understand to feel things and put the word to the element of art that is texture and that’s how I teach to learn about texture.