Chaplain's Chat

Hi everyone! 

Some of you might have noticed emails from me since the start of Term 3 saying "Your child saw the Chaplain today! These are just to let you know when I see your children, don't feel any pressure to reply. If you do have a question, please feel free to respond and I will get back to you. Just a reminder, I am only available on Mondays & Tuesdays so will be unable to respond out of those days. 

As lockdown gets extended, some kids (and even adults) might be feeling stressed or bored looking towards the upcoming time stuck at home. One great creative activity to beat the stress and boredom is to make your own sensory toys! 

Sensory toys and fidget toys are extremely popular with young kids at the moment. Things like slime, pop-its, fidget spinners and putty are great to use for things like emotional self-regulation and anger-management. Sensory toys also help improve concentration and attention to tasks by allowing the brain to filter out the extra sensory information. 

By having a fidget toy, a child can ‘filter out’ other sensory information which is causing a distraction and encourage the sensory information to be focused on a toy in their hands. 

One activity I like to do with young people is to create our own fidget toys! This is great for kids who like specific sensory feelings and want to be creative and experiment with different materials.

What you need: 

• Balloon
• Funnel
• Material to fill the balloon! This can be rice, beans, beads, play-dough, sand, slime, water, flour – and anything else that might work!

Pull the end of the balloon over the funnel and pour the material into the funnel. If it gets stuck, use a pen or pencil to push it through. 

Keep adding more and more material until your are happy with the size, and tie a knot at the base of the balloon to keep it in! 

Enjoy your new stress ball!