Learning

Jingle all the way - Insight magazine

Summary: How to turn a Christmas song into an experience for all the senses! From Insight magazine issue 18, November/December 2008.

• Making Christmas carols multi-sensory
• Jingle Bells

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Making Christmas carols multi-sensory

It can be a challenge to think of new and interesting Christmas activities, both at home and at school. As a parent or teacher of a child with complex needs and visual impairment, there is the extra dimension of creating a multi-sensory experience that can be accessed by children with varying interests and abilities.

Here are some ideas about introducing tactile, olfactory and noisy elements to a well-known Christmas song. This could be done just for fun at home, or part of a Christmas show or class assembly at school, each child being given a different activity, with appropriate support. Teaching and practising the different lines can help with development of sequencing, turn taking and team working.

Please make appropriate health and safety considerations according to the group of children you are with, including potential allergies to materials suggested.

Jingle Bells

Dashing through the snow
Throw confetti, desicated coconut of tiny scraps of white paper into the air (or out at the audience)

In a one horse open sleigh
Make "clip clop noise" with coconut shells. Brave people could use a horsey smell - perhaps some horse hair or a grooming brush from a local riding centre. You can buy a "stables/horses aroma" from Dale Air .

Over fields we go
Run hands over tactile surface to resemble grass - real piece of turf, greengrocer's artificial grass or grass substitute from garden centre

Laughing all the way
Children encouraged to "ho ho ho", sign laughter, or operate switch and single message device with recorded laughter
Bells on bob tails ring
Ring hand held bells, attach bell to toy reindeer for shaking or if child would like to dress as reindeer, bell could be attached to "bob tail" on costume.

Making spirits bright
Turn on torches, or use switch to turn on bright light or Christmas fairy lights

What fun it is to laugh and sing
A sleighing song tonight

Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Ring hand held bells

Oh, what fun it is to ride
In a one horse open sleigh
Clip clopping with coconut shells

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what fun it is to ride
In a one horse open sleigh

Insight magazine

Content author: insightmagazine@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 20/11/2008 11:13