For a Montessori homeschool and many preschool environments, Montessori tactile boards are a great DIY project. Tactile boards are a wonderful sensorial activity, but they were never one of the most popular materials in my Montessori preschool or homeschool. Especially for a homeschool, DIY tactile boards are a good place to save money.
In traditional Montessori classrooms, you’ll find both rough and smooth boards and boards for gradation of textures. There are also tactile tablets for matching grades of sandpaper.
DIY Tactile Boards and Tactile Tablets
DIY Tactile Boards and Tablets (Photo from Making Montessori Ours)
Making Montessori Ours made tactile boards and tablets from plywood and sandpaper.
Little Schoolhouse in the Suburbs has $2 touch boards from floor sample tiles and sandpaper.
DIY Touch Boards (Photo from Walk Beside Me)
Walk Beside Me used matte board and sandpaper.
A Bit of This and A Bit of That used mini cheese boards and sandpaper.
Carrots Are Orange used a slate board and sandpaper to make a sandpaper texture board.
Extensions/Alternatives to Traditional Tactile Boards and Tactile Tablets
Sandpaper and Normal Paper Sorting (Photo from Elaine Ng Friis)
Elaine Ng Friis made a rough-and-smooth activity sorting sandpaper and normal paper. (blog no longer available)
Harvesting Kale made texture boards using wooden boards from the craft store and items of varying textures.
Kreative Resources made texture boards from inexpensive cutting boards and items of varying textures.
Julie K. in Taiwan made texture boards using cardboard and items of varying textures.
Post-Apocalyptic Homeschool made texture tablets from cardboard squares and items of varying textures.
Tactile Tablet Matching (Photo from Barefoot in Suburbia)
Barefoot in Suburbia made tactile boards and tablets from hard foam board and sandpaper.
My Delicious Ambiguity used wooden coasters and items of varying textures.
Walk Beside Me has tiny fabric matching pillows (and an interesting post about the use of sandpaper).
School Time Snippets has a texture road of butcher paper with items of varying textures.
Making Montessori Ours has a fabric box and mystery bag in addition to DIY tactile boards and tablets.
Tactile Board and Tablet Presentations
Montessori Primary Guide has presentations for Sensitizing Fingertips, Touch Boards (Rough and Smooth Boards 1-3), Touch Tablets, and Fabrics.
Rough and Smooth Presentation (Photo from Carrots Are Orange)
Carrots Are Orange shows the steps for presenting rough and smooth boards.
David Gettman’s Basic Montessori: learning activities for under-fives – Google Books has presentations for touch boards, tactile tablets, and fabric matching.
Montessori World has presentations for texture boards and tablets.
Montessori Monday Link-Up
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Love all your Do It Yourself Post. Always helps me to feel that I can still have materials avaliable without having to have lots of money. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much for your kind comment, Discovering Montessori! I appreciate all the great tutorials that are available now, and I’m so glad that my online research can help others! 🙂
These are great ideas!
And I am SO happy to see someone else besides me mention the sensitizing fingers – this can be SO crucial for some children all of the time, and the rest of us some of the time. There are days the sandpaper feel is just “yucky” – I can’t explain it any other way – do the sensitizing fingers and it’s completely fine!
They should be used for the sandpaper letters, numerals and phonograms too 🙂
Thanks so much for your comment, Jessica! I’ve just seen the sensitizing fingertips used for the tactile boards and tablets, but it does make a lot of sense before any activity with sandpaper. For certain children that definitely would be essential. 🙂
Thank you for showing this Deb:)) These were really fun and simple to make. You are so wonderful:))
Thanks for your sweet comment, Cherine … and my pleasure! I love how your boards and tablets turned out … they look professionally made! 🙂
These are such fun to explore textures with.
Thanks for your comment! Tactile boards and their variations are great for exploring textures, aren’t they?!
Thanks for adding my Texture Walk post to your list! This is a great resource!!! Thank you for taking the time to put this (and other Montessori Monday) list together : )
My pleasure, Kristina … LOVE your idea! And thanks for your kind comment! 🙂
Thank you so much for taking the time to compile all of your diy posts. I am trying to see the link for Montessori Free Fall but I am getting denied. Do I need permission or is the blog gone? If I do you you ask the blog owner to add me to her list – my blogger account is kg****@***il.com.
Thanks, Kari! And thank you for letting me know about the Montessori Free Fall link. It looks like that blog has been changed to a private blog. I removed the link, since I don’t know how to get added to the list.
Wow. I love all your posts on DiY activities and you are so generous with all the additional resources you provide. I am back here more often than I care to admit. Thanks again.