Stamping Fun!

Activity of the Week: ALPHABET STAMPS!

Age: 2+ 

I recently unearthed this awesome stamp set from the bottom of my fine motor box (my closet is an amazing place if you know where to look!). I found these great stamps at the local Target dollar spot a few years back, but I’ve seen them come back with different seasonal themes since. While I like this set because of the size of the handle, you can find stamp sets from a variety of sellers in different sizes and shapes. 

Stamping activities can work for a variety of ages and are a versatile art tool to keep around.  Stamps can be used with a traditional ink pad but also try them out with playdough, on rocks, sand, or cookies – think outside the paper!  Try the following activities depending on what your child is currently working on:

Activities for children working on letter recognition: 

·      Let your child choose a variety of letters and talk about the letters as they stamp. “You choose the letter “L.” Aunty Leah’s name starts with an “L.”

·      Ask your child to find a specific letter in the pile. Challenge your child to roll a dice and stamp the number of times the dice reads. 

·      Encourage your child to find the letters for their name and stamp them.

·      Use the stamps to make dinner place settings for each member of the family.  It doesn’t need to be for a fancy dinner party – let your child assign seating for taco Tuesday. 

Activities for children working on spelling:

·      Hide & seek – tell your child the sound of the letter and encourage them to find it in the pile of stamps. Once they find the correct letter, stamp away on some paper.

·      Use the stamps to practice sight words.  

·      Put all the stamps into an opaque bag. Have your child reach in blind and pick out a stamp. Find something in the room that has the letter in its name. For example, if I pull out the letter “C,” I can name the can or the cat. To start, use just the first letter. As your child progresses, play the game so the letter can be at the end of the word or in the middle. 

Activities for children working on handwriting:

·      Make a list of your favorite foods - use lined paper and give your child encouragement to work on proper spacing & alignment.  Before you start, ask ‘where do you start your line?’ or ‘where do you put a space?’ to prepare your child for success.

·      Use the stamps, ink, & paper to practice spelling words.

·      Write an invitation to a friend.

Don’t forget to use washable ink pads! Most importantly, have fun. 

Snow Box!

OT Activity of the Day:

Snow Box!

Target Age Range: 3 and up

Do you have any extra paper shreds?? Great, you have a snow box! Grab those shreddings, throw them in a box, add an activity (here I’ve added alphabet puzzles) and you have a fun inside activity on these cold winter days!

To make more of a fine motor challenge you can add tongs (we love handy scoopers and jumbo tweezers-both can be found on Amazon) and small toys. You can also put beads inside and have your child string them on a pipe cleaner. Or you can add anything that you know your child likes inside and turn any activity into a calming sensory activity!

We always recommend putting a sheet under the container to help catch any mess:). Enjoy!

Homemade Snow!

OT Activity of the Day:

Homemade Snow!

Target Age Range: 3 and up (making sure that your child no longer puts things in their mouth!)

Too cold to venture outside to play in the snow?? Our therapist, Jess, has come up with a solution! Homemade snow that you can play with in the comfort of your own home:). This is a great sensory activity that will help fill those hours of the day and provide some calming input to your child’s body. Depending on what type of manipulatives you place inside you can work on fine motor skills (scissor tongs, beads to string on pipe cleaners, tongs, small animals) or pretend play (small animals, small figurines, cars, etc.) or both!

All you need to do is mix a cup of regular old shaving cream and a cup of baking soda in a container and you’re set! Feel free to add a few drops of water to really get the consistency that you’re looking for! As always, we suggest you put a large sheet under the container to catch any mess that may be made:).

Enjoy!

Melted Snowman

OT Activity of the Day:

Melted Snowman

Target Age Range: 3 and up

This is a great activity that is easily scaled down for the young 3s and scaled up for your older preschoolers. All you have to do is rip paper! Ripping paper is a great activity that helps build the fine motor skills necessary for activities like cutting and writing.

First rip up some white paper, I used computer paper. Then glue it down on a piece of paper and add whatever features you would like. For the younger kiddos I had the eyes, nose, and arms precut, however your older kiddos can cut out their own snowman details. For the even older kiddos, Kindergarten and older, you can write a quick sentence or two about why/how the snowman melted!

Enjoy!

National Handwriting Day!

Happy National Handwriting Day!

On this day we just want to highlight a few ways of making handwriting, and learning how to write, fun!

1. Try building letters with wikki stix! Wikki Stix are very pliable and super fun to use to build letters and simple words. They’re also a great way to work on fine motor manipulation.

2. Using the Handwriting Without Tears letter blocks. These blocks are great because they come in the 4 different sizes/shapes that are stressed in the Handwriting Without Tears method (big line/little line, big curve/little curve). You can put these together to build all the different letters of the alphabet!

3. Using the Handwriting Without Tears roll-a-dough cards. Everyone loves play doh and it’s amazing how easy it is to get a child to build letters when this modality is involved.

4. Making letters/words in shaving cream. This is another fan favorite! Your child can write the letters or words in the shaving cream using their hands or a paint brush (should they not want to get their hands messy).

5. Using a dry erase board. Even the pickiest writers love when I pull out the dry erase boards.

6. If holding a pencil is challenging, don’t forget about all the wonderful grips out there! Ask us about our favorites today!

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Day Activities!

OT Activity of the Day:

Thanksgiving Day Activities!

Target Age Range: 3 and up

Looking for some fun holiday themed activities for your littles this Thanksgiving? We’ve got you covered! Here are some of our favorite activities to help entertain your children while you cook!

1. Name Tags- Grab some construction paper, stickers (foam are my favorite), crayons, glue, pom poms, and anything else you can think to decorate some name tags. I folded a piece of construction paper into 4s and then I cut out the squares and folded the paper and it gave a pretty good size for name tags. For your younger children you can always have the paper precut and the names already written and they can simply decorate the name tags, for the older ones you can have them cut, write and decorate! This is a great way to work on fine motor manipulation, visual motor skills and handwriting!

2. Play Doh Turkey- I grabbed some play doh and made a turkey! Play doh is always a great way to improve hand strength end endurance. When making a turkey it’s also a great activity for fine motor manipulation! I made my turkey standing up, but you can flatten the play doh and make a flat turkey if you would like!

3. Thanksgiving Necklaces- I used some scissors, construction paper, glue, crayons, yarn and a hole puncher to make a turkey necklace! This is another fun activity that can be precut for your little ones. The older kiddos can even write on them! I made mine more detailed, but you can make yours as simple or as elaborate as you would like! The hole puncher is always a fan favorite, and is a great way to work on improving hand strength and endurance.

4. Not Pictured: Sensory Bin- you can make a bean bin or you can be festive and dump some popcorn seeds into a large container for your sensory bin. You can add some feathers, cups, tongs, empty spice containers, and anything else that may keep your child entertained. As always, I would always recommend laying a large sheet down first to catch any runaway sensory items-this definitely helps with cleanup!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have a safe and happy holiday!

2018 Holiday Gift Guide

2018 Holiday Gift Guide

Finding kids games for each age group that promotes overall development can be tricky. So as our gift to you, we’ve compiled our favorites here (including our favorite brands) to help you select the perfect gift for the children in your life!

Much of this can be found on Amazon or in Target! Happy Holidays!

Ages 1-2 For this age group I love the brands Fisher Price, Vtech, and Learning Resources.

1. Fisher Price Rattle and Rock Maracas

2. The First Years Stack Up Cups

3. Fisher Price Rock-a-stack and Baby’s First Blocks Bundle

4. Sassy Developmental Bumpy Ball

5. Vtech Drop and Go Dump Truck

6. Learning Resources “Snap and Learn” Alphabet Alligators

7. Medium sized building blocks (I like B.Toys)

8. Squigs (they stick on mirrors and windows!)

9. Bath Toys-like Munchkin Float and Play Bubbles Bath Toy

Ages 2-3 For this age group I love the brand Melissa and Doug and ALEX

1. Melissa and Doug Pounding Bench and Mallet

2. Melissa and Doug Food Groups

3. Melissa and Doug building blocks

4. Melissa and Doug Examine and Treat Pet Vet Play

5. Handy Scoopers (promotes scissor skills!) Great for those early sensory bins (dried pasta, cotton balls, pom poms, etc.)!

6. Jumbo Tweezers (promotes fine motor strength) Great for those early sensory bins!

7. Dot markers

8. LEGO DUPLO blocks

9. ALEX Toys Button Art

10. ALEX Toys Little Hands String a Farm

11. ALEX Toys Little Hands String and Beep

Ages 3-4 For this age group I love Learning Resources and Educational Insights games

1. Learning Resources Froggy Feeding Fun

2. Feed the Woozle

3. Learning Resources Color Bug Catch

4. Avalanche (a game that is a child favorite in my clinic)

5. Fruit Pie Sorter

6. Stack Up

7. Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game

8. Pop the Pig

9. Magnatiles (always a fan favorite)

10. Bowling sets

11. Jumbo Eye Droppers (great for bath time play and fine motor development!)

12. Play doh sets (great for developing hand strength)

13. LUKAT STEM Toys, Building Blocks with Drill (kids are always motivated by a drill!)

14. Puzzles

15. USA Toys STEM Engineering Building Kids Toys

16. Learning Resources Primary Science Lab Activity Set

17. Learning Resources Mini Muffin Match Up Counting Toy Set

Ages 5-6 For this age group I love Learning Resources and Educational Insights games

1. Learning Resources Mental Blox (great for visual motor and motor planning development)

2. Angry Birds On Thin Ice (great for visual motor development!)

3. Zingo

4. Guess Who

5. Lego sets (great for fine motor manipulation and visual motor development)

6. Play Doh sets (promotes hand strength)

7. Whirligig STEM Toys, building blocks

8. Puzzles

9. D-Fantix Rainbow Puzzle Ball (This is in my fidget box and is a fan favorite by children 5 and up)

10. Educational Insights Design and Drill Activity Set (drills are so motivating and fun for this age group!)

11. Kinetic Sand Sets (a great sensory and fine motor activity!)

12. Perfection! (promotes visual motor skills)

13. Operation (great fine motor control game!)

Ages 7+ For this age group I love ThinkFun Games (fun brain teaser games)

1. ThinkFun “Shape by Shape”

2. Thumbs Up (Fun game for fine motor manipulation development)

3. Quick Cups

4. ThinkFun Distraction (great game for improving overall attention)

5. Spot It (perfect to promote visual scanning and perfect travel size for those car or plane rides)

6. Fast Flip

7. Simon Says (great game for improving overall attention)

8. Bop It (great game for improving overall attention)

9. River Crossing (brain teaser game)

10. Puzzles

11. Lego Sets

Fall Corn

OT Activity of the Day:

Fall Corn

Target Age Range: 3 and up

This is a great craft for the younger kiddos. I would pre-cut the corn and husk and even glue it down depending on the level of your child. The real work is in the painting. Now, I chose to use a cotton ball, however you can use fingers or a q-tip, either works on finger isolation and overall grasping development.

Once your corn is glued together and your mode of painting is determined you can get to work! Q-tips are great ways to promote a tripod grasp on a fine motor utensil. So is using a cotton ball. While I used a clothes pin on my cotton ball, you can easily use your child’s pincer grasp (thumb and index finger) to hold onto the cotton ball. If you go with finger painting this would be a great way to work on finger isolation! Happy painting!

Enjoy!

Cornucopia

OT Activity of the Day:

Cornucopia

Target Age Range: 4 and up

With this craft we break out the hole punchers again. Kids seriously love hole punchers, so this is a craft that is sure to please!

First, either you or your child, should punch holes all around the paper plate. Next you take some brown yarn, or string, and lace the holes. This is a great way to work on hand strength, fine motor manipulation and visual motor skills. Once the plate is laced you can either draw in your fruit and other fillers or you can have some options pre-made.

For the younger kiddos it may be a better idea to have some items pre-cut so all they have to do is use some glue to glue down their fillers. If your child is older you can have them practice their visual motor skills by having them draw in their own fillers. Other way this is a great holiday craft!

Enjoy!

Hand Turkey

OT Activity of the Day:

Hand Turkey

Target Age Range: 4 and up

A hand turkey is a pretty standard Thanksgiving craft. While this is a seasonal staple, it’s also a great way to work on bilateral coordination, scissor skills, fine motor control, and handwriting.

If you have a younger child, you may need to trace your child’s hand for them, tracing their hand may be too difficult. If that’s the case, there’s still plenty of skill sets that are targeted. For the younger kiddos, you can have all pre-made feathers or you can practice cutting out one or two of the feathers. By the age of 4 your child should be able to cut along a line so this is a craft that would be right up their alley. If you don’t want to use construction paper as feathers, you can always color the “feathers” with crayons! When you ask a child to color inside the lines you are asking them to use their fine motor control, so this is a perfect task for your preschoolers!

If you have an older child, Kindergarten and up, you can absolutely have them trace their own hands. This promotes bilateral coordination, a skill that is necessary for classroom success. After they trace their hand, they can either cut out the feathers or color them in, it’s their choice! If your child is even older, you can even have them write a sentence or two about what they’re thankful for. If you want, you can write one thing you’re thankful for on each feather!

Enjoy!

Witch's Brew

OT Activity of the Day:

Witch’s Brew

Target Age Range: 3 and up

I created this craft to work on early scissor skills and fine motor manipulation. By the age of 4 your child should be able to cut on a 6 inch line, so these smaller lines used to cut out the small squares are great practice for our 3 year olds. The foam stickers are also a great way to promote fine motor manipulation skills and they’re FUN! I did this craft with a 3 and a half year old this morning and I had the cauldron precut so all we had to cut were the small squares.

I did this craft with a few Kindergartners as well and I even had them cut out the cauldron for some extra cutting practice. You could do this with even older kiddos and add an element of writing!

Enjoy!

Roll a Frankenstein

OT Activity of the Day:

Roll a Frankenstein

Target Age Range: 3 and up

Last year I did this activity I made my Frankenstein pieces, but this year the Target dollar section did it for me! All I had to create was the roll guide and provide the dice.

This activity can be done as a sedentary game or a movement game, depending on the needs of your child. This craft also works on fine motor manipulation through manipulation of the gel stickers and bilateral coordination when using both hands to roll the dice. This is also a multiple step task so it works on sequencing and completing a task with multiple steps.

Enjoy!

Pumpkins!

OT Activity of the Day:

Pumpkin!

Target Age Range: 3 and up

I created this craft to work on basic cutting skills. I drew guidelines on an orange piece of paper for a child to cut on. (While I used an orange piece of construction paper, you can use any kind of paper to create your pumpkin.) After we cut the orange strips, we glued them onto a piece of paper and topped it all off with a precut pumpkin cut out. Lastly, we added a precut stem and leaf! If your child is older, you can always have them make the pumpkin cut out and stem/leaf.

A child should be able to cut on a straight line by the age of 4, so it’s a reasonable task to work on for those older 3 year olds. If your child is just getting comfortable with cutting across a piece of paper try really thick guidelines to help with success.

Enjoy!

That's a wrap!

OT Activity of the Day:

Pipe cleaner wrapping

Target Age Range: 5 and up

This is a great activity that promotes fine motor manipulation and bilateral coordination. In order to wrap the pipe cleaner around the popsicle stick your child will need both skill!

All you need for this craft are popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and glue. First you wrap the pipe cleaners around the popsicle sticks and then you glue on the eyes. If you have an older kiddo, you can also add an element of writing, you can create a story or write a sentence!

Enjoy!

Spider Fluffy Slime

OT Activity of the Day:

Spider Fluffy Slime

Target Age Range: 3 and up

This slime is so much fun! It’s puffy and stretchy and super easy to make. This type of activity can be used for just about any age range. For the younger kiddos (preschoolers) it’s all about the sensory experience and helping with the measuring cups and spoons (great for fine motor control, wrist/forearm rotation and bilateral coordination). For the older kids (elementary kiddos) you can work on sequencing and writing by having them be in charge of making the slime and then writing or copying the directions afterwards. This is also a great way to work on bilateral coordination, fine motor control and manipulation in your older kids. Either way this is a super fun activity for an afternoon. I added spiders to mine for a spooky Halloween effect!

Here is the recipe!

1/2 cup Elmer’s glue

4 cups shaving cream

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

saline solution, 1 tablespoon at a time

First you mix the glue and shaving cream together. Mix well. Second, stir in the baking soda and continue to mix well. Last, add 1 tablespoon of saline solution at a time. Keep adding the saline solution until the slime begins forming into a ball like shape. It’s ready when it becomes less sticky!

Enjoy!

Halloween Sensory Bins

OT Activity of the Day:

Halloween Sensory Bins

Target Age Range: 3 and up

If you have pretend spiders, pumpkins, ghosts, bats, and some rice/beans then you have a Halloween sensory bin! All you have to add are some tongs, empty spice containers, scoopers, and anything else that will promote fine motor manipulation.

Sensory boxes are great for young preschoolers. They promote fine motor manipulation and offer a way to calm down at the end of the day. My go-to sensory box adds are jumbo tweezers and handy scoopers, both are found on Amazon!

As always, don’t forget to put down a bed sheet underneath the sensory bin to help catch any run away rice or beans. Enjoy!

Halloween Writing Prompts

OT Activity of the Day:

Halloween Writing Prompts

Target Age Range: 7 and up

DISCLAIMER: I did not create this, I found this on Pinterest and took a screenshot. So these ideas are not mine, but they’re too good not to share.

Writing prompts are always difficult to come up with, but these Halloween ideas are sure to be a hit for your Elementary School kiddos!

Happy writing and enjoy!

Beaded Pumpkin

OT Activity of the Day:

Beaded Pumpkin

Target Age Range: 4 and up

This is a great activity for your older Preschoolers. This works on bilateral coordination, visual motor skills, and fine motor manipulation.

All you need are some pipe cleaners and beads and, you too, can make a beaded pumpkin. I had each child pick out 15 beads (only because I was conserving beads, if you’re not worried about saving beads for 20+ kids then you can use however many will fit) and had them string their beads on the pipe cleaner. Once all 15 beads were on the pipe cleaner, we brought the ends together and twisted them up. This is excellent practice for fine motor manipulation and bilateral coordination. After the ends were all twisted up we took half a green pipe cleaner and wrapped it around the twisted part, another great challenge for promoting fine motor manipulation and bilateral coordination. As soon as the green piece is twisted on you have yourselves a beaded pumpkin with a green stem!

Enjoy!

Toilet Paper Roll Ghosts, Bats, and Pumpkins!

OT Activity of the Day:

Toilet paper roll ghosts, bats, and pumpkins!

Target Age Range: 6 and up

This is a great activity for your Kindergartners and older kiddos. This activity promotes fine motor manipulation, scissor skills, precision cutting, and bilateral coordination.

I created this activity so that way we could practice using tape. Tape is often a very tricky thing for kiddos to use and practice always makes better. If your child is in Kindergarten then they are more than capable of using tape and this is a great activity for teaching that such skill!

For this activity I have the child pulling tape off 4 different times so practice they will get! Once they tape down the construction paper to the empty toilet paper roll then they get to start rolling the paper around the empty roll, this is another skill that should be present in all Kindergartners. This is a display of bilateral coordination and fine motor manipulation. Once the paper is all rolled up more tape is required! After the paper is in place around the roll you can get to adding details to whatever Halloween character your child has picked.

Enjoy!

Jack-o-Lantern

OT Activity of the Day:

Jack-o-lantern

Target Age Range: 4 and up

It’s October and we all know what that means! It’s time for all things pumpkins, bats, ghosts, witches, etc. This is a pediatric OT’s favorite time of year because so much Fall fun can turn into a great OT experience.

For starters, you can make a classic Jack-o-lantern out of construction paper, glue, and crayons. All I did for prep for this activity was draw a few guidelines for the pumpkin and stem and we have ourselves a great activity. Now, I drew triangles for the eyes, however if your child wants to do squares, circles, or another shape then that’s great as well! If you’d like to have your child practice precision cutting (a skill for 5 and up), you can always have your child cut out small triangles, squares, or circles for the face instead of drawing the face details.

This activity is perfect to work on cutting skills, drawing prewriting shapes, precision cutting, and if you’d like, you can write the name or word, “pumpkin” on the back for some writing practice.

Enjoy!