Fine Motor Skills

I found a blog post about printing out a skeleton onto magnet paper and then putting it together onto a magnetic door.  Here is a cute Skelly the Skeleton from the toymaker.com, to print out and use in Halloween activities.  I think that I may print it out and have the kids cut it out… [Continue Reading]

I have a new activity for my bouncy balls to participate in. I stuck five golf tees into a piece of rigid Styrofoam, and then had kids balance the bouncy balls onto the tees. You can increase the challenge by holding multiple balls in one hand, and putting the balls on the tee at the… [Continue Reading]

I really want to pronounce this game Bloke-us, but I think that it is pronounced Block-us. Anyway, to the game. I bet everyone else has heard of and played this game before, so what rock have I been hiding under. This game is awesome for O.T. I got the “to go” version at Target ,… [Continue Reading]

Bouncy balls. Gotta love em. They come in all sizes, and as their name suggests, boy are they bouncy. I love this activity because you can be so concrete with you directions. Hold the blue ball with your finger and thumb. Now put the blue ball back in your hand and hold the red ball… [Continue Reading]

Spring is here and bugs are fun. I found these bug boxes at the dollar spot at Target, and they had packages of bugs too. I put the bugs into a pop up tunnel, and had the students crawl in, get a bug with tongs or pinch clips, and bring it out to put it… [Continue Reading]

No therapy gym should be complete without some legos and duplos. They are the quintessential fine motor activity. If you follow a pattern or design, they are good for developing visual perceptual skills as well. Even without making something specific, it is fun to see how tall you can build before it gets wobbly. As… [Continue Reading]

I have been working with several kids who have visual perceptual problems, and they have a hard time with some of the simple tasks. I am working on getting back to basics with them so that we can build on it. I wanted to have them put together shapes to make objects, and I made… [Continue Reading]

I saw this on a preschool activity site, and saw a lot of therapy potential in it. You can have a client build their own designs and structures, or you could have them copy a design that you show them. This is a good activity that incorporates playing with food, and fine motor skills. You… [Continue Reading]

When working on buttoning skills, there is a progression of skill mastery. Pushing buttons or coins into a container is the first step. Putting coins into a piggy bank slot is the easiest, and then pushing buttons or coins into a recycled butter tub is the next. One reason using the butter container is good… [Continue Reading]

When learning to button, it is easier to button large buttons on fabric that you are holding rather than fabric that is on your body. In order to practice this skill, I made a “button snake”. It is a very simple activity of squares of fabric with button holes in the center. I then stitched… [Continue Reading]

I have seen these cake pops around the internet, and they look so cute.  I thought that it would be fun to have a holiday party and decorate cake pops.  Instead of a cookie party, we would do cake pops.  As I was making them, I was thinking about the therapy involved.  You could only… [Continue Reading]

Young pre-school kids love playing with cars. Follow the road. Find the ice-cream store. Let’s go to the lake. Following the roads on the car mat is a pre-cursor to tracing and writing letters. Looking for the right building and place on the mat develops visual-perceptual skills. Materials: Car mat Cars Skills: Pre-writing Arm movement/… [Continue Reading]

When the weather is warm, it is always fun to play in the water. Here is a fun activity that has water play, with some self-care skills and fine motor skills all mixed into one activity. When washing your hands, you use visual perception and motor planning to see and physically scrub the dirt off… [Continue Reading]

Here is a post submitted by a reader: This is a good activity for drawing circles, handwriting, and cutting, as well as pattern recognition.  I created a “caterpillar head” print out and have the kids each color and cut out the head. Then, they choose three colors of construction paper to use to make the… [Continue Reading]

Mature and refined grasp patterns, as well as in hand manipulation, require use of the small finger muscles. Similar movements are used with chopsticks as are used in writing with a mature dynamic grasp. Many therapists recommend using tongs or tweezers to work on fine motor skills, and this is good if the person is… [Continue Reading]

I have been working on some clothespin games for at least six months now. I wanted to have a board to attach clothespins to, but to have the option to play several different games. I went through a lot of trials and errors before I came up with my current solution. I was trying to… [Continue Reading]

  The ultimate Occupational Therapist stand-by, pinching clothespins. Man can that be boring. How about playing a card game along with pinching?   The clothespins hold the cards, so you have to pinch high, pinch low, pinch left, pinch right. Don’t have too much fun playing the game that you forget to make them use… [Continue Reading]

I have created my permanent clothespin UNO board, and had my daughter help me paint it and put the Velcro on it. I used $1.00 wood craft frames from Michaels so that when pinching the clothespins it will be easy to do because of the hole. Take out all of the frame parts, including the… [Continue Reading]

For this activity, we are incorporating very simple coloring and cutting of easy shapes. Then you can put those shapes together to make a pretty picture to take home. Two simple designs to choose from are a flower or a butterfly. With the flower, you have a circle for the center and ovals for the… [Continue Reading]

Coloring pictures is good for hand strengthening, and visual motor skills. I have some coloring pages that will challenge anyone’s fine motor skills and visual motor/visual-perceptual skills. These are called altair designs , and I have a book that my mother gave me from when she was an art teacher. As you look at the… [Continue Reading]

Confetti eggs are one of the most fun and best selling games at the fall festival at my kids’ school. The confetti eggs are regular raw eggs that are emptied, filled with confetti, and the hole is covered with tissue, and then painted. The kids buy the eggs and then break them over each others’… [Continue Reading]

An Occupational Therapy clinic can not function without this game. That may be an over statement, but Connect 4 certainly does work on a lot of OT skills. You have to pick up the checker-like pieces and reach up and slide them into the slots at the top of the game. The goal is to get… [Continue Reading]

I had heard years ago about using straws and connectors, and I think that someone had mentioned using regular straws and the connectors for drip tubing from home depot. Well I tried the drip tubing connectors, and they don’t work with regular straws. They are too small for regular straws, and they are very hard… [Continue Reading]

Any square piece of paper can be made into a Cootie Catcher. Fold two corners together and crease firmly. unfold.  Then fold the other two corners together and crease again. Fold each corner point into the center. flip it over and fold all four of these corners into the center. Under the inside flaps, you… [Continue Reading]

Today we did cootie catchers.  I spent some time making a template.  I will upload that with pictures and directions tomorrow.

I love Crayola Model Magic as a type of modeling clay, but I love it more because it has many other uses. As a modeling clay, it has more resistance than play-doh, so it requires more strength to pinch and poke it. It air dries, and is very light once it has dried. I have made… [Continue Reading]

A lot of the time, I will go to see a patient/student/client, and will create an activity right there on the spot.  I don’t always plan ahead too much.  When I want to do that activity again, I make it up again.  This is mostly with pen and paper activities.  Putting them in this blog… [Continue Reading]

I love using money in therapy, since it provides lots of opportunity to work on fine motor skills and visual perceptual skills. I had a little client that had a great time putting coins into this digital piggy bank. The benefit of this bank compared to a regular bank, is that in order for the… [Continue Reading]

When playing dominos in therapy, we don’t usually play the game of dominos . Instead we line them up to knock them over. Lining the dominos up on end requires fine motor precision in getting them to stay in place. It also takes eye hand coordination and visual perceptual skills to get the dominos lined… [Continue Reading]

I ran across this little car on Amazon called the Doodle-Track Car .  You draw a black line, and it has a sensor that will follow the line.  I thought that this car would fit into my road theme, and kids would have fun drawing lines for the car to follow.  I modified my road… [Continue Reading]

Today I had my students draw flowers, color them and then cut them out.  I often have all of my kids in therapy do the same activity all week and then modify it for difficulty and change things if I want to work on one specific thing.  Sometimes it can surprise you by how hard… [Continue Reading]

The blog at Pediastaff was looking for some therapy games that have a connection to Hanukkah, and I have been making a bunch of games lately. My son was thrilled to help me create a board game using a dreidel to determine the spaces you move. I made a game board that would fit with… [Continue Reading]

This week as I was driving to work, I came up with a way to make the clothespin frame for the games using much more accessible supplies. I had thought of this one before, but thought that it might not work, and might be too difficult, but I was wrong. It works well, and it… [Continue Reading]

I really love the activities that they come up with at the adaptions 4 kidz blog.  Here is another one.  It is for a vertical puzzle board.  Basically, you put flannel over a piece of foam core, and small pieces of velcro on the back of puzzle pieces.  That way you can put the puzzle… [Continue Reading]

I have seen this activity in several places, and decided to try it. It is a tennis ball with a mouth cut into it. You squeeze the ball to open the mouth, and feed objects into the mouth. First, you take a new, clean tennis ball and make a slit in it using an exacto… [Continue Reading]

Here is a fun little Christmas activity of decorating a Christmas tree with felt ornaments. I got a styrofoam cone from the craft store and wrapped green felt around it. I then cut out some ornament shapes from different colored felt. You could glue the green felt onto the cone, but it actually stays well… [Continue Reading]

I have a client that needs to work on buttoning skills, and I found that I do not have many buttoning activities that are appropriate and fun for older kids. When I heard another therapist mention that the pepperoni pizza buttoning activity is her favorite, I searched the internet and came up blank. I therefore… [Continue Reading]

I have an interest in inventing, which is a long, unrelated story, but it brought me to this new fine motor activity. I was web surfing at a mom inventing website where I am a member, and I ran across another member who has this fun product that works on fine motor skills. The activity… [Continue Reading]

Valentines is almost here, and I made an activity to make a paper flower bouquet. I created some flower templates, but my daughter said that they were too hard, so I simplified them, and these ones are much easier. You could print the template one time onto card stock and then have the student trace… [Continue Reading]

This craft is to make a pencil case out of a sheet of craft foam and duct tape. It is very quick and easy to do, and it is not messy. It does take some skill to put the duct tape in the right places. We used colored duct tape from Michael’s to make it… [Continue Reading]

I have been brainstorming to come up with fun activities that work on strengthening the fingers for fine pinch and tripod grasp. Using pinch clips with craft foam pieces was a natural direction to go as they worked well with the sentence copying activity. I started to cut ½ inch cubes of the thicker craft… [Continue Reading]

When I used to work in an outpatient clinic environment, I used to have the kids make these gingerbread type of houses out of graham crackers.  It was a fun, christmasy activity that was good therapy at the same time.  It was also out of the ordinary, and the kids loved it.  You use graham… [Continue Reading]

I have several kids that I work with who needed to get back to the basics of writing. Some of them could not even follow a path from one point to another. I got out my car mat, and had them follow the roads with their car and look for the places that I told… [Continue Reading]

A cool website lets you enter your text and it will make a worksheet that you can print out to practice handwriting.  It is pretty cool.  handwritingworksheets.com.

I am writing a lot about the roads that I made because I have been working on them for so long, and have been keeping myself from writing about them until they were done. I use the big roads and letters, and the maps the most. That could be because they are the ones that… [Continue Reading]

I spy bags are fabric bags with a vinyl see-through window in them. They are then filled with a filler such as plastic pellets, and small objects are placed inside and sealed up. A child then has to move around the inside pieces to find see all of the objects inside through the little window…. [Continue Reading]

One of the Kindergarten classes that I visited today was making Christmas Trees out of ice cream cones. First you get a sugar cone, the kind with the pointy tip. Then you spread green frosting all over the cone. You can use red licorice strings as garland, and sprinkle it with colored sugar sprinkles. This… [Continue Reading]

Summer painting wouldn’t be complete without a little ice painting. I started with a little ice cube tray that I put water in and a drop of food coloring in each space. I also put a toothpick in each spot so that when it hardened in the freezer, each ice cube would have a little… [Continue Reading]

As I have been perusing the blogosphere, I have come upon several sites that comment on the Ipad and using apps for special needs.  The touch screen on the Ipad is really easy to activate so it makes it easy to play the games on it.  It almost acts as a sensitive switch.  I will… [Continue Reading]

Halloween is right around the corner, so here is a pumpkin template to cut out and glue on a piece of paper.  Cut out the eyes, nose, and mouth, and glue them on.  Here is a white pumpkin in case you want your students to color it too. I then had my students write what… [Continue Reading]

I was sent this K-BEU Mom Pillow and baby to try out and see how it works for the clients that I see.  I have the Kbeu dad available here, and use it for some higher level kids that need a challenge.  I also got a baby when I got the Kbeu dad, and the… [Continue Reading]

My son just bought the Lego Game Ramses Pyramid game with his birthday money and we played it for the first time. You have to build the pyramid, which is the game board, before you can play the game. It is a very typical Lego building project during this part of the process. It requires following the… [Continue Reading]

The sliding glass door that is. With washable markers please. I will not be held responsible for the permanent marker on your walls. Writing on a vertical surface is great practice because it puts the wrist into extension and strengthens the arm muscles. It is hard to work on using just your fingers though when using… [Continue Reading]

A lot of typical play activities can be considered therapy.  Lincoln Logs are a classic toy that incorporates all of the best parts of playing with toys.  They use imagination, and when building your house, you use visual perceptual skills.  You of course have to use fine motor skills in order to put everything together. … [Continue Reading]

Another OT Blog that I enjoy reading is OT Tools for Public Schools.  She recently posted about using scrabble tiles for a student to write his name and do his spelling words.  She added velcro to the back of the tiles so that the student could stick them to felt.

When working on visual perceptual skills, placing body parts on Mr. Potato head can be a great tool. The real Mr. Potato Head is great for working on fine motor and visual perception, but sometimes you want a smaller and simpler activity. Meet flat potato head. I made some potato head parts on the computer… [Continue Reading]

I did this activity on Monday.  I used the christmas tree cutting template that I made.  We cut out the shapes and glued them in place on one side of a piece of paper.  On the other side of the paper, I made lines to write on.  My client colored her tree first, but I… [Continue Reading]

UPDATE:  I have an easier way to make the boards.  New post about it on 1/30/2012   To make the clothespin game board, you will need a stiff material. I used coroplast ( White Corrugated Plastic ), which is an awesome material to work with. It can be made out of foam core as well,… [Continue Reading]

Where has this game been all my life.  Actually, I played this game as a kid, and I have played it as therapy in the past, but I just re-discovered it as a therapy activity.  It is a perfect game for in hand manipulation skills or for fine motor in general.  You could also work… [Continue Reading]

I wanted to play a game with a student that would use spring clips in order to work on finger strengthening. I got little pom poms at michael’s (a craft store), and we played the game of Mancala . Her hands were quite tired by the end of the game. We will play some other… [Continue Reading]

Keep in mind that marbles are a choking hazard so you have to watch little ones around them. That said, little ones love watching the marbles go down the ramp. There are some ramps with larger balls that are safe for the younger set. There are multiple levels of therapeutic value with a Marble Maze. Starting… [Continue Reading]

We made some men out of marshmallows and toothpicks, and they were delicious.  We used multiple sizes of marshmallows for the different parts, and connected the parts with toothpicks. Some of these men were looking very funny, but they all tasted good in the end.  This is a fun food play activity to combine food… [Continue Reading]

Painting is often good therapy, but you can kick it up a notch by using marshmallows as the painting tool. You can grade the type of grip used by using the large marshmallows or the mini marshmallows. You can use regular paint on paper and just dip the marshmallow in and make designs on the… [Continue Reading]

When I was using the road maps with some students, they had a very hard time following the paths, so I decided to simplify it even more. A couple of these kids had trouble drawing a line from one point to another. I figured a good transition would be having a car follow a road… [Continue Reading]

I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud. Sorry, quote from Toy Story. Mr. Potato Head has many levels of therapy. It helps a child learn body parts. Visual Perception and motor control are worked on when trying to get the pieces into the holes. Strength in hands and arms are worked on when pulling his… [Continue Reading]

When working on developing a fine tip pinch, you have to make it happen by removing the option of a raking grasp. One way to do this is to put the small items to be picked up into a space that the whole hand can’t get into. Muffin tins are a good start to having… [Continue Reading]

I originally heard about the Multi-Matrix game when I took a class on handwriting and the instructor showed us how to play it. The game was created by a Developmental Optometrist in San Diego, and it works on visual perception and visual processing while adding other sensory motor components to increase the challenge. The game… [Continue Reading]

I was picking up some sidewalk chalk at the store the other day and just happened to look at this little Connect Four Fun On the Run Game.  It is connect 4, which is already a great fine motor game as I discussed in another post, but this new one is smaller, with smaller pieces… [Continue Reading]

I finished making four new pencil adventures, and my son was eager to try them out. While he was doing them, he commented that it was hard to stay on the path, and that his hand was getting tired from working at being so careful. In the dragon adventure, you have to avoid the dragon’s… [Continue Reading]

I just got a new product that I have uploaded into the shop.  I will post an activity about it later in the week.  It is a really good fine motor activity.  It is called the Kbeu Dad (spelled kaboo), and it is a silly creature.  You feed polished stones into his mouth as food,… [Continue Reading]

In my quest to paint with tiny objects, I had some kids paint with tiny cut up sponges. I cut the sponges into tiny pieces so that the kids would have to use a fine precise grasp. It worked well, but I used regular kitchen sponges, which squished down too easily between the fingers when… [Continue Reading]

I like to work on many skills within the same activity, and these folded flowers definitely do that.  I discovered these via pinterest, and they are originally on Whimsical World of Laura Bird.  I often have kids that need to work on writing small enough to fit into a specified space, such as writing answers… [Continue Reading]

A simple activity that I did a few weeks ago is making a paper rainbow mosaic. I drew the rainbow template and cut it out. I then had my student trace around the curved rainbow lines and cut them out of colored construction paper. We then glued the rainbow onto a sheet of white paper,… [Continue Reading]

I ran across a blog that posts projects that they have done using only recycled toilet paper and paper towel rolls.  It is called TPcraft.com.  They have a post where they made a magnetic marble run using paper towel rolls.  It looks really cool.  Here is a picture of their finished product.  Go check it… [Continue Reading]

With higher level kids, I look for activities that will challenge them mentally as well as physically.  Paper folding can be challenging visual-perceptually as well as the difficulty with fine motor and manipulating the paper in the right way.  A cute website that has different toy patterns to print, cut, and fold out of paper… [Continue Reading]

Playing with playdoh is fun, and if you can eat the playdoh when you are done, it can be even more fun.  It is also a good way to play with food for kids that have problems with eating. Ingredients: 1 cup of smooth/creamy peanut butter 2 cups of powdered sugar 1/2 cup honey Mix… [Continue Reading]

I see so many articles and statements about the dynamic tripod grasp being the one that should be used, and that you need to have a child learn to use that grip. I think that’s rubbish. Yes, the dynamic tripod is the most efficient, but many grasps can be just as efficient if they are… [Continue Reading]

Very frequently, I draw a path for kids to follow with their pencil.  I often draw animals beside the path to make it fun and tell them they have to stay on the path so that the lion won’t get them.  I have wanted to have some fun ready made ones, but they are hard… [Continue Reading]

Money money money money. MONEY. Sorry, got distracted by a song in my head. You don’t have to be limited by access to a piggy bank. Money is great for in-hand manipulation, and you can just reach into your pocket and use the coins that you have. I carry around a little bank with fake… [Continue Reading]

Spreading can be a challenge for many kids, so here is a fun activity that helps practice. You use a pine cone and attach a wire or string to the top of it so that you can hang it once it is finished. You then spread peanut butter all over the pine cone. It can… [Continue Reading]

This game uses a floor road map that I made, and writing out and following the directions to get to different houses on the map. I made this huge road map on a new fabric shower curtain that I had lying around (don’t ask why I had a bunch of fabric shower curtains – that… [Continue Reading]

Of course, playdoh is a great toy for strengthening, but if you add candles, it can be good for in hand manipulation too. Make a cake out of playdoh, model magic, or any clay of your choice. Put some candles in the cake. They can be real or fake. Toothpicks would work in place of… [Continue Reading]

I was inspired by making the buttoning pizza to make more food that requires buttoning. I see a whole line of fun button food in my future. Here is an oreo cookie that I made. It is very similar to the button snake, but looks like an oreo. One difference from the button snake is… [Continue Reading]

I was inspired by making the buttoning pizza to make more food that requires buttoning. I see a whole line of fun button food in my future. Here is a sandwich that I made. It is very similar to the button snake and button oreo that I made, but it has more layers like a… [Continue Reading]

Squeezing sponges is a great activity for hand strengthening, so I came up with a game to play that incorporates the squeezing of the sponges. This game will need to be played outside because it can get very wet. I wanted the kids to be able to squeeze the sponges on something that was upright,… [Continue Reading]

When I think of therapy activities, I keep in mind what skill I am looking to improve. When trying to challenge someone’s fine motor skills, I try to come up with tiny things to hold. I figured that Q-tips were pretty tiny, so how about we do some painting with them. I made them even… [Continue Reading]

Good in-hand manipulation skills can be an indicator of how good handwriting will be.

This ribbon Christmas tree activity is the most awesome therapy activity ever. It incorporates practicing tying into a nice craft that looks beautiful when it is done. The kids all loved it, and they were all very proud of what they had accomplished. Most of the kids started the activity by saying that they didn’t… [Continue Reading]

Salt painting gives an interesting twist to regular painting, and it makes good use of a glue bottle for hand strengthening. Before you get to the painting part, you squeeze glue onto the paper in the pattern that you want the paint to be in. You can either put the glue on free hand, or… [Continue Reading]

I have created more scissor cutting designs.  Have the client color it in, cut out the shapes and glue it all together.  Here is a car design. Here is the link to the PDF finished sample. here is the PDF for the cut out template.

This week I had some of my students make some pizza. I made a template for the shapes needed to make the pizza, and they traced the shapes, cut them out and glued them on to their paper. I printed one sheet in color that I made as an example for them to follow.  Here… [Continue Reading]

Cutting with scissors is a skill that works on bimanual skills, motor planning, fine motor, etc. I have created some templates to practice cutting, coloring, and then paste them together to create the picture. Since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, here is a Turkey template to work on with your kids in therapy. You… [Continue Reading]

Here is a Christmas tree template for coloring, cutting and putting together.  First the finished product. Next, the template.  I have the template both plain white, and in colors. Here is the PDF file for the colored template.  And here is the PDF file for the white template.

I have been working on some new printables to cut out with scissors and paste together.  It is time to get into the winter and holiday spirit, so here is my gingerbread man.  First is the finished product. Here is the template to color and cut. Here is the PDF file to print out.

Here is a snow man template to color and cut.  The client has to draw the face and add any extra accessories. Here is a picture of the template. Here is a PDF file for the snow man template.

Screwball scramble is a game where you have to get a ball through an obstacle course.  To play it, you push buttons, turn dials, and slide levers in order to get the ball to move through the course. I have used this game in therapy with kids of all abilities.  It is difficult to get… [Continue Reading]

An activity that uses the tactile and visual motor sensory systems is to search for items in a box of rice and beans. You get a small box (shoe box size or larger) and put in some dry rice and beans so that it is about half way full. Then you need to get small… [Continue Reading]

I have a group of three students who have trouble copying sentences from the board in class. When we did some practice during therapy, it turned out that the kids could not remember the words that they were trying to copy, so they were copying the words one letter at a time, and did not… [Continue Reading]

I have been doing this sentence memory activity periodically with a small group of kids. I decided to do it again and add the challenge of chopsticks along with the sentences. To summarize, I have the sentences typed on a piece of paper, and the words on pieces of foam with magnets on the back…. [Continue Reading]

I have never played the Sequence Game until last weekend. It has some fine motor aspects to it, but I think that the biggest challenge is visual perceptual. You draw cards and have to find the matching card on the game board and put a chip on it. The goal is to get five chips in… [Continue Reading]

I recently was doing an evaluation, and the student was just snipping at the paper as fast and furiously as she could.  When I tried to help her position the paper or the scissors better, she just pushed me away and kept snipping.  She gave no attempt to follow the lines that she was supposed… [Continue Reading]

I saw this cute little snow man mentioned on a teacher’s site, and I thought it would be perfect to use in therapy.  I do not know the original source of the picture, so if you do, let me know so I can link to it. There is a plain white picture to color and… [Continue Reading]

Cutting out snowflakes is a winter tradition. Some clients will be able to cut them out with just a demonstration of how to fold and cut the shapes, but for younger clients, you can draw the shapes onto the paper and have them cut out the shapes. These work best when the paper is folded… [Continue Reading]

I have a few kids that I see who do not like food. I like to use food as a play tool in order to help make food their friend because they need to accept being around food,so using spaghetti noodles as a painting tool is a fun activity. Some kids love it immediately, and… [Continue Reading]

Squirt guns are good for working on finger strengthening, and they are fun too. A game that is fun to play with squirt guns uses a cup, water, squirt gun, and a ping pong ball. In this game, you fill the cup up most of the way with water and put the ping pong ball… [Continue Reading]

I have seen this Marble Maze where you have to manipulate the marble through a path, and I made my own. I used duct tap, a zip-lock bag, some dish soap, and a marble. First I folded a strip of duct tape on itself, topsides together, so that I had a strip of sticky on both… [Continue Reading]

I work with a child that needs to improve her fine motor skills, but she puts everything in her mouth. She enjoys the marble run, but I am nervous about using it with her. I decided to try stringing cheerios as a good edible fine motor activity. My client is not ready to string the… [Continue Reading]

I found this craft kit at Joann’s, but it would be so easy to do it from just things you have around your house.  It is a piece of styrofoam with a picture of a flower drawn on it.  I am definitely going to keep styrofoam packaging now instead of throwing it away.  You then… [Continue Reading]

I have been seeing kids this summer for an early intervention program, and have been playing with sidewalk chalk and water.  Some younger kids will have trouble with squirt guns, so we are going to try a regular spray bottle. I broke all of the brand spankin’ new sidewalk chalk into smaller pieces.  There was… [Continue Reading]

A tea party is fun for both young and old.  It is even more fun when you use a nice china tea set and fancy linens.  More motivation is real food and real drink.  Preparation and clean-up is of course a big part of the activity.  You can work on cutting food, pouring, opening containers and packages,… [Continue Reading]

I am going to try something new. Along wifh my weekly activity posts, I am going to do some simple spur of the moment, here is what we are doing today type of posts. So in that spirit, here is one thing we are doing today. Finding money hidden in the theraputty

Tinkertoys are a construction toy that uses sticks and wheels. The wheels have holes in them for the sticks to go into. There are multiple holes for multiple sticks and positions. It is almost like doing pegs with a purpose, except that with tinkertoys you use both hands to put the pieces together rather than… [Continue Reading]

Start with drawing a tree trunk and some bare branches.  You can do this beforehand, or you can have the client do this. You then need to have little squares of tissue paper cut.  We used green, but you could use fall colors, or be creative with colors.  The next step is to roll or… [Continue Reading]

Therapists often recommend the use of tongs to pick up small objects and work on fine motor skills. The long tongs are useful for kids who use a gross grasp and you are trying to get them to use their fingers only. If a client already uses their fingers well, and you want to work… [Continue Reading]

It is the time of year to cut out and make turkeys.  I did a few turkeys last week, and will be doing more this week. Check out last year’s post on these Turkeys to get the templates.

I have a little girl that I work with who needs to work on her fine motor precision and visual perception.  The perfect toy for her to play with and work on these is a marble ramp, but she puts things in her mouth, and I am afraid that one time I might not be… [Continue Reading]

When working on in-hand manipulation, you need to hold small objects in your hand, so what better object to use than pom poms.  In this activity I had two different colors of silicone muffin cups, and the same colors of pom poms.  Instead of just sorting the colors, You have to pick up a hand… [Continue Reading]

Playing with sidewalk chalk can work on and use a lot of different skills during therapy, and is a good activity. Using short pieces of chalk forces the fingers to use a tripod grasp, by using the index, second finger, and thumb. Writing on the sidewalk is also good for range of motion because the… [Continue Reading]

When pulling up pants or getting your shirt aligned, or trying to get your socks on, sometimes it is just hard to reach some spots. I am not sure why, but stickers are a big motivator for kids. Some children with tactile hypersensitivity do not like having stickers put on their skin, which of course… [Continue Reading]

Many people who benefit from therapy have trouble with stereognosis. Stereognosis is the ability to know what an object is just by feeling it. We do this on a daily basis, reaching into a backpack or purse and pulling out exactly what we had been trying to get, because we could feel it.  Many people… [Continue Reading]

Wikki Stix, in case you haven’t heard of them, are string that are covered in colored wax. They are bendable, sticky, but easily pulled apart, and can bring hours of entertainment. In fact, I am not sure what category they fit in because they are a handwriting activity, but they are also a craft, and… [Continue Reading]

Many of the kids that I see for therapy have trouble with handwriting. Handwriting trouble stems from other problems such as fine motor problems, hand weakness, visual motor/visual perceptual problems, in-hand manipulation, and motor planning problems. One small thing that can help with handwriting is to get the hand in the right position to write… [Continue Reading]