Games

Using a scooter board is great for strengthening both the arms and the trunk / core.  Sometimes just being on the scooter board is fun all by itself, but other times you need to provide kids with a purpose and motivation to move the scooter board from one place to another. Here is a short… [Continue Reading]

Balloon Volleyball is such a simple game to play that is fun for young and old. It can be played standing up or sitting down, although when sitting down, someone will need to retrieve the balloon when it is out reach. I don’t think I need to say this, but will, just in case. 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

  Quadriplegics Boxing Owner of Freedom Shores, an Accessible Resort in Mexico trying out new accessible Wii controls we installed in their bar with customer. they played all Wii Sports games but boxing was most entertaining. With a good burn in their shoulders afterwards, both suggested: “They should have had this when I was in… [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]

This activity evolved from another activity, and the child who was doing it thought it was so much fun. We had been playing with plastic bugs, so I got out the butterfly nets, but it was too hard to catch the bugs or the balls in the nets when they were thrown, so we had… [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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Scooterboards are great strengthening tools, as are doing supermans. Supermans are an exercise position where you lay on your stomach, put your arms out in front of you and then lift your legs straight up off of the mat, and lift your arms and upper chest off of the mat. This works your core muscles… [Continue Reading]

Toss Across is a tic tac toe game that is played by throwing bean bags at the squares which turns them over to reveal X’s and O’s. You throw the bean bags, and if they hit the square on one side an X would be turned over, but if you hit it on the other side,… [Continue Reading]

Twister is a good game to work on motor planning and gross motor skills. My nephew is autistic and he is very motivated by words and writing so we incorporated words into a game of twister to work on his motor planning skills. Put a strip of packing tape on each color on the twister… [Continue Reading]

I had recently used water guns to fill up a cup with water and make a ping pong ball rise. I was trying to think of other activities that use water guns because they can really work on hand strengthening. I had the guns, and I had the balls, so I had a group of… [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]