Our therapists love incorporating games into therapy sessions. The kids enjoy it, and it just makes therapy more fun! While board games themselves offer many opportunities for learning, we often like to add a movement component to the game as well. Try out this fun candy land movement printable. We laminated ours so that we can easily use a dry erase marker to write in exercises by each color, or you can just print one and have the child help write in exercises if you are also targeting handwriting. Whatever color your game piece lands on, you must complete the assigned exercise. You can even have all game players join in on each exercise. The kids love it, and it puts a fun twist on exercise repetitions. Happy playing!!
Holiday Box Craft
This time of year we love incorporating holiday themed activities into fine motor work. See below for this fun popsicle stick box craft where you can choose to make either a Christmas tree or Hanukkah Menorah! Pushing the popsicle sticks into the corresponding slots is a great way for kids to work on fine motor strength and precision.
Materials Needed:
Recycled Box (big enough for a sheet of computer paper)
Knife
Clear Packing Tape
Popsicle Sticks
Hot Glue
Pom-Poms
Step 1: Tape your box closed using clear packing tape. We added yellow painters tape around sides for extra color, but this step is optional.
Step 2: Tape FREE Holiday Box Printable sheet of choice to the top of the box covering with clear painters tape.
Step 3: Using hot glue, glue a pom-pom to the top of each popsicle stick. To help with this we used the knife to make a small cut in the bottom of the pom-pom (but be careful not to cut too deep or the pom-pom will unravel).
Step 4: Using knife cut small slit into picture and through the box in desired area (either on top of ornaments or where the candle flame will be).
Step 5: Have fun!! Work on putting popsicle sticks into slots to complete the picture. Such a fun way to challenge fine motor strength.
Feed The Ghosts
We are huge fans of themed therapy activities for Halloween, and this ghost feeding one is so fun to get the kids involved in. This activity can help strengthen pincer grasp and finger isolation. You can also add clothes pins, tweezers, or tongs to pick up the pom-poms for grip strength. You even have the option to turn this into a color recognition game.
Materials Needed:
Box (We used a recycled amazon box), but a shoe box would also work
Ghost Printable (Click here to download for free)
Box Cutter
Scissors
Tape
Pom-Poms or Cotton Balls
Markers/Crayons (optional)
Step 1: Print Halloween ghost printable for free! Using scissors cut out the mouths of all the ghosts.
Step 2: Tape one side of box closed to make a flat top. You will want to leave bottom open so you are able to get pom-poms out. Place ghost paper on top of box and trace where the holes will be. Using box cutter, carefully cut holes into the box.
Step 3: Tape the ghost paper on top of the box so that the mouths line up with the holes. Have your child work to pick up pom-poms or cotton balls and feed the ghosts by pushing them into the box.
*Therapy tip: Try making the holes in the box a bit smaller than your pom-poms so that your child has to isolate their index finger to push it inside the box.
Step 4: As an optional extra step have your child color the ghosts to match pom-poms. Then they can practice feeding the ghosts matching colored food! So “Boo-tiful”
Lego Building Match
There are several reasons that we love incorporating building with blocks into therapy, classroom, and home routines. Block play is such an important foundation of early childhood learning, and can target so many developmental goals. Plus, who doesn’t love to knock over the tower when you are done building….classic fun times!
Here are some of the many benefits of block play:
Strengthens motor skills and hand/eye coordination
Strengthens fine motor manipulation skills
Strengthens pincer grasp
Builds graded precision of movements
Builds spatial reasoning
Helps children learn to balance objects in space
Helps with motor planning skills
Encourages imaginative play
Foundation for early mathematical concepts (size, shape, counting)
Provides a means for appropriate destructive play (great outlet for those sensory seekers)
Encourages teamwork
Builds problem solving skills
Strengthens visual perceptual skills
Introduces the concept of gravity
Encourages speech production
Can be used to help with following directions
Honestly, we could go on and on about blocks….they are the coolest! While we think open-ended free play with blocks is AMAZING, we also love to incorporate structured block play into our therapy sessions. One of our favorite activities is to build a tower, and have the child build a matching tower. We often start small with only 2 blocks at a time, and work up to more complicated towers. We also love giving the child a turn to build a tower that we have to copy to make it even more fun. This is a great game to incorporate into home learning routines! Our amazing Occupational Therapy Team put together a fun free printable based on matching block towers. The great thing about this is it is also a coloring page, so if you don’t have blocks available at home right now kids can also work on matching the correct colors. Click here for the FREE block worksheet, and happy building!!
Scavenger Hunt
While we are all spending most of our time at home lately, that does not mean that daily outside walks are canceled! We put together this fun outdoor scavenger hunt activity to take with you on your next family walk (while practicing social distancing of course).
Spotted the fire hydrant!
Taking a marker along is a fun way to sneak in some fine motor practice as well. He rocked his check marks!
The great thing about scavenger hunts, is they really get kids to pay attention to the details of their environment. Searching for the items on the list is a great way to challenge visual scanning and boost their observational skills. Don’t forget to take a marker along so they can check off their finds as you go! This can also be a fun activity to incorporate with speech goals. As you walk work on pointing towards objects, identifying them, practice making their noises, or talk about colors. This activity is so great to tailor to your child’s current speech level. For an extra challenge celebrate each find with an exercise (try jumping jacks, frog jumps, or marching in place). Such a fun way to take advantage of movement time outdoors, while encouraging learning and talking in a relaxed and natural environment. To make searching even more exciting check out our post on how to make binoculars out of recycled toilet paper rolls, this will help kids get excited about searching!
If outdoor walks are not available to your family at the moment, we also created an indoor scavenger hunt option for you. You can still work on all these skills indoors or while looking out the window! Happy searching!! Click here for our scavenger hunt pages.
So proud of all of his finds today! The bunny might take a few walks to find, but we will be keeping our eyes out.
Introducing DKT Blog
During this COVID-19 closure, we have really been missing seeing all of our kiddos and connecting with families in person. While we love our virtual sessions, we thought that starting a small blog might be another way to keep in touch during this time. Meddy Teddy has been hard at work thinking up some ideas for at home therapy fun! Stay tuned for more!
