Bilateral Integration

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]

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]

Put stickers on the client’s forearms to encourage supination when finding the stickers to take them off.

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’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]

This can be a wild bouncy ball activity. Be prepared to chase balls everywhere. You stand at one end of a table with the client at the other end. You then roll Bouncy Balls one at a time across the table, and the client has to catch them in a cup as they roll off… [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]

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]

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]

A toy shopping cart is a very necessary piece of equipment when working with pediatrics. It can be used for many things during imaginative play, and makes the child forget that they are working. When you go shopping, you can work on walking with the cart assisting. You will have to squat to pick up… [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]

The Kid-O Bilibo is a toy that is the shape of a turtle shell. It reminds me of one of the large pieces of equipment that I use in therapy to balance on, but on a much smaller scale. It couldn’t be used exactly the same, but it has its own uses, and imagination can… [Continue Reading]

These cardboard bricks are a large motor building toy that creates fun during other activities by incorporating the building and knocking down element. The best part about these bricks is that they are so much fun to knock down. When building with these bricks, a young child has to use both hands because the bricks… [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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

When Scooter board fishing, your hands are the paddles and you have to move your boat around the ocean to catch all of the fish. The fish can be anything that you can put on the floor for the fisherman to collect. I used paper fish that I laminated with a paper clip as the… [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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

Twist (literally) on Puzzles Part #2   from Your Therapy Source – www.YourTherapySource.com by Your Therapy Source Inc Your Therapy Source posted an activity that came from an idea on Pinterest about changing up puzzles.  Basically, using any picture or text that you would like, you can create a twisting puzzle.  Go visit them to… [Continue Reading]

I saw a picture of wooden frog pieces glued onto a clothespin on pinterest, and I thought that it was a great idea, and that I needed to make one for kids to play with when working with Clothespins and finger strengthening. I made the frog picture in photoshop, and then cut him in half. … [Continue Reading]

I saw these Big Mouth Critters on a blog called Whimsical Publishing, and thought that they were so cute, and that it would be a great activity for some of my students to do. Some kids need the challenge of following the folding directions and trying to make the creature themselves, but others have trouble… [Continue Reading]

How could you get any more OT than mixing an oral motor, ADL, and fine motor activity into one.  I found these build your own straws called Pipeline at Bed Bath and Beyond, and just had to try them.  They seem to be the same thing as the Strawz that I found on Amazon too…. [Continue Reading]

I was working on visual perceptual games and wanted to get the kids to work on visually scanning to find what they are looking for. To do this, I came up with a game I call Roll a Shape Game, using 12 dice with shapes on them. I also made cards with shapes on them… [Continue Reading]

Here is a low tech visual perceptual marble maze made out of a cardboard box and some straws. This one is fairly simple, but it can be useful for those who have trouble with motor coordination as well as visual perception. I used a cardboard box and some large “Smoothie Straws”. I glued the straws… [Continue Reading]

Throwing bean bags into a container is great for visual motor control, and even better when you have to aim at a specific target, such as toss across or similar game. I ran across these angry birds dog toys at walmart, and they are the perfect size for throwing at a target. I made a… [Continue Reading]

A fun activity that we did at a Zaner Bloser workshop that I went to while at the OTAC spring fling, were these pages with paths on them. You place a metal piece on the path (I used a metal nut) with a magnet underneath. Then you move the magnet to make your piece follow… [Continue Reading]

I loved the activity that I did where the kids had to tie ribbon onto a stick to make a tree. The activity turned out beautiful, and it really targeted the tying skill, which is usually a pretty difficult skill to attain. Since then, I have been thinking about other activities that would target tying,… [Continue Reading]

I happened across this wall marble maze in my internet surfing, and had to get it. I have seen many home made wall marble mazes in the world of the internet, but if I made one, it wouldn’t be reusable, and it would get crushed in my bag of toys as I was traveling from… [Continue Reading]

I saw these pool noodles at the grocery store, and they had extra large holes in the middle. I just knew that they would work for an activity. I made a frame out of four pvc pipes, using duct tape to hold them together at the top. I then attached regular pool noodles to the… [Continue Reading]

I got this little Personal Mister at the target dollar spot a couple of months ago, and decided to use it to paint.  It is a great tool to work on bimanual skills and hand strengthening because you have to use two hands to pump it up.  After you fill the mister up with water… [Continue Reading]

This was kind of a spontaneous activity. I had pool noodles, and I had pipe cleaners that I was planning to use to thread the letter beads onto, so I stuck the pipe cleaners into the pool noodles to make a tree. The tree worked beautifully to thread the beads onto, and the pipe cleaners… [Continue Reading]

I am proposing a challenge to all of you creative therapists and parents.  I found these funky little toys called crazy cubes while perusing the toy aisle at Target.  If you have kids you may have seen the commercials.  There is a little ball inserted in the top of the cube, and when you push… [Continue Reading]

Thanks Karen for making me spend money.  This cute little Stretchy Mice and Cheese looked like such a great fine motor toy that I had to buy it.  It is truly adorable, and great for working on those fine motor finger skills.  The little mice go inside the cheese, and it is a challenge, and… [Continue Reading]

I put out a challenge a couple of weeks ago to have people send me ideas of ways to use Crazy Cubes in therapy.  They just seemed to lend themselves perfectly to therapeutic activities, but I wanted more than just what I would come up with.  I was going to compile all of the ideas… [Continue Reading]

Kids love to play pretend, and playing with pretend food is one of the most fun pretend games.  Felt food is fun to play with, but what if you could work on skills at the same time?  It has been about a year and a half since I first posted about my felt button food. … [Continue Reading]

Last month, I put out a call to have other therapists share creative ideas using crazy cubes. I did this because I saw a lot of potential for these little toys to work on fine motor skills and hand strengthening, but I thought that there should be more to them that the basic pushing and… [Continue Reading]

I was in a speech therapist’s room this week and she had a foam craft pumpkin with foam jack-o-lantern face parts stuck on using velcro.  This was cute, and I was just going to show pictures of her pumpkin, and then I found some foam face parts at Michaels.  I pinned those parts on, but… [Continue Reading]

I was sent a Monsuno toy pack to try out and share my opinion.  I was interested in them because they are little plastic tubes that hold a little toy in them and then you play a game with them.  Putting the Monsuno character into the capsule is a good fine motor activity.  If you… [Continue Reading]

The other day I was having a student practicing fastening some buttons, and he was very focused on tugging and pulling, and was not feeling the fabric and button with his fingers. I then covered his hands to try and get him to just feel where the button hole was and try to get the… [Continue Reading]

Occupational Therapists create stuff. It’s what we do. I am thrilled to share products that have been conceived and created by other OTs. Today’s product is Loopers Laces, which was created specifically to help with working on learning to tie shoes. The Loopers Shoelace tying system comes with 2 little mini practice shes that are… [Continue Reading]

We have another quick guest post by Barbara Bailey.  I found these adorable little guys on clearance at four for $1.00 at the dollar store.  I have actually bought them for the past several years and have found them at Walmart as well.  I realize it is a bit late to still find them but… [Continue Reading]

For a fun valentine craft this year, I had the kids color hearts, cut them out, and make butterflies out of them.  I think that they made adorable little love bugs.  Maybe next I will create different bugs to be cut out, but for now it is butterflies. I had the kids glue their butterflies… [Continue Reading]

I have been working on a fairly complex (for me to create) clothespin game, and am getting burned out on it, so I took a (long) break from working on it and made a quicker and easier clothespin game. This one consists of game boards similar to the Monster Bowling boards, and Ocean animals that… [Continue Reading]

I love marble runsfor a variety of reasons, and have posted about many different kinds. There are the plastic free standing ones that you put together, there is the fabric marble maze, and there was a wall mounted marble run, and the cardboard marble maze. Needless to say, when I saw this marble run that… [Continue Reading]

I started this craft thinking it would be so cute to cut out bugs and glue them onto a bug box like you caught the bugs.  This morphed into a jar, because a jar is see through, and a bug box is not.  It then morphed into a full game with clothespins and everything, but… [Continue Reading]

I started working on a craft for cutting out bugs, and it morphed into a complete game that includes catching bugs and using clothespins to hold the bugs in the bug jar. I am thrilled with the little bug jar, and they can stand upright using a stand made out of popsicle sticks ( Wood… [Continue Reading]

This is a very simple activity that is easily used with a scooterboard or other motor activity.  You start with clothespins at one end of the room with numbers written on them.  The child attaches the clothespins to the bottom of their shirt.  You could have a ribbon for them to attach them to if… [Continue Reading]

I went to an Occupational Therapy Conference last week and found a cool new product while I was there. It is called Kinetic Sand, and it is seriously the coolest stuff. It is sand, but it does not act like sand, and it is a wonderful sensory experience to run your hands through. I feel… [Continue Reading]