Handwriting

This is a little peek at a new clothespin game that I have been working on. I love the new design.

I got a chance to try out the app Ready to Print over the weekend.  This app just recently came out, and I have wanted to try it out, but sadly, I do not own an iPad.  I hope to remedy that fact as soon as I have some money saved up for it, but… [Continue Reading]

Some people have started back to school, and others will be starting soon. We are starting back this week, so I thought that it would be the perfect time to share some information about the Tran-Quill writing kit, and to give one away to one lucky reader. The Tran-Quill kit has a vibrating base, with… [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 saw this cute little creature on Pinterest, but it originally came from a blog called The Preschool Experiment.  He was so easy to make, and adds some fun to placing objects into a container.  He is made out of a clean parmesan cheese container, and all he needs is pom pom eyes with googly… [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]

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]

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]

I found this book called Cloudination at the AOTA conference, and it was such a simple and unique idea that would work well in some therapy situations. The book has pictures of clouds, and you draw what you see in the clouds with a dry erase marker. The book is simple, but has potential for… [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]

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 designs,… [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.

Cootie catchers are great fun for kids to play, and they lend themselves very well to the learning environment. I use them in order to have kids work on writing within small designated spaces, and they can be used to work on counting and review. I have re-vamped my cootie catcher templates to include some… [Continue Reading]

I have some students that have trouble copying from the board during class.  When practicing this, I noticed that they are copying letter by letter rather than writing a whole word.  This means that they write a letter, look up at the board, write a letter, look at the board, write another letter, etc.  I… [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]

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]

Most of the apps that I have been using lately have been for me improve my productivity and paperwork, or as a reward for a student at the end of the therapy work. That being said, I recently tried out the Dexteria App to see what it does and how I might use it. There… [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 been using dice a lot in therapy, and playing games with letters to have kids work on their writing, so I wanted to combine the two, and had some other games that use dice, but I wanted to make my own dice with my own stuff on them (more on that later). I… [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]

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]

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 love to play hang man in therapy because it motivates kids, and they can practice writing their letters and focus on getting the letters on the line, and forming them properly. I usually just play on a blank piece of paper, but I thought that I would make a template that has the spaces… [Continue Reading]

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]

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]

I wanted to work on in-hand manipulation skills with some kids, and decided to use little pieces of broken off crayon.  I had them hold two crayons at the same time, one in their palm, and one in their fingers.  Then I had them draw a shape (I had circles and rainbows) with one color,… [Continue Reading]

I primarily use my iPad as a productivity tool, and type reports on it.  It is very rare that I use it during direct treatment, although I do use it as a reward at the end of a session.  One app that I absolutely love for direct treatment is called Rollercoaster Builder Travel.  This app… [Continue Reading]

It is no secret that I have an affinity for using chopsticks to work on developing high level fine motor control, and I figured out a way to use them with the iPad. I was playing a game on the iPad that requires pinching your fingers together, and my finger nails were too long, so… [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]

At Christmas, I got my kids a generic Jenga game for really cheap, and I got myself an extra one because I knew that I would want to make a therapy game out of it. I didn’t give it much thought until I was brainstorming new game ideas and using dominos as part of a… [Continue Reading]

Karen over at (B)e(LO)n(G) OT has been drawing Lava paper and using it to practice writing, so I made some for her in photoshop, and have been using it as well.  Karen has a couple of posts about using her paper, and I use it in the same way. When writing, all the letters have… [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]

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.

I have many kids that I see for problems with their writing, and many times it is not the legibility of their letters that is the problem, it is the spacing of the words.  I thought that if they could make their own spacers to use when writing, they might be more apt to use… [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]

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 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]

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]

I saw these little Monster Marbles at Walmart, and had to know what they were. They are little monster characters with a marble on the bottom so that the figures roll across the table. They just come with the little monsters only, and I decided they were perfect to use in a game, so I… [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]

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]

There is a new app that was developed by the makers of Dexteria that is specifically for the preschool set.  The activities are simple, and it has some fun, motivating parts to it.  The app is called Dexteria Jr, and is made by Binary Labs.  The folks at Dexteria got feedback that some parts of… [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 finally completed another set of pencil adventures.  These have been partially done for ages, and I made a big push to finish them completely.  There are 7 of them, and include: The Cafeteria, Hawaiian Vacation, Ski Vacation, Halloween Haunted House, and 3 pages of race tracks that include race track letters to follow. Since… [Continue Reading]

I have changed the writing charms just a little, and added some frog charms to the options.  The change is that the band holding the charm onto the pencil is skinnier and less obtrusive.  I really liked the squishy stretchy attachment, but it was too distracting for some of the kids that I have been… [Continue Reading]

Karen over at Miss Awesomeness uses Lava Paper that she thought up and that I made for her. I have tried the Lava Paper with some of my kids as well, but many of my students had trouble with the “complex” concept of Lava. I know lava is not truly that complex, but many of… [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 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]

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]

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]

To work on pencil control, I created some Pencil Adventures.  When I started making the pencil adventures, I was inspired by the pencil obstacle courses that were created by another Occupational Therapist, Jennifer Dodge.  I now have her obstacle courses available here on Therapy Fun Zone, and I am so excited about it.  These ones… [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]

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]

The pool is a fun and important place to spend time in during the summer months. You can add some fun word activities and even incorporate some writing to the fun of summer. I cut up some packs of sponges (but you could use craft foam just as easily) into quarters and wrote letters on… [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]

I have posted about Q-tip painting before, but another therapist has a different twist on it.  She has made some templates to do the q-tip painting, which requires more precision in the painting. This is a guest post by a therapist,  Tova Stulberger, who made some templates to use when Q-tip painting. Instructions: Kids dip… [Continue Reading]

Sometimes personality is a big component of good writing. If they don’t care if their writing is good, it won’t be, and OT won’t change that. You can’t change personality with OT.

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

I was given a trial of the Rainbow Sentences App, and want to share how I used it and how it worked for me. I used it with a student who really struggles in all areas of reading and writing sentences. In the app, you are given lines that make up a sentence, a picture… [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]

To continue with my dice obsession, I made a roll a creature game that has two dice that have creature body parts on them, and one with numbers on it, as well as some cards with four of the body parts. The object of the game is to roll the dice, and then you have… [Continue Reading]

I am always on a quest for fun and interesting ways to work on writing and school skills. I have been on a bit of a dice kick, so I created a writing game using dice with words on them. The game has 4 noun dice, 4 verb dice, and 4 descriptive word dice. For… [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.

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.

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.

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 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]

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]

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 worked out an even easier way (in my opinion) to make the game boards, and you can have me make them now if you want.  I have it down to a science, and it doesn’t take me very long with this new technique.  I hot glue strips of the coroplast material onto a… [Continue Reading]

I found these little magnets that are perfect for working on fine motor skills while playing games. I used the games from my clothespin games, and put them on a cookie sheet instead of the clothespin frame.  Then the magnets can be used as the game pieces. Here are posts about the games, and here… [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]

I was given the sentence builder app (by Mobile Education Store) to try out, and at first I tried to use it the way it was meant to be used. The way the app works is that a sentence is on the screen along with a picture that the sentence is describing. You have to… [Continue Reading]

I love tiny toys to use when working on fine motor skills, and the cuter the better. Even better is when they come with little places to put the toys. For example, this little train play set , which are smaller than Squinkies, came with a little train to put the little animals into. It… [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]

I have been using my writing charms to get kids to work on stabilizing their hand when writing, and I wanted them to hold something a bit bigger than the cap erasers that I had on the original writing charms.  I came across this cool stretchy string, and attached it to a squishy toy ,… [Continue Reading]