Perler beads are tiny plastic beads that you place on little spikes on a board in order to make a design. They are quite small, so they require precision and care to get them placed on the design board. Once the design is finished, you then put parchment baking paper over the design and iron […]
You often hear therapists make a recommendation to incorporate some heavy work into a student’s day, and to make it natural. Most older students have textbooks that are heavy as a natural heavy work task, but you may have some kids that you need to create a heavy work task for. An easy way to […]
Kids make a lot of changes with their handwriting legibility when they are aware of the expectation and know that they will need to fix what the teacher can’t read or that doesn’t meet the teacher’s expectation. For those kids, it makes sense for them to check their own work before turning it in, but […]
Jack is in Kindergarten and during circle time, he often gets up, wanders the room, and pulls things out of the bins. He has trouble staying seated in the group when he is not doing an activity. Jack is working on learning to wait and take his turn. Some little tricks that help Jack, and […]
Holding small objects is a benefit of good fine motor skills, and to work on developing and perfecting those fine motor skills, you can use small objects as a tool. Push pins or thumb tacks that you would use in a cork board are usually a perfect size to facilitate a good tripod grasp. The […]
July I see the time to eat ice cream so ice cream activities are on sale until the end of July. They are all super cute and fun to work with. You can find the sale items in the shops including here on therapy fun zone, and on therapy fun store. The membership community is […]
Water guns are a great finger strengthening tool, and when it gets hot, water is a welcome part of therapy. I had 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 […]
I am always working on interesting and fun ways to work on fine motor skills, and love using clothespins to work on the skills. The kids enjoy pretend playing with ice cream, but for some kids, the ice cream buttons are too hard for them to do. I want them to work on fine motor […]
Today we hear from a seasoned Occupational Therapist named Stacie Erfle, MS, OTR/L. She is the creator of the Fine Motor ABCs book. A quick Google search will lead to endless possible activities to build fine motor skills. Pinterest is full of imaginative activities to get kids creating with their hands. In this digital world, […]
Everyone has those days where you just need to pull an activity out of your bag that is simple and requires no extra preparation. I have quite a few of those types of activities lurking at the bottom of my bag, and a favorite is the alphabet search. It combines visual scanning, fine motor skill, […]
Are you looking for some ideas and information to help children learn to cut? Do you struggle with helping your child use scissors? This is a wonderful new book written by a group of therapists that goes over all of the skills areas that are used when cutting with scissors. Written by a team of […]
When working on cutting skills, it is fun to create something out of what you cut. 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 […]
Animals are great fun for kids and can make it motivating to work on skills. I don’t have any real animals to work with, so I made some pet store animals for the kids to feed, use clothespins, and practice some writing. The activity is simple and cute. First you roll the dice to determine […]
Flowers make a great spring time activity, and there are so many ways to incorporate flowers into therapy to work on fine motor, visual motor, and coordination. I have many flower activities, such as ones that use clothes pins, but today we are using buttons in our flower activity. It is so simple to make […]
At Therapy Fun Zone, we focus a lot on activities for children that develop their skills. However, I was recently contacted by an Occupational Therapist, who has invented a new product to help adults who struggle to unbuckle their child’s car seats. I expect many of you will know someone in your family who can […]
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 […]
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 […]
It is fun to do rainbow activities as you can include color sorting and matching along with working on fine motor skills. I have done many different rainbow activities over the years, and have also incorporated a Q-tip painting template into my latest activity. Use a q-tip as your paint brush to put the right […]
I love using the button food for practicing buttoning and working on fine motor and visual perceptual skills. I made some order forms so that the kids can practice writing and sequencing their sandwich toppings as well. The kids can take your order and put the fixings on the sandwich. I also made some sandwich […]
When I am working in a school, I have so many skills that I would like to work on, but I also need to make sure that practice of writing fits into our therapy session. I have heard many people talk about doing warm up activities before their writing activities, but I have a tendency […]
I always love the fine motor activity of putting objects into a hole or slot, and it makes the task more fun and engaging when you are pretending to feed an animal. Plastic deli containers or yogurt containers are perfect to cut a mouth or slit into and draw on a face in order to […]
