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Fruit Munching Fine Motor Activies

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The kids have been having fun feeding Munchy Ball mini fruit, and I have come up with several games for the kids to play in order to work on specific skills. I had made dice that have one of the fruit types on each side of the die so that we can roll and choose a fruit.

I like to use the fruit on the balance tree and the kids have to roll the dice and find the fruit on the tree. They can then feed the fruit to the Munchy Ball.

I also made a grid with color and fruit for the kids to find letters or words to write. Some items that I also made are graphing pages and color sorting “bowls” to graph and sort the fruit. There are three different skills games that I thought up for the fruit.

Several Ways to Play

Writing Practice and Graphing:

  • Roll the fruit dice and color dice. Use the grid and find the junction on the grid to see what letter or word you have to write. Write your word, feed the Munchy Ball the fruit, and graph the type of fruit.

Number Graphing:

  • Roll a fruit dice and a number dice. Feed the ball that number of fruit. If you roll the bird, he eats the fruit so that you have to take on of the fruit out. You could graph the type of ruit that you get in each turn
  • To add in-hand manipulation, you pick up all of the fruit one at a time in one hand, then feed the ball one at a tie with one hand.

Fruit Munching (working in-hand manipulation):

  • Roll the dice, pick up one of that fruit and put it in your hand. Roll the dice again and pick up one of that fruit. Keep going until you have five pieces of fruit in one hand. Now you can feed the Munchy Ball your fruit one at a time moveing the fruit from your palm to your fingers.
  • To add an extra challenge, I like to keep track of the fruit in the hand and randomly call out which type of fruit they have to feed the ball. That way they are not feeding the easiest one, but have to work the hand to get the right type of fruit.

Color sorting Paper Bowl with colored small bowls

  • Roll the fruit dice and color dice. Pick up the nunber of the correct kind of fruit and move it to the right color of fruit bowl.
  • You can choose when to feed the Munchy Ball once the you have finished putting the fruit into the color spots.

I have put together the fruit salad munching game with dice and fruit as well as the digital files of the graph, girds, and sorting “bowls”.

You could also make your own, and I have the digital files, including the dice parts to glue onto a foam cube or blank die. There are also files of fruit squares to make your own fruit pieces. You just glue the fruit page onto a foam sheet and then cut out the fruit squares. I put a sheet on each side of the foam so that you don’t have to turn the squares over to see what type of fruit it is.

You can find the physical game in the store, and the digital download in the membership community.

Looking For More? Try these categories

ADL Fine Motor Visual Perceptual Sensory Motor Planning Oral Motor

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2 Comments

  1. Hi Tonya,

    My name is Kristen, and I am a pediatric occupational therapist working in an outpatient clinic and providing early intervention in the community.

    I was drawn to your blog because it focuses on increasing function through play and had so many fun and easy activities. These activities are vital to our success as pediatric OTs, as they motivate our clients to learn new skills.

    I love this activity and have made a similar tool for hand strength with a tennis ball.

    I also love that you made it into a game that we can grade and use in many ways to address different skills. The actual fruit pieces are a fun touch too.

    Have you found that incorporating handwriting into this activity is motivating for the children you work with? Also any other tips/tricks for “sneaking” handwriting practice into play? I find that handwriting is the least desired activity for my clients, so finding fun and playful ways to incorporate it is great!

    Thank you for sharing your amazing activity ideas!

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