In-hand Manipulation Activities

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I have found that working on in-hand manipulation is one of the best ways to really improve hand and finger coordination. When working on in-hand manipulation, it is an area that we as Occupational Therapists can show an objective improvement in, which translates well to better use of tools such as writing tools and scissors. Better in-hand manipulation skills translates to better ability with ADL skills such as buttoning and zipping.

The average person doesn’t realize how much they automatically move objects around in their hand and how it makes tasks easier to do. For the people that struggle with in-hand manipulation, many daily tasks are made a little bit more difficult

My favorite item to work on in-hand manipulation is a munchy ball with little mini cubes, but there are many activities that work on this skill.

Here are some fun games that work on in-hand manipulation.

1. pony beads
   • roll dice – pick up a number of pony beads, feed a munchy ball (or put it in a container). 
   • place pony beads onto number sorting or color sorting boxes. (make sorting boxes) 

2. foam word pieces
   • pick up three different colored foam word pieces in one hand.
   • re-arrange the words to make a silly sentence. feed the munchy ball or take to a center and place it into word spaces.
3. Paper crumple
   • Write random words onto a 1-2 inch piece of regular paper. Pick up the paper and crumple the paper with one hand and tuck it into the palm. Pick up another piece of paper and tuck it into the palm
   • Trade pieces of paper and uncrumple them and try to make a sentence from the words.
   • Increase the difficulty by having to uncrumple the paper with one hand.
4. Craft stick words
   • roll dice and pick up the number of pony beads and balance them onto a craft stick that is balanced between two cubes. Have a word written on the underside of each craft stick. Once a stick has a determined number of beads balanced on it (such as five), pick up the beads and squirrel them into one hand and read the word.
   • Write the words or make sentences from the words.
5. Bead threading
   • roll the dice and pick up the number of pony beads in one hand (one at a time)
   • stack/place the pony beads onto a toothpick or a pipe cleaner. Repeat until the pipe cleaner is full
   • Take the beads off one at a time and squirrel them into your palm and then put them onto a color or number sorting mat
6. spike animal
   • animal to use: porcupine, tree, hedgehog, flowers, cactus, xmas tree
   • Put pictures onto a foam block or playdoh
   • stick toothpicks into the foam or playdoh. Pick up five beads at a time in one hand and add pony beads to the tooth pics to make a colorful animal/picture.
7. Make a spoon tree
   • Use pom poms or pony beads and hold five in your hand and place them onto the spoons or craft sticks. You could add colored duct tape to add color matching. You can also use colored craft sticks
   • Remove the “fruit” from the tree and squirrel it into your palm and then feed it to munchy ball.
8. rotation
   • Pick up a golf tee, rotate it in your fingers and push it into a piece of foam
   • Can use pipe cleaner and poke it into playdoh and make colorful designs with colorful pipe cleaner.
9. Rainbow Drawing with three broken crayons in one hand and drawing rainbows with the different colors of crayons while maintaining grasp on the other crayons. You can do donut shapes in rainbow colors as well.