It is time to head back to school and I have been working on getting files organized and figuring out the best way to do notes and activities. I am starting out simple this year and have used the paper tearing crayon to have kids color the crayon, write their name, and tear paper and…

Munchy Ball is the kids I work with and my favorite way to work on using two hands together. It is fun and simple, but can be made more complex by making a game of it. It is also easy to grade by giving help. Check out all of the Munchy Ball Games. My new…

When doing online therapy for a year during the pandemic, it really made me scale down my supplies because the student and I both had to have the same supplies to use. I used a lot of household items that were easy for both the family and I to have available and ready to use….

I wanted to work on in-hand manipulation along with pushing objects into playdoh to really target those fine motor skills. I made some little prickly animals that I can put playdoh or kinetic sand into in order to make a resistive activity for poking. I made a porcupine, hedgehog, puffer fish, peacock, dinosaur, and lion….

The whole act of gardening is good for both the body and soul. Getting your hands dirty in the soil and digging is great for working your hands and for sensory calming. Pulling out vegetables and pulling out weeds can work the arms and trunk, but you can also work on the smaller muscles when…

Have you noticed that a lot of students with autism hold their pencil with 4 fingers wrapped up the barrel of the pencil, and their thumb is pressed straight into the pencil. This grasp is not just specific to students with Autism, as the kids who use it generally have weak fingers. The reason that…

Have you ever wanted to add resistance for strengthening the writing muscles of the hands? Writing in clay is a perfect way to do this. This week we made letters out of clay/playdoh, and had the kids write letters on a clay tracing board. I used a little chalkboard that I got from oriental trading…

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…

For some little hands, the Munchy Ball is a little too big, and a bit hard to squeeze but it works on so many great skills.  I have searched for smaller balls to use, but have not had any success in finding ones that would work. When working with one of my students, I really…

You can put manipulatives into any container, but when you make the container into a creature that is hungry, it makes it so much more fun to do the work. 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,…

With short treatment times in school therapy, and lots to accomplish during that time, I will make good use of my time by combining a strengthening activity with a writing activity. You could think up many variations and pairings of hand strengthening and writing. My favorite includes letter beads, theraputty or squishy cheese, and a…

Hand strength is kind of a big deal, and most people just take it for granted, but when your hands are too weak to do simple everyday tasks, then you definitely want to do some strengthening. There are many tools that are made specifically for hand strengthening, such as therapy putty, gel balls, digit exercisers,…

When I see kids for therapy, I like to make it a fun and motivating time to work on underlying skills and practice class skills (such as writing) in an interesting way. If we make it fun and interesting, then the kids are more likely to participate to the best of their abilities. Many therapists…

The trapeze swing is basically bar with two chains or ropes going up on each side to a center point to form a triangle, then a single rope going up to the swing mount. The benefit of this configuration is that the trapeze can swing around in a circle or go in any direction that…

I have a couple little guys that always try to make the tail of the lower case g come down from the middle of the g. We practice it, we talk about it, and they are doing it right, then next time I see them, they are back to doing it the old way. Last…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

I love using the color pop game in therapy. Ever since I created it, it has become my go to for many therapy sessions because it is so basic, and can be so easily modified to work on so many different areas that I want to address.  Since I use it so much, I have…

I was looking for an activity that would give a good challenge to the visual motor system as well as challenge fine motor control. I wanted quite a bit of visual motor reaching and grasping while in prone. In one school that I work in, I have access to suspended equipment, which is rare, so…

Annie, don’t slide down the slide head first! I could hear a mother yell to her child as the little girl went down the slide on her back head first. I told the mom that it was actually good to slide down this way as it gives her body a new experience and sensation and…

Resistance keeps your muscles strong, and the little muscles in the fingers need to work and get strong along with the rest of the muscles of your body. I love having kids get letters randomly in order to practice writing the letters and words, since the randomness is somehow more fun than me giving them…

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…

One of our favorite games is the Ocean Animal Clothespin game, so I made a variation of the game named the Wild Animal Clothespin Game, with some different animals so the kids can enjoy working on finger strengthening using clothespins while having fun.  We also have some question cards and action cards to help have…

Play Doh Connect Four is a fun activity that was created by Marie Logan, an Occupational Therapist with UAB Pediatric Neuromotor Clinic.  This activity is a great way to combine the benefits of using play doh, and the fun of playing connect four while working on hand, wrist, and forearm skills.  In order to play you…

I found a new ball that I love in many different ways.  I love it because I can use it form many different things.  My new favorite ball is called the Matrix Ball, and it is made by Tangle Creations.  The ball is a great texture and has open holes in it, but it still…

This is a game that was submitted by a therapist, Marie Logan, OTR/L. It is a simple game that is played on paper, and it is similar to the game Battleship.  During the game, you work on eye hand coordination and hand positioning, challenge diffierent grasp, and work on visual motor skills. Set Up: •…

Here is a great activity that is worth doing every year. I love having kids tear paper because it really makes them work hard with their fingers and work on those fine motor skills. I have had kids cut out pumpkins and create a jack-o-lantern face on them. Today we are going to tear colored…

Mature and refined grasp patterns, as well as in hand manipulation, require use of the small finger muscles, and they use the two sides of the hands separately. It can be challenging learning how to coordinate the pinky finger side of the hand separately from the index finger side of the hand.  Similar movements are…

A simple and fun activity for young kids is hanging play clothes on a clothesline. This activity happens to be great for targeting fine motor skills, finger strength, and visual perception. It is a lot harder than you think to hold clothes up to the clothesline, get it in the right position, while pinching open…

Playing in mud is a great sensory and tactile activity, but it can be very messy. This “clean mud” activity gives a similar sensation to regular mud, but you come away from the activity cleaner than when you started. You need a plastic tub or bucket with a couple of inches of water. You add…

Have you made your own squishy stress ball?  You use a balloon (actually several) and fill them with different materials to squish and squeeze.  You can fill them with flour, play dough, beans, beads, rice, and many other materials.  They are great to use as fidgets, stress balls, or play a guessing game to figure…

This week I wanted to incorporate some targeted fine motor and hand strengthening in our sessions, and then follow up with some writing tasks. I used the foam letter squares that I made for the pool writing activity. I spread all of the foam letters on the floor and gave each student a color to…

I have been meaning to make a clothespin game with bugs and their legs (the clothespins) for a while, and have just finished it. It combines two of the kids’ favorite things, sugar and bugs. This game is great for any time of the year since there is no time of the year that sugar…

I have joined some other bloggers to share recipes and posts about sensory dough called the Twelve Months of Sensory Dough, and this month’s play dough is snow dough. When I think of snow, I think of white, and since marshmallow fluff worked so well in the sweet potato play dough, then I thought I…

While working with my students this year, I have been trying to work on not only the fine motor aspects of writing, but also the memory aspect of writing. When you can’t remember the words that you are writing, then how can you write the sentence that is made up of those words. I have…

We did a craft this week that was a build your own catapult.  We made it from a catapult kit, and it involved placing pegs in holes and putting the pieces together.  It would be a great activity for older kids to follow directions and work on putting together an activity.  Once it is done,…

It is fun to have a toy that is personalized and not the same as all of the others. We spent some time last weekend dressing up the Munchy Balls and making them unique. On some of them we used colored sharpies to draw on some permanent changes such as adding red lips, eyelashes, hair,…

We talk a lot about doing fine motor activities and there are a lot of them available. Another aspect of motor ability though is the speed of the motor response. I can see a student’s motor response speed when we play the game with the balls and cup. I roll small bouncy balls across a…

This Summer, I was running a group with kids that avoid food, so we played with all kinds of foods to get some pleasant associations with the smells and tastes. I wanted to make every day food into a fun activity, and one of the things we did was make play dough out of sweet…

To work on a combination of skills, I made some fish with letters on them, added some pipe cleaner to make it metallic, and made some fishing poles out of pipe cleaner and magnets.  Fishing is a great way to work on bimanual hand skills, fine motor skills, visual perceptual, and motor planning.  I used…

I have seen people playing with foaming dough, and decided it would be fun to see what would happen if Munchy Ball was foaming from the mouth. The foaming rock food is made simply by mixing baking soda and water into a paste and making little balls out of it. You then have to let…

When working with kids who have food aversions, I work on having fun with food items. To make this delicious peanut butter play dough, I put the ingredients in a bowl and let the kids mix it all together. If you have a concern about peanut allergies, you can use sun butter instead of the…

Let me start by saying that I’m probably one of the few pediatric occupational therapists who needs help with arts and crafts!  No, seriously!  I am so thankful for the many wonderful websites and blogs whose authors share some of the most incredible activity ideas with me!  And, Pinterest?  Well, I’m not really sure what…

I played with foam letters with the kids in school where we rolled the dice and then fed the letters to the Munchy Ball, and now that it is summer, we took the game to the pool so that we could swim for the letters. The fun foam letters float, so it makes it easy…

I posted about Kinetic Sand last year after I saw it at the AOTA conference and fell in love with how fun it was (you can read that post here).  I did not have any of my own at that time, and it was not available in many stores yet.  Since then, I now have…

Now that I have the new vinyl Munchy Balls, I was eager to use them in messy play.  I started simple with water beads, which are the perfect size to feed to the Munchy Ball.  It was fun to fill the ball up all the way and then have the ball spit out all of…

I am excited that the vinyl Munchy Balls are in the shop and they have great resistance to work on fine motor skills and hand strengthening.  The great thing about them being vinyl balls is that they are washable, which is important when working in a clinic setting. When I got the first Munchy Balls…

This is a guest post by Donna Abramson, OTR Opening and closing clothespins is a wonderful way for children to develop strength in the muscles of their hand, particularly the webspace – which helps them to hold the pencil with a correct tripod grip. Using clothespins also helps children to separate the radial and ulnar…

A group of therapist bloggers have gotten together to share what our favorite summer toys or activities are.  This post is about my favorite summer toy, which is playing with water via squirt guns and other water tools.  In order to see all of the other favorite summer toys, you have to go to each…

I wanted to use the Munchy Ball in a new game with letters so that we could practice writing and build fine motor skills and hand strength at the same time. I started with just cutting foam squares from different colors and writing letters on them.  I also made a color dice by sticking colored…

I searched and searched, and cut open a lot of balls to find one that would have a good resistance when squeezing it.  I wanted the ball to be not too difficult, but also not too easy.  I finally found one through a web store that sells printed promotional items.  They are now available in…

The raindrop clothespin game has a full game with game board, and it also has some simple clothespin matching activities. In both parts, you use clothespins to clip raindrops onto an umbrella. Here is the reversals umbrella free. For the matching part, there is a colorful rainbow umbrella that you match the colored raindrops to….

I love all of the recycling activities that the Recycling OT does, but I am not as good at saving items to recycle.  I used an empty tennis ball can, and put colored duct tape stripes on it in the colors of the items that I wanted to attach to it. I then put velcro…

I posted a few weeks ago about the games that I have made to play with Munchy Balls (tennis ball heads).  Most people make their own balls, but many people would rather have them ready to go, so I have included some different packs of Munchy Balls in the shop alongside the digital download of…

I have been doing a lot with Munchy Ball and realized that he could easily be incorporated into games the same way that I use clothespins in games. Munchy Ball is a ball with eyes, and a mouth cut into it that opens his mouth when you squeeze the ball. It has great resistance to…

I have officially named my tennis ball head Munchy Ball, and I guess he is like a frog because he likes to eat little bugs. I made a little game to incorporate visual motor skills, motor planning, fine motor strength, and writing. I duct taped four little plastic tubs together and put a number in…

I have written about coloring detailed geometric shape pages to work on hand and finger strengthening and visual perception in older students. You can buy a book of these coloring pages on Amazon, but you can also now make your own using the Kaleidopaint App. It is a free app for the iPad. The app…

Just a glimpse of the fun had this week with tennis ball heads. I have another post about the tennis ball heads that turn into vampires. Looking For More? Try these categories ADL Fine Motor Visual Perceptual Sensory Motor Planning Oral Motor

This game takes a bit of time to put together, but it isn’t hard, and the materials are quite cheap.  I made the game originally to play in the pool, but I think that it actually works better played on a table, and I think that it would be fun to play it out in…

Every clinic needs to have a Zoom Ball since it is so great for working on so many skills. You hold the handles and pull them out wide so that the zoom-ball moves along the two strings to the person holding the other handles. In order to make your own zoom ball, you just need…

I was searching for small rolling toys to use in a game and I came across these Cars Micro Drifters. They didn’t work for the game I was looking to use them for, but they were the perfect size and have a roller ball under them, so they move exactly the way I wanted them…

I am sure that you have heard of The Recycling OT (and if not, then you need to come play on the internet more).  Barbara’s (the recycling OT) claim to fame, and what she does best is cut up plastic detergent bottles to make toys and activities.  She has a whole book about making recycled…

Let’s talk about weighted pencils.  Abby has a nice post about making weighted pencils.  I have used weighted pencil kits to add weight onto a regular pencil, and I have seen the do it yourself pencil weights using hex nuts, but there are some things that have always bothered me about them. The metal on…

The kids I work with had a great time strengthening their hands with ball races that I posted about here. I thought it would be fun to use the squirt guns in the pool too. We used little balloons, but it would work with larger balloons, beach balls, and with the small practice golf balls…

Scooping is an important skill to have, and can easily be worked on in a fun and playful way. I decided to have fun with it with an ice cream scooping session, using large home made pom poms as the scoops of ice cream. I neglected to make toppings which the child working on the…

I was invited to join the DC Comics Fan Families for an event that they were holding this summer during the San Diego Comic Con.  I only participate in events if they can relate to therapy in some way, and I found several items at the DC Comics event that I could share.  The DC…

When I was making my Clothespin Tower Games, one of the games is a game about building an ice cream sundae.  The game easily translates into a flat game without the tower, so I thought that at times I would prefer to use it that way.  It is exactly like the tower game, but played…

When I am looking at the basic clothespin game that has been used through the ages, most of them are simple matching games on the side of a can. I wanted to take the concept of my flat clothespin games, and merge it with the concept of the can type of clothespin game, and the…

I have wanted to post about this little Pediatools monkey pediatric hand exerciser for about a year now, but I had only seen it on the internet, and had never seen one in person, so I didn’t know if I loved it. Now that I have seen it and tried it, I can honestly say…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I really like using push-ins as an activity, but have usually used buttons to push into a slot. For an easier, more basic push in activity, I used balls to go into a see through container so that the kids could see the ball drop into the container. I used a tennis ball container because…

Pulling on small objects is great for working on fine motor skills, and what better small object to pull on than a ribbon. I had some tennis ball containers, and thought that the fact that they are see through would make it even more fun and motivating because you can see the ribbon moving inside…

Another activity that I had my son do while working on strengthening his hand and forearm after his broken arm, is flipping bean bags with a spatula. I did not have any bean bags, so I put some beans in a baggie and taped it closed. To make the game interesting, I taped some pictures…

Once my son was able to get good active wrist extension after his broken arm, I began to think of ways to work on strengthening his wrist extension. He is at an age that he will do repetitive exercises, but I still wanted a game that would give motivation for getting the wrist extended to…

For a fun 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 onto…

Here is an easy bingo game for some Valentine’s Day fine motor fun.  This activity was submitted by Barbara Bailey.  Make the dice by fastening corresponding colors to a wooden or foam cube. To play the game, pour candy hearts into a paper plate.   Each player roles the dice and uses either a pickle picker,…

Back in October, my son fell when we were ice skating, and he broke his right arm. It started healing wrong and had to be re-broken to set it properly. He was casted in a full arm cast in wrist flexion. His arm was immobilized for more than two months, so when he got his…

This is a little peek at a new clothespin game that I have been working on. I love the new design. Looking For More? Try these categories ADL Fine Motor Visual Perceptual Sensory Motor Planning Oral Motor

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…

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…

Last year I made a fabric marble maze, and created a pattern that can be downloaded to make your own. When I was having my button pizza, sandwich, and oreos made, I decided to have the marble maze made as well, and it is available in the shop. It is made on a soft fleece…

I made a finger exerciser out of Hyperflex Stretchy String . It was really easy to make, and would be perfect to work on strengthening finger extensor muscles in really weak hands. I envision using it with kids who have hemiplegia. Theraputty is the standby hand strengthening tool, but it is hard to work on…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Play doh is such a great tool to use to work on fine motor skills, so I decided to make some from scratch. Since the best recipe involves cooking, I anticipated it being difficult, but it was surprisingly easy. I made three small batches of 3 different colors. The recipe is: 1/2 cup flour 1/2…

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…

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…

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…

I have seen fabric marble mazes in catalogs, and decided to make my own as I have a lot of fabric sitting around from other projects, and I am not too bad on a sewing machine.  I was even helping with a children’s sewing class, so thought that they would be able to try making…

I have worked out an even easier way (in my opinion) to make the game boards.  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 scrapbook sheet protector.  It is much easier, and it is quite…

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…

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. …

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 Looking For More?…

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…

UPDATE:  I have an easier way to make the boards.  New post about it on 1/30/2012   To make the clothespin game board, you will need a stiff material. I used coroplast ( White Corrugated Plastic ), which is an awesome material to work with. It can be made out of foam core as well,…

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…

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…

Therapists often recommend the use of tongs to pick up small objects and work on fine motor skills. The long tongs are useful for kids who use a gross grasp and you are trying to get them to use their fingers only. If a client already uses their fingers well, and you want to work…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Salt painting gives an interesting twist to regular painting, and it makes good use of a glue bottle for hand strengthening. Before you get to the painting part, you squeeze glue onto the paper in the pattern that you want the paint to be in. You can either put the glue on free hand, or…

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,…

I was picking up some sidewalk chalk at the store the other day and just happened to look at this little Connect Four Fun On the Run Game.  It is connect 4, which is already a great fine motor game as I discussed in another post, but this new one is smaller, with smaller pieces…

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…

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…

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 (pronounced kaboo), and it is a silly creature.  You feed polished stones into his mouth as food,…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

Squirt guns are good for working on finger strengthening, and they are fun too. A game that is fun to play with squirt guns uses a cup, water, squirt gun, and a ping pong ball. In this game, you fill the cup up most of the way with water and put the ping pong ball…

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…

When working on buttoning skills, there is a progression of skill mastery. Pushing buttons or coins into a container is the first step. Putting coins into a piggy bank slot is the easiest, and then pushing buttons or coins into a recycled butter tub is the next. One reason using the butter container is good…

Here is 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 it onto colored paper and…

I have been brainstorming to come up with fun activities that work on strengthening the fingers for fine pinch and tripod grasp. Using pinch clips with craft foam pieces was a natural direction to go as they worked well with the sentence copying activity. I started to cut ½ inch cubes of the thicker craft…

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…

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…

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…

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. This is the base paper that I like…

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…

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’…

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,…

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…

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…

I have created my permanent clothespin UNO board, and had my daughter help me paint it and put the Velcro on it. I used $1.00 wood craft frames from Michaels so that when pinching the clothespins it will be easy to do because of the hole. Take out all of the frame parts, including the…

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…

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…

I love Crayola Model Magic as a type of modeling clay, but I love it more because it has many other uses. As a modeling clay, it has more resistance than play-doh, so it requires more strength to pinch and poke it. It air dries, and is very light once it has dried. I have made…