Using a scooter board is great for strengthening both the arms and the trunk / core.  Sometimes just being on the scooter board is fun all by itself, but other times you need to provide kids with a purpose and motivation to move the scooter board from one place to another. Here is a short…

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

I am proposing a challenge to all of you creative therapists and parents.  I found these funky little toys called crazy cubes while perusing the toy aisle at Target.  If you have kids you may have seen the commercials.  There is a little ball inserted in the top of the cube, and when you push…

Throwing bean bags into a container is great for visual motor control, and even better when you have to aim at a specific target, such as toss across or similar game. I ran across these angry birds dog toys at walmart, and they are the perfect size for throwing at a target. I made a…

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…

The mini travel games really challenge fine motor skills because the pieces are much smaller than the full size games. I love the connect 4 to go game, so I had to try out the tiny Battleship Travel Game as well. The little pegs are very, very tiny, so they can be great for someone…

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 really want to pronounce this game Bloke-us, but I think that it is pronounced Block-us. Anyway, to the game. I bet everyone else has heard of and played this game before, so what rock have I been hiding under. This game is awesome for O.T. I got the “to go” version at Target ,…

I love using bouncy balls in therapy, and use the small balls for in-hand manipulation as well as catching them in cups when they roll off of the table.  I use the balls in cups when I evaluate a child as it gives me a good idea of the student’s motor coordination as well as…

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…

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,…

Last week we made catapults out of clothespins, so this week we used those catapults to play a game and work on writing. I made a target to shoot pom poms at, and use the pom poms as birds that we shoot with the catapult (kind of like angry birds). Inside the target, there are…

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…

It is time for spring and flowers, so how about a new clothespin game where you have to build the flower petal by petal and use the clothespin to hold the petals onto the flower. There are several different ways to play the game.  The most simple way is to shoot the flat marble down…

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…

  The ultimate Occupational Therapist stand-by, pinching clothespins. Man can that be boring. How about playing a card game along with pinching?   The clothespins hold the cards, so you have to pinch high, pinch low, pinch left, pinch right. Don’t have too much fun playing the game that you forget to make them use…

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…

An Occupational Therapy clinic can not function without this game. That may be an over statement, but Connect 4 certainly does work on a lot of OT skills. You have to pick up the checker-like pieces and reach up and slide them into the slots at the top of the game. The goal is to get…

Stereognosis is the ability to use your fingers to feel and know what you are holding, without seeing what you are holding. It is always hard to get kids to feel and find objects without looking. You can put up a barrier, but they always try to peek. This cup is a great idea to…

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…

Lately I have been wanting to do my sentence memory copying activity with the kids that I am working with, and decided to modify it a bit to add monsters / creatures. I have used the monster drawing type of activity that I did in the Roll a Creature game, and added sentences to remember…

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…

When playing dominos in therapy, we don’t usually play the game of dominos . Instead we line them up to knock them over. Lining the dominos up on end requires fine motor precision in getting them to stay in place. It also takes eye hand coordination and visual perceptual skills to get the dominos lined…

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…

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…

The end of the year is here, and it is time once again to sum up the year and post a list of my favorite activities of the year.  As I look through the activities I find that I am surprised that it was only this year that I did those activities.  Time does fly. …

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…

  Quadriplegics Boxing Owner of Freedom Shores, an Accessible Resort in Mexico trying out new accessible Wii controls we installed in their bar with customer. they played all Wii Sports games but boxing was most entertaining. With a good burn in their shoulders afterwards, both suggested: “They should have had this when I was in…

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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…

This summer, we spent some time on Hawai’i, the big island. We had a wonderful trip, and while there we were introduced to the game Konane. It is a game that is usually carved into lava rock or wood, and the game pieces are black and white shells or stones. I reproduced the game by…

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…

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…

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…

I recently did an interview with Maritsa over at Raising Playful Tots, and it has just been posted.  The interview lasts about 50 minutes, and is worth the listen.  Maritsa had some great questions that were fun to answer, and some that were hard to answer.  Go check out the interview.

As I have been perusing the blogosphere, I have come upon several sites that comment on the Ipad and using apps for special needs.  The touch screen on the Ipad is really easy to activate so it makes it easy to play the games on it.  It almost acts as a sensitive switch.  I will…

This activity evolved from another activity, and the child who was doing it thought it was so much fun. We had been playing with plastic bugs, so I got out the butterfly nets, but it was too hard to catch the bugs or the balls in the nets when they were thrown, so we had…

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…

It is Summer and the kids are out of school.  During school, the kids have recess and P.E. most days so they stay relatively active and work on many skills during school.  In the Summer, if left to their own devices, many kids will choose to watch TV or play video and computer games a…

I have posted before about the Stretchy Mice and Cheese, and since then, I use it all of the time.  When I pull it out, the  kids are so excited about it and everyone wants to play with it.  I think it is so much fun because it is unexpected.  You can fit a surprising…

My son just bought the Lego Game Ramses Pyramid game with his birthday money and we played it for the first time. You have to build the pyramid, which is the game board, before you can play the game. It is a very typical Lego building project during this part of the process. It requires following the…

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.

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,…

Where has this game been all my life.  Actually, I played this game as a kid, and I have played it as therapy in the past, but I just re-discovered it as a therapy activity.  It is a perfect game for in hand manipulation skills or for fine motor in general.  You could also work…

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…

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…

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 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…

I was sent a Monsuno toy pack to try out and share my opinion.  I was interested in them because they are little plastic tubes that hold a little toy in them and then you play a game with them.  Putting the Monsuno character into the capsule is a good fine motor activity.  If you…

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…

I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud. Sorry, quote from Toy Story. Mr. Potato Head has many levels of therapy. It helps a child learn body parts. Visual Perception and motor control are worked on when trying to get the pieces into the holes. Strength in hands and arms are worked on when pulling his…

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 originally heard about the Multi-Matrix game when I took a class on handwriting and the instructor showed us how to play it. The game was created by a Developmental Optometrist in San Diego, and it works on visual perception and visual processing while adding other sensory motor components to increase the challenge. The game…

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…

Our Munchy Ball has been going on many adventures, and he is such a great toy to do so much different pretend play with.  Recently, Munchy Ball wanted to go flying, which sounded like a great adventure and we just had to figure out how to make it happen for him. We rigged up a…

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…

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…

The button pizza, sandwich and oreo are so great for working on fine motor and motor planning skills in a fun way.  I ran out of the button food available in the shop quite a while ago, and have found it difficult to find a sewing manufacturer that is affordable.  So I have been developing…

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…

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 saw the Ogo Sport Disc during some random internet shopping, and they looked like they would be fun to play with. I did not realize how fun they would be though until my son started playing with them. They are round discs that have a springy fabric center. You use a koosh type ball…

I had heard good things about the Perplexus maze game, so I got one to use for therapy. If you haven’t seen one before, it is a large clear ball that has a three dimensional platform maze inside of it, and you have to rotate the large ball to move a small steel ball through…

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…

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 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…

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…

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 made a fun little game for spring with rainbows and words.  I call it the rainbow puzzle game, and you can download it for free (you can also find it in the shops).  You have to roll 3 dice first, a number dice, a color dice, and a word dice.   You remember what you…

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….

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…

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…

I was working on visual perceptual games and wanted to get the kids to work on visually scanning to find what they are looking for. To do this, I came up with a game I call Roll a Shape Game, using 12 dice with shapes on them. I also made cards with shapes on them…

I know that many therapists love and use the game Rush Hour to work on some skills.  I have a tendency to dislike playing these types of games myself as I don’t really like the challenge, but this Rush Hour Jr Game edition is easier to play, and if you get stuck, there are cheater…

It is always fun to find a fine motor games that work on so many great Occupational Therapy skills, and Scatterpillar Scramble is one of those games.  The Caterpillar is standing up tall, and each of his legs has a little cup at the end of them to hold a little ball.  You use tongs…

Screwball scramble is a game where you have to get a ball through an obstacle course.  To play it, you push buttons, turn dials, and slide levers in order to get the ball to move through the course. I have used this game in therapy with kids of all abilities.  It is difficult to get…

I have never played the Sequence Game until last weekend. It has some fine motor aspects to it, but I think that the biggest challenge is visual perceptual. You draw cards and have to find the matching card on the game board and put a chip on it. The goal is to get five chips in…

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 live in sunny Southern California, so we have to pretend that we have snow. We can still enjoy some hot cocoa even though the temperatures are in the 70s. (I even wear a sweatshirt in the mornings). The rest of the country has lots of snow, so making snow men is an important and…

I love playing the swish game for visual perception, and saw the Squint Jr Game , which has some similar components, so thought I would try it out. It has clear cards with lines on them that you have to match up to copy a design. In squint, you try to copy a shape with…

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: •…

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…

Scooterboards are great strengthening tools, as are doing supermans. Supermans are an exercise position where you lay on your stomach, put your arms out in front of you and then lift your legs straight up off of the mat, and lift your arms and upper chest off of the mat. This works your core muscles…

Have you heard of the game Swish? I ran across it during one of my extensive internet surfing expeditions, and it looked so unique that I had to give it a try. The game consists of clear cards that have colored spots and colored circles. There are two of either a spot or circle on…

Toss Across is a tic tac toe game that is played by throwing bean bags at the squares which turns them over to reveal X’s and O’s. You throw the bean bags, and if they hit the square on one side an X would be turned over, but if you hit it on the other side,…

Twister is a good game to work on motor planning and gross motor skills. My nephew is autistic and he is very motivated by words and writing so we incorporated words into a game of twister to work on his motor planning skills. Put a strip of packing tape on each color on the twister…

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…

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 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…

Last week I posted about regular (and mini) battleship games to work on fine motor skills and visual scanning, but have you ever played paper battleship to work on fine motor and writing skills?  Paper battleship is played the same way as regular battleship, but you have paper grids, and you have to use a…

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…

Many people who benefit from therapy have trouble with stereognosis. Stereognosis is the ability to know what an object is just by feeling it. We do this on a daily basis, reaching into a backpack or purse and pulling out exactly what we had been trying to get, because we could feel it.  Many people…

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…