Kids can have fun creating people out of a ton of different materials. Two of the materials we use are pipe cleaners and wikki sticks.
Areas it works on:
Fine Motor Dexterity: This activity incorporates a lot of pincer grasping and finger isolation in order to push the wikki sticks onto the white board and to twist the pipe cleaners together. Kids also needs bilateral hand use in order to twist the pipe cleaners together and stick the wikki sticks together. In addition, they can work on snipping with scissors to cut the wikki sticks and pipe cleaners to the appropriate length.
- Alternative Ideas: If the kids are having a lot of difficulty in placing the pipe cleaners or wikki sticks, you can still work on finger isolation by placing them for them and then having them trace them with their index finger, so they are still attending to placement and shapes and working on pointing their finger.
Body Awareness: Some kids are still working on learning where their body parts are and how they relate to the space around them. Working on visuals of the body can be a way to work on this and to have them be aware of things such as arms and legs come out of the body and not the head!
- Alternative Ideas: You can play directional and movement games when placing the body part to make it more interactive. The kids have to place the arms and then raise their arms in the air, or they have to make a head and then turn their head side to side, to name a few options.
Visual Copying: You as the therapist, parent, etc. can build the person and see if the child can duplicate what you created allowing them to working on visual processing skills and eye-hand coordination.
- Alternative Ideas: You can grade this activity to make it easier or harder for them. This can be done by: complete the person one step at a time in order to make sequencing easier for them or complete multiple steps and judge from their motor planning/sequencing skills whether the task needs to be graded up or down.
How have you worked on these concepts? What other items have you used for creating people?
