Looking for easy and fun activities for your kiddos to do at home? All you need is painter’s tape and a little imagination! Here are four different gross motor activities with simple set ups to work on balance, strength, motor planning, coordination, and body awareness. Weaving through spider web: Use a hallway to span tape […]
Jumping Path
As I was browsing through Facebook the other morning while trying to get my morning started (yes, this has become my new snooze button), I saw a video someone had shared of kids using a jumping path. I thought is was so great that I took a screen shot of the video and brought it […]
Hand and Foot Play
Hand and foot play is an important part of a child’s development. So is bringing the feet to their mouth (unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture of that!). So what are some of the reasons it is so important? Hamstring stretches – They just spent 9 months cramped up in the ‘fetal’ position. This […]
Pipe Cleaner and Wikki Stick People
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 […]
Taking the visual out of handwriting practice
I love having students in our practice. Not only do they challenge us as therapists to be deliberate and think about why we do what we do, but they also bring an influx of ideas in and add to our overall toolbox. Our most recent OT student shared this idea with us that she did […]
Body Awareness and Proprioception – A Brief Glimpse
So after 3 weeks of keeping my left hip from turning out I am finally allowed to. Since my legs tend to turn out on their own I was being extra careful over these last 3 weeks by either actively holding it straight or making it turn in (since it was allowed to turn in […]
Stacking Cups
Stacking cups can be a great activity for many skills including motivation for gross motor skills! Visual motor skills – you can vary the size of the cups, the color of the cups or even the weight of the cups to provide different input and make it easier or more challenging grading of movements – […]
3-D Masking Tape Maze
I have to admit, I’ve been waiting to try this idea, that I saw in not one but two places on pinterest, out for a while and I had the perfect kiddo that I wanted to be the one to test it. This kiddo has developmental coordination disorder and so I really wanted to […]
Marble Play (with your toes)
I have frequently used picking up marbles with your toes as a tool to strengthen a kiddo’s intrinsic foot muscles to help with their arches however, when I was using this activity with a kiddo recently I realized some other areas it can help in. Coordination/Motor Planning – As the kiddos are […]