A fine motor, pre-writing activity offer in my therapy gym today: dot-to-dots to make the “flight paths” of different airplanes, rocketships, and helicopters. You can customize this whichever way matches the child’s level of drawing/tracing right now…to work on horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonals, curves, loops, etc. All of these things are skills that children … Read more
One of my favorite tools for building a whole bunch of skills— hand strengthening, finger strengthening, hand-eye coordination, and then copying from a visual model, and occupationally meaningful writing— are these toys which I originally found in a closet and have since googled to find out are called “Zoomorphs” and, more specifically, “Dinomorphs”. They’re basically … Read more
With the big kids in my action room who still have handwriting or letter formation goals, one of the activities I set out is a big huge grid on the floor drawn on butcher paper, with my gigantic Sharpies, and offer to make a word search themed about whatever they’re interested in. The sheer size … Read more
Child’s favorite activity: searching for something hidden somewhere in the room My goal for child: that they would not feel completely threatened by the concept of writing/drawing/touching a pencil, but begin to see ways in which it could be meaningful My plan: hide a lot of things around the room, make a checklist for those … Read more
I had the opportunity to speak about protecting the power of play to childcare providers at the daycare and youth program centers near where I work for my day job. This lecture covers play development and various forms that it takes, explains the step-by-step development of pre-writing skills, and talks about the essential skills … Read more
I offer a fine motor area as one of the stations in my therapy gym, in the form of a whiteboard with something casually drawn on it that the kids can interact with or not. I did not originally anticipate the massive popularity of simple mazes with the 4-6 year olds! I drew SO MANY … Read more
Process art, as opposed to product art, usually doesn’t produce an end result — a “product” — that looks pretty or neat or send-home-able. It might be messier, more about exploring texture or materials than making an end result. One defense of product art is often that it targets fine motor skills in a way … Read more
(From the archives of my own personal FB page, a story from when I was an early therapist. I would do some things differently now, but I still appreciated the story.) *** I have a kid who I see every week at the same time. He’s usually working on the same in-class spelling worksheet, and … Read more
Ultra-washable paint: 50% washable tempera paint 50% dish soap or bubble bath or old shampoo that you have left over after switching brands That’s it. Mix those two together. It will create an extremely washable paint. Because of the soap, it is also very runny. This is a good activity for toddlers or young children … Read more
When I introduced watercolors to my children for the first time (back when they were 3 and 2), I thought that the concept of dipping the paintbrush in the paint, wetting the paint, cleaning the brush after each go, etc, would be way above their level. (Spoiler alert: I was correct.) So instead I just … Read more