A recent little activity option from the schools: I set out this “car mat” for our littlest kids (3-4yo) to roll cars on while waiting for their turn in the therapy gym. It was mostly set up for purposes of keeping them safely occupied while waiting, but of course there’s an element of letter recognition … Read more
If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I really love it when activities can span across multiple weeks and have multiple steps and goals that shift and change each week. I feel like it helps kids recall their prior OT sessions as one overarching goal-oriented thing instead of only a handful of little disparate … Read more
When I get a kid on my caseload who has been forced, from too early, to trace and write — for whom it is HARD to trace and write, who quickly learns to HATE tracing and writing and learns that they are BAD AT tracing and writing — It snowballs from there. Sometimes compounded by … Read more
Before a child is ever able to write, and before they learn to control the small muscles of their hands, they need to have full-body strength. This comes mainly in the form of strength in their core and trunk — where you might call your abs, your back muscles, etc — and strength in their … Read more
Since people were into my “spy code” activity in its extremely simplified form, I thought I’d share a few printable ones along with the whole “code” that I usually use. (Eagle-eyed readers may notice that this code is not identical to the one I shared yesterday. It’s something that I use as an activity because … Read more
I have a “secret spy code” activity that I do with lots of kids at different times. I love it for lots and lots of reasons: it’s a fun writing and reasoning activity that doesn’t feel like “handwriting practice”. I make the “code” something with lots of foundational pre-writing shapes, so that kids who struggle … Read more
On the topic of process art vs product art. “Product” art is like— doing a craft. There’s supposed to be a set result and everybody’s is supposed to look a set way. Sometimes I hear arguments for the positive side of product art in terms of teaching children specific fine motor skills; i.e., if everybody … Read more
More creative treatment ideas… I really wanted to get a specific child to draw or write on a lateral surface or even on a vertical surface above their head! Writing and drawing in these creative ways work out a child’s shoulder, elbow, and core, all of which are super important for being able to support … Read more
A multi-week activity: a student and I have been working on making “wizard scrolls”. First we used teabags, coffee grounds, and brown markers to test which would make the best “aged paper” by staining them brown and crumpling them up, then letting them dry. Next, we looked at our dried experiments and picked our favorite … Read more
One of the stations in my therapy gym right now is a dinosaur dig. I have had this idea in my mind for a long time and finally had time to construct it during the winter school break! The end result is a bin of sand with “dino bones” to hunt for, and their skeletons’ … Read more