Resources, Links, Websites, and Activities to continue Occupational Therapy at home:
OT Activities
Looking for some ways to work on fine motor and visual motor skills at home? Here are a few ideas. Keep in mind that a lot of children’s play activities naturally incorporate many skills like movement, gross motor, fine motor, strengthening. Many activities/chores around the house can build skills such as cooking, cleaning, folding laundry. There are also a lot of toys and games that you may already have that can help to build fine motor and visual motor skills.
Remember to make it fun!
Typing Activities: This is a great time to work on typing skills. 10 minutes a day of typing practice is great to work on keyboard awareness and finger placement. Older students are familiar and have accounts with www.typing.com.
Hand/Finger Strengthening Activities: All of the work your student completes at school requires them to have appropriate hand and finger strength. Here are some ideas to try at home.
Here’s a link for making a homemade playdough: https://www.iheartnaptime.net/play-dough-recipe/
Here’s a link for homemade baker's clay: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/11125/bakers-clay/
Fine Motor Activities: Fine motor skills involve using the small muscles in the hands and are important for all aspects of school and daily life. Here’s some to try at home.
Handwriting Skills: Many students are working on writing in their OT sessions. Here’s some ideas that may make it more fun to work on. As a district we use the handwriting program in the Learning Without Tears curriculum. Here is a link to their parent resource page which includes some free downloads and a worksheet maker.
https://www.lwtears.com/resources-families-2019?pc=2019_footer_link
There are many creative multisensory ways to practice the formation of the letters of the alphabet.
Fun way to work on drawing skills: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/mo-willems/
Toys/Games for building skill: Here is a great list compiled by South Shore Therapies. You probably already own some of these.
https://www.southshoretherapies.com/media/site_assets/cd9d31deccfbd53420c5709e70f96cf6/assets/toy_list_2019_ot.pdf
iPad Apps: There are also many iPad apps that are great for developing motor control skills, handwriting skills and visual perceptual skills. Here are some great suggestions for apps:
https://theinspiredtreehouse.com/occupational-therapy-best-apps-for-kids/
*Please feel free to reach out to your child’s OT with any questions specific to your child
Additional Links/Resources:
Adapted shoe tying technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkxRkgG07C0&t=21s
Free resources on learning without tears
https://www.lwtears.com/freeresources
Free printables on yourtherapysource.com
https://www.yourtherapysource.com/freestuff.html
Sensory Motor Scavenger Hunt:
https://theinspiredtreehouse.com/activities-for-kids-sensory-motor-scavenger-hunt/
https://smarts-ef.org/remote-learning-executive-function-resources/
Looking for some ways to work on fine motor and visual motor skills at home? Here are a few ideas. Keep in mind that a lot of children’s play activities naturally incorporate many skills like movement, gross motor, fine motor, strengthening. Many activities/chores around the house can build skills such as cooking, cleaning, folding laundry. There are also a lot of toys and games that you may already have that can help to build fine motor and visual motor skills.
Remember to make it fun!
Typing Activities: This is a great time to work on typing skills. 10 minutes a day of typing practice is great to work on keyboard awareness and finger placement. Older students are familiar and have accounts with www.typing.com.
Hand/Finger Strengthening Activities: All of the work your student completes at school requires them to have appropriate hand and finger strength. Here are some ideas to try at home.
- Many kitchen/cooking activities are excellent choices for increasing hand strength. Have your child help you roll dough with a rolling pin, stir cookie dough, pudding, or cake batter, or cut and bake cookies.
- You can have your child make confetti using a hole puncher. The difficulty level of this activity can be increased or decreased by varying the weight of the paper your child is punching holes in. The confetti can then be used for fine motor activities like glueing it on projects.
- Theraputty, bakers clay, play dough, and silly putty provide excellent opportunities to strengthen hands and fingers. You can have your child roll these items into snakes, balls, or flatten them. You can also hide items (buttons, beads, coins) and ask your child to pull apart the putty/clay to find them.
Here’s a link for making a homemade playdough: https://www.iheartnaptime.net/play-dough-recipe/
Here’s a link for homemade baker's clay: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/11125/bakers-clay/
- Any toys that push and pull apart (Legos, Duplo blocks) are good for increasing hand and finger strength. Try building a lego design and have your child copy it, or if siblings, challenge them to create eachothers design.
Fine Motor Activities: Fine motor skills involve using the small muscles in the hands and are important for all aspects of school and daily life. Here’s some to try at home.
- There are many games that require the use of fine motor skills. A few examples of these would be “Operation”, “Don’t Spill The Beans”, “Lite-Brite”, and “Perfection”. Other games include “Battleship”, “Bed Bugs”, and Pick-up-sticks. Any other games that require movement of small pieces or the manipulation of small pegs would also serve the same purpose.
- Build with Legos.
- Have your child craft some jewelry or decorations by stringing popcorn, beads, macaroni, or buttons.
- Use mini marshmallows and toothpicks to form letters.
- Tweezers are an excellent tool that require refined fine motor skills. There are many different activities that can be done using tweezers. You can have your child pick up small, common household items ( buttons, small beads, small pom-poms, cotton balls, coins, small pieces of macaroni) with tweezers to sort. Be sure that when your child is using tweezers that he/she is only using 2 – 3 fingers to hold and manipulate them. Be creative and make it fun!
Handwriting Skills: Many students are working on writing in their OT sessions. Here’s some ideas that may make it more fun to work on. As a district we use the handwriting program in the Learning Without Tears curriculum. Here is a link to their parent resource page which includes some free downloads and a worksheet maker.
https://www.lwtears.com/resources-families-2019?pc=2019_footer_link
There are many creative multisensory ways to practice the formation of the letters of the alphabet.
- You can use pencils, markers, sidewalk chalk, finger paints or paint with brushes.
- You can have your child practice making the letters in shaving cream or sand that is spread on a table.
- Letters can be formed with putty, clay, playdough, or cookie dough by rolling out the dough/putty, breaking it into smaller pieces, and then putting the pieces together to form letters.
- While your child is in the bathtub you can have them write letters on the walls of the shower/tiles with shaving cream, soap, or soap paint.
- Children can write letters with tubes of cake decorating icing.
- Get outside and use sidewalk chalk - see how big/small you can write the letters, write names, sight words, full sentences…..
Fun way to work on drawing skills: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/mo-willems/
Toys/Games for building skill: Here is a great list compiled by South Shore Therapies. You probably already own some of these.
https://www.southshoretherapies.com/media/site_assets/cd9d31deccfbd53420c5709e70f96cf6/assets/toy_list_2019_ot.pdf
iPad Apps: There are also many iPad apps that are great for developing motor control skills, handwriting skills and visual perceptual skills. Here are some great suggestions for apps:
https://theinspiredtreehouse.com/occupational-therapy-best-apps-for-kids/
*Please feel free to reach out to your child’s OT with any questions specific to your child
Additional Links/Resources:
Adapted shoe tying technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkxRkgG07C0&t=21s
Free resources on learning without tears
https://www.lwtears.com/freeresources
Free printables on yourtherapysource.com
https://www.yourtherapysource.com/freestuff.html
Sensory Motor Scavenger Hunt:
https://theinspiredtreehouse.com/activities-for-kids-sensory-motor-scavenger-hunt/
https://smarts-ef.org/remote-learning-executive-function-resources/