Book Inspired Roll-A-Movement Break

October 30, 2019otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Roll A Movement Break

For those of you who have been following my blog, you may remember that I recently wrote and illustrated two children’s books. I recently had the opportunity to share my writing and illustrating process with hundreds of amazing young people, and in preparation for my book presentions, my OT-inspired mind was working overtime. I decided to make yet another fun movement break game, this time inspired by the illustrations in one of my books, The Whispering Tree.

TWT rollamovementbreak

To use this fun little movement activity in your home or classroom, please feel free to download the template I created here: Book Inspired Game Download

My kids love acting out the motions, trying to be leaves in the wind, butterflies, or marching ants. As always, happy reading and let those imaginations soar!

For more information about my picture books (or to order a signed copy), check out this website!

Obstacle Courses for Motor Planning, Strengthening, and More

March 7, 2019otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids, sensory Leave a comment

Obstacle Courses

I love obstacle courses for kids, and the best part about them is that most kids love them as well!

So, why do I love obstacle courses? Not only are they a quick, cheap and easy activity get kids moving, but obstacle courses have many developmental benefits as well.

Let me break down some of the benefits associated with participation in completing obstacle courses:

First, obstacle courses provide a great opportunity to engage in and practice praxis and motor planning skills. Praxis is the term that includes the need to create, plan, and carry out a sequence of motor movements. Obstacle courses often offer novel physical environments for children, challenging their praxis skills. This also provides opportunities for children to reflect and learn how their motor plan and movements succeeded (or didn’t quite succeed) leading to development and improvement of motor planning and praxis skills.

OBSTACLE COURSES FOR KIDS.png

While completing these motor movements, children are also engaging in weight-bearing and strengthening activities. It’s fun to incorporate challenges such as climbing over or crawling under obstacles. These motions allow for weight-bearing on the arms which helps to strengthen hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, and core muscles.

It’s beneficial to strengthen all of these muscles as they provide important aspects of postural control as well as allow for precision movements for tasks such as handwriting and many other fine motor tasks. Having strong core and proximal (close to the body) muscles allows children to use their hands more easily for tasks requiring precision.

Obstacle courses also encourage body awareness and bilateral integration skills (using both sides of the body in an organized and coordinated manner). While climbing through tunnels, up ladders, or under items, coordination between both right and left arms and legs must be coordinated to successfully complete the challenge.

Opportunities for tactile (touch) and proprioceptive sensory input are also present while completing obstacle courses and together these senses promote body awareness, or knowing where your body is in space. Proprioception allows us to know where our limbs are and how much force our muscles are using at any given moment. Participating in “heavy work” activities that provide substantial input to the proprioceptive system also allows for optimal regulation of arousal levels. Meaning, these activities can both calm or alert children, depending on the situation and needs of the child.

While moving through obstacle courses, the vestibular sensory system is also activated. This important sensory system provides awareness of where your head is in space and of head movements. The vestibular system works closely with visual and proprioceptive systems to maintain balance.

An additional bonus of obstacle courses is that they can be great for preposition practice. A good obstacle course will have items to go under, over, near, around, next to, etc. It’s a great way to verbally label these actions to help reinforce children’s understanding of these difficult concepts in a fun context.

A Few Obstacle Course Ideas

Obstacle courses can be so EASY to create and there are ENDLESS possibilities when it comes to creating your own.

Using them indoors or outdoors, the glory of creating your own obstacle course is that you can use whatever materials you have on hand. With a little imagination, you can turn just about anything into part of the course. Here are a few ideas that I’ve come up with…

Outdoor ideas:

Use chalk to outline or mark parts of your course.
Jump over sticks or logs and make trails of pebbles or leaves.
Make a path through the leaves, snow, or sand.

According to Wikipedia, swimming pool sanitation is the process of ensuring healthy conditions in swimming pools, hot tubs, plunge pools, and similar recreational water venues.

Indoor ideas:

Use couch cushions or pillows to climb over or step on to really challenge balance and encourage strengthening.
Use painter’s tape on the floor to run through, jump over, or spin around on.
Climb through tunnels or a homemade streamer curtain.

DIY Rainbow Streamer Craft

Even more ideas:

Make it silly and add animal walks.
Make it imaginative and stay out of the hot lava floor but jumping to couch cushions, mats, or even squares of paper.
With multiple kids, have a “leader” create a course as you go. (I did this with my nieces and part of our course was sitting on the snow and spinning around on our bottoms). Kids come ups with some great ideas!

Most importantly, make it fun! Don’t be surprised if the kids take the lead and come up with their own ideas. It’s great for encouraging imagination, and if there is more than one child involved, cooperation and social skills are at play as well. Comment some of your ideas below!

*Disclaimer: The information presented in the blog is intended for information and entertainment purposes only. Please consult your physician with any medical concerns and/or for medical advice. The information presented is not intended to be used in place of individualized therapy services, please contact your health care team for skilled therapy if you think it is necessary. Please supervise your children (or friends, spouses, etc) if you decide to try any of the activities or ideas presented as the author or this blog does not claim liability for possible injury or negative consequences related to the activities and ideas presented here.

DIY Rainbow Streamer Craft

March 7, 2019otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids 1 Comment

This was a super easy craft that entertained my kids for longer than I expected! I simply attached strips of party streamers (with glue or tape) to leftover wrapping paper rolls.

DIY Rainbow Streamer Craft.png

We used them as part of our obstacle course as well as to wave around and run around with. I have also made a smaller version using paper towel rolls, which we called “rainbow wands.”

Easy, peasy! Enjoy!

Gross Motor Movement Break: Roll-an-Animal Walk

February 21, 2018otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids 1 Comment

Weight Bearing Animal Walk Game

Several months ago, I created a Trolls inspired movement game that has continued to be a big hit in my house. With the success of this game in mind, I decided to create another gross motor break game, and the Roll- an- Animal Walk game cube was born!

Animal walks are a great activity for kids, as the movements have many benefits. Weight bearing on extended limps provides for strengthening and proprioceptive input. For more about the benefits and importance of upper extremity weight bearing, check out this other post.

Two ways to play animal walk movement break games

You can create an animal walk cube with this free printable: Roll-an-Animal Walk Cube Game Template

(I recommend using thick paper or laminating the template prior to cutting and taping it together so that it’s a little more durable).

If you’d prefer to use dice, you can try this one instead: Roll-An-Animal Walk Dice Game PDF

Here’s how to do the walks:

gross motor animal walks

Crab Walk– Place hands behind the body, lift bottom completely off the floor to move forward or backward.

Bear Walk– Walk on hands and feet.

Tiger Walk– Crawl on hands and knees (sneakily, like a Tiger).

Donkey Kick– place hands down on the floor and kick legs up behind like a donkey.

Lizard Walk– crawl pulling with the hands, also known as an army crawl.

Frog Jump– squat with hands in front, using the hands and feet to push off while jumping forward.

The great thing about this activity, is that it’s quick, easy and can be done anywhere. In addition to strengthening muscles, movement breaks such as these provide some sensory input to encourage attention and optimum arousal for learning. Please feel free to share with parents, teachers, and therapists who might love incorporating this fun activity into their daily regimens!

*Disclaimer: The information presented in the blog is intended for information purposes only. Please consult your physician with any medical concerns and/or for medical advice. The information presented is not intended to be used in place of individualized therapy services, please contact your health care team for skilled therapy if you think it is necessary. Please supervise your children (or friends, spouses, etc) if you decide to try any of the activities or ideas presented as the author or this blog does not claim liability for possible injury or negative consequences related to the activities and ideas presented here.

Fingerprint Penguin Ornaments

December 8, 2017otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids, Uncategorized Leave a comment

holiday penguin ornament

Last week I described the very fun and engaging Fine Motor DIY Ornament Station that provided some great fine motor practice. It was the first step to this year’s homemade Christmas ornaments. Each holiday season, we love to make keepsake ornaments for our tree as well as for gifts for grandparents and close friends.

This year we decided to make penguins- one of my son’s favorite animals (and we had already done snowmen, reindeer, Santas, and Christmas light ornaments in previous years).

Penguin Ornaments

My kids loved filling the ornaments with pompom balls for this project. We used a variety of hollow plastic bulbs that can be found at most craft stores, super centers or online here.

To complete the ornaments, we used white paint for finger prints. Some ornaments hand only a couple prints, some as many as four. Finger prints and finger painting provided for some fun tactile exploration. Some of the fingerprints smeared a bit, but that’s ok! The beauty of homemade ornaments is that each on is different and unique.

fingerprint penguins

It was quite easy to turn the prints into penguins: just a couple eyes, a beak, a black outline, little wings, and orange feet.

Some of the ornaments we left as is, others we added snowflakes, hats, scarves, and/or earmuffs.

Penguin ornaments-1

These turned out super cute, let me know how it goes if you decide to try them too!

Fine Motor DIY Ornament Station

December 1, 2017otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids, Uncategorized Leave a comment

diy ornament station

It’s getting colder, and for many of us, it’s time to take down the water tables. Luckily, however, it is NOT the end of utilizing the water table for something different.

This week, I cleaned out our water table and brought it inside for some fun holiday fine motor crafting.

Every year, my kids enjoy making homemade ornaments, and this year, the water table is the perfect place to do this activity. Our water table provided a kid area that kept all the items (mostly) contained. We’ve done similar projects described below at a regular table, but the water table kept everything in one spot longer, and it kept the much-used dining table clear of our sensory materials/craft supplies. Another alternative idea that works great for sensory exploration is to use a simple shallow plastic bin if you don’t have a water table.

HOLIDAY SENSORY ACTIVITY

This DIY ornament station is super simple, yet it keeps little hands busy and entertained for double-digit minutes at a time (if you have or know a toddler, you know double digit entertainment is HUGE and often times hard to come by).

Here’s what we did:
We stocked up on the DIY plastic hollow ornaments and tons and tons of pompom balls. We chose holiday pompoms, but any pompoms are sure to please!

Also, close adult supervision was included for the littles who tried to eat such fuzzy fun treasures

The simple task of squeezing the pompoms into the ornaments kept my kids entertained and working on their bilateral motor skills, fine motor skill development, and provided some great sensory feedback. Providing different sizes of ornaments and different sizes of pompoms allows for a great toddler learning opportunity.

SENSORY TABLE ORNAMENT STATION

In addition to the ornaments, I provided my kids with some fun tools to provide free play and opportunities for additional motor skill acquisition.

The best part was that both of my kids came up with their own games in the days that followed the initial ornament filling! My son popped the pompoms allover (like “popcorn”) and then had the opportunity to clean it up (luckily he’s into brooms) and my daughter used these awesome scissor tongs to fill Santa’s sleigh with the holiday balls of goodness.

FINE MOtor

So, this has completed our first step to this year’s DIY ornaments! It was so much fun… stay tuned to see the finished (painted) product!

DIY ORNament-2

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Fun & Easy Pumpkin Activities

October 18, 2017otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids, sensory 1 Comment

OT Mom says, “It’s pumpkin season!”

And in my house, everyone cheers (even Dr. Dad)!

Pumpkin activities

It’s fall and I am totally on the pumpkin bandwagon. What’s not to love about pumpkins? They’re colorful, tasty, and irrevocably associated with the fall. In my house, we are all about the pumpkin crafts and activities. Here are my favorites so far this year:

Pumpkin Washing Station

We used our sand and water table to make a pumpkin washing station. Baby bubble bath made this activity safe and super fun. We also used wash clothes, a cloth sponge, and a nail scrubber for variety. This was a big hit several days in a row.

Pumpkin “Sensory Bin” Center Piece

To decorate for fall and have a hands-on pumpkin inspired activity, I made this pumpkin bowl for our coffee table. As a filler, I used 99 cent foam pumpkins, a few real gourds, and a couple other sturdy wooden pumpkin decorations. They all feel and bit different and are not so fragile that I don’t mind my 2-year-old playing with them. I do have to admit, Dr. Dad does sometimes move this off the coffee table and out of reach when he is tired of finding the pumpkins and gourds out of the basket and across the room. So far, all of the contents have remained in one piece!

Pumpkin Painting

We love painting in my house, so why not paint pumpkins and gourds?!? Last year we picked a nice day to paint outside, and this year we did it at the kitchen table. This year we also used the tiny paints that are connected, as my son is into pouring or mixing all the paint together to make a beautiful brown any chance he gets… check out these other messy play hacks to make messy play a little more manageable.

Tissue Paper Pumpkins

This one is pretty simple too- tear or cut up tissue paper and glue on a pumpkin, as easy as that. We used regular school glue and glue sticks. I love the hidden motor skill practice this activity has. Tearing up the tissue paper involves hand strength and bilateral coordination skills and gluing takes a bit more precision than simply slathering the paint on a pumpkin. We didn’t use scissors with ours, but I bet cutting out shapes or even faces for older kids would be a ton of fun. While the finished product in our house wasn’t quite what I had in mind, my son loved it, and that’s what counts!

Pumpkin Sensory Bottles

We’ve had a sensory bottle laying around that I made almost a year ago that has and handlful of random small items, mostly beads and the like and rice as a filler. One of the small items is a jack-o-lantern earring, and it’s my kid’s absolute favorite thing to look for in the bottle. So this fall we also made this pumpkin sensory bottle filled with pumpkin decorating filler, Halloween sprinkles, and tri colored dried cous cous as a filler. My kids argued over who got to play with it first, so we used it as “sharing tool.”

Just Explore

I LOVE PILES AND PILES OF PUMPKINS… and so do kids. Visiting a pumpkin patch is an Autumn must if you ask me. The numerous sizes, shapes, and colors of pumpkins, squash and gourds allow for kids to explore these natural beauties. It’s fun to compare the different kinds and sneak in all kinds of vocabulary and concepts with kids, such a big/small, colors, counting, you name it!

Fall explore pumpkins

I’m also looking forward to carving some pumpkins this month as well, playing in the goopy guts, and roasting some seeds. I have a feeling some of the above activities will follow us through fall as we are looking for fun ways to spend the season. As alway, enjoy & I’d love to hear your thoughts about these pumpkin activities and favorites of your own!

DIY Cardboard Box Carwash

May 12, 2017otmomsays Easy Activities- Kids, Uncategorized 2 Comments

My son (once again) said, “Maybe go to the carwash today.”

OT mom said, “Instead, let’s play car wash!”

DIY CardboardCarwash Toy

My son’s current obsession is anything carwash. Just about everyday, he asks if we can go to the carwash when we are out running errands. His love for playing carwash inspired my latest activity idea: a fun, DIY crawl through car wash!

The kids can play with this several ways: by actually pretending they are the “cars” or using it to wash their big toy cars and trucks by pushing them through. It has proven to be extremely entertaining for their busy minds, and in addition to the great imagination and pretend play engagement it promotes, there are additional hidden benefits as well.

Super Fun & Easy

Crawling through the tunnel gives my kids a dose of proprioceptive input, which can do wonders for regulating the sensory system. Click here to learn more about proprioceptive input.

By weight bearing on extended arms during crawling, it also provides strengthening for the shoulders, arms, core, and even the muscles of the hands. Putting weight through open hands strengthens the arches in the hands- which will be important for the development of handwriting and other fine motor skills.

While pushing cars through the car wash tunnel, you may notice a child using one hand on the ground to stabilize, and the other hand to push the car through. This promotes dissociation of the two sides of the body and allows for practice with crossing midline and bilateral coordination skills.

DIY

My son didn’t play with the car wash the same way the whole time this evening. He tried to wash his wagon, his truck, and he pretended to be the car. By moving his body (and toys) through the makeshift car wash, he had the opportunity to work on his motor planning and praxis skills. The development of such skills relies on using novelty in movement sequences.

But the list goes on… we made our car wash “scrubbers,” as my son calls them, brightly colored and slightly different fabrics, so my daughter enjoyed the tactile discrimination aspect of playing with the wash. We added an “open” and “closed” sign for fun (and it stayed open all evening). I was pleasantly surprised with my kids’ ability to take turns moving through the car wash and sharing their space- a thing I think most siblings have trouble with.

The bonus was that I didn’t spend a penny on this project- I used scrap fabric and a leftover moving box. It feels good to save money and reuse old items.

So here’s how I made it:

box steps 1

I started with an extra large moving box, with one end taped. Using a utility knife, I cut off the flaps from one side. (Please use caution with the utility knife).

Next, cut out a door for each side. Above the door, cut small holes about 1/2 an inch above the doorway. I didn’t measure initially, I just eyeballed the size based on the size of my kids and their toys. It turned out to be about 14 inches wide and just over 17 inches high.

DIY carwash

I used fabric strips to make the “scrubbers” (I had some leftover from another project or you could use scrap clothes, etc). I didn’t measure these initially, but they were about 2-3 inches in width by about 19 inches long.

Once you have your fabric strips, cut a small hole from about 1/2 inch from the end and feed that through a hole in the box. To secure, feed the opposite end of the fabric through the hole and pull snug. Continue until all the holes have scrubbers.

Since kids don’t seem to mind if things aren’t measured perfectly, it was a pretty quick project to complete.

DIY Carwash open

Just for fun I used some scrap cardboard and sticky-back velcro to make an “Open/Close” sign for the carwash. You could easily do this with markers or paint. It’s as easy as that!

If you decide to try this easy, beneficial DIY activity, please remember to keep your kids supervised for this activity! I’d love to hear how your kids liked it!

DIY-1

*Disclaimer

Please use supervision with this activity, as young children or children with motor skills difficulties may get tangled up in the fabric strips.

The information presented in the blog is intended for information purposes only. Please consult your physician with any medical concerns and/or for medical advice. The information presented is not intended to be used in place of individualized therapy services, please contact your health care team for skilled therapy if you think it is necessary. Please supervise your children (or friends, spouses, etc) if you decide to try any of the activities or ideas presented as the author or this blog does not claim liability for possible injury or negative consequences related to the activities and ideas presented here.

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Category Archives: Easy Activities- Kids

Book Inspired Roll-A-Movement Break