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Month: April 2014

Sensory Letter Play Activity for Kids

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This sensory letter activity is a totally easy way to play and explore senses while learning a little along the way.
Baby Girl and I get some one-on-one time while Little Guy is at school a few days a week.  She is all about fun ideas and willing to go along with all of my crazy play ideas.  We have so much fun together!  We had fun with foam letters and an easy sensory bin one day and she’s been wanting to play with these things over and over again.  
Sensory play activities are big in our house, but we try to make them easy, with simple set-up, and on the cheap.  This sensory letter rock bin was no exception!


Kids love to explore testures while learning letters

sensory letter activities

I started with a bag of pebbles you can find at your local dollar store.  These guys are meant for vase filler, but make an excellent fine motor and sensory play item.  We pulled out our foam letter puzzle and added the letters to the bunch.  Time to play!

Don’t you want to get in there and play?

There are more ways to use these rocks in sensory letter activities.

Just punching those letters out was fun enough, but exploring the colors, letter names, and checking out the different rocks was an added bonus.  Baby Girl likes to play with these little rocks and pick out her favorites.  She has a few “cute little rocks” that are extra special.

We went through the bin and pulled the letters out and put them back into the puzzle one at a time.  This was a fun way to play and learn…the easy way!

Note:  As always, please use your judgment with any activity that you see on this blog.  Activities like this one should be supervised.  If your child tends to put items in their mouth, put this activity away and try again in a few months.  Have a fun and safe time playing!

Sight Word Crayon Rubbing Activity

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This sight word activity has been so much fun.  I got the idea when Big Sister came home from school with some sight word crayon rubbings.  She made them during centers in her Kindergarten class.  I had the idea that we could make our own version at home for added practice (and fun!). 
 
We have a ton of fun sight word activities here on the blog.  This one has been sitting out on our train table for a few days now and has been getting quite the work out with lots of sight word crayon rubbings happening!
 
Make your own textured letters for sight word practice.
 

 

Sight word activity for Kindergarteners

 
I started with a list of Big Sister’s sight words and wrote them out with a hot glue gun on rectangles of cardstock.  These dried and I pulled off the bits of dried hot glue strings. 
 
 

These sight word cards were ready by the time Big Sister came home from school.  I had them sitting out with some paper and crayons and she got busy rubbing the words.  This is a great sensorial way to learn and practice those words!  Feeling the letters on the cards adds a fun way to learn through touch. 

 

She practiced a little handwriting too by writing the words.  It was great to overhear her read the words to her little sister as she did the crayon rubbings and wrote the words out.

Sight word activity for kids with crayon rubbing activity.

We have tons of pages of these sight words now.  This sight word practice is a huge hit in our house!

You might also like:

Sight Words Ping Pong Bounce Game 
Sight Word Sensory Bin   
I Spy Sight Word Sensory Bottle 

 


Looking for more creative sight word activities?  Stop by and follow along on our Pinterest board, “Sight Words and Beginning Reading”:

Visual Scanning Activities

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visual scanning activities

These Visual Scanning activities support the essential visual skill needed for functional tasks. Here, we are covering specific strategies to support the ability to scan during daily tasks, all through play-based visual processing activities. Related, is this resource on scanning activities for reading, which is a very functional occupation and a part of learning impacted by reading.

Visual Scanning Activities

First, it’s important to cover what visual scanning is.

Visual scanning is an essential part of so many functional skills.  What is visual scanning?  When you’re reading a line of text in a book, you shift your eyes left to right across the page without losing your place. 

When you get to the end of the line, you shift your eyes down to the next line without jumping your vision all over the page.  Without this ability, reading would be quite difficult!

Read more to find activities to support this visual skill including visual scanning games, visual scanning occupational therapy activities, and other visual scanning exercises that teachers, therapists, and parents can use to develop the skills kids need!


Try this fun and easy visual scanning activity.

Other areas where visual scanning is important: watching a moving target such as following the ball in sports, completing mazes and word searches, cutting shapes with scissors, tracing lines, spacing letters in handwriting, and so much more.

These features are great ways to practice visual scanning skills in a fun and creative way.



Visual Scanning Activities

 

Kids will love these visual scanning activities to use in occupational therapy activities. They are creative and fun ways to work on visual scanning to improve reading and comprehension skills.
 

 

 

 
Visual scanning for words

Sight Word Blast Off Game from There’s Just One Mommy~ In this activity, encourage your kids to scan the page with just their eyes.  Prompt them to keep their head still as they move their eyes to scan for letters and words.

Match colors and sort for visual scanning activities

Seek and Sort Color Game from Where Imagination Grows~  Scanning for objects is a great way to practice visual motor skills.

Color matching games are great for visual scanning activities

Color Pattern Matching Game from The Connection We Share~ Scanning for colors and patterns practices those skills needed for functional tasks like handwriting.

Visual scanning printables

Dot Printables from Tot Schooling~  Filling in the dots requires eye-hand coordination, which is an essential part of visual motor skills.

Looking for more visual scanning activities for the kids?  Try some of these:

 

 


 
 

More Visual Scanning Activities you will love: 

Spring Sensory Play Date Ideas

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Have a play date on the calendar this spring?  These are the ideas for you!  We’re featuring our favorites from the All Things Kids Spring  sensory play date series from March with a round up of great play date ideas, sure to provide sensory input, multi-sensorial experiences, language development, imagination, learning; The benefits of sensory play go on and on!  So get that list of play date friends ready, this is going to be a fun play date!

(or just do a few of these fun ideas at home without the crowd.  It’s sure to be fun!)

ideas for a spring play date for kids

How to plan a Spring Play date:


Get the kids messy and dirty in the mud with a sensory gardening activity  (Lemon Lime Adventures).  You could provide containers, seeds, and a big bag of potting soil.  SO many sensory benefits occur with a good gardening activity.  This play date idea is sure to be a hit all summer as the seeds sprout and the children keep watch over their crops!

Sensory painting with a group of friends sounds like a great way to play.  Crayon Box Chronicles shares their melting insect painting activity.  Be sure to ask parents to dress the kiddos in their play clothes, because they might get messy with this one.  But, don’t stress the mess, there is a ton of sensory input happening with this creative artwork!

All kids love water play, right?  This spring sensory water bin that we created touched on a few of the senses and would be a great way for friends to play and interact.  The language that comes out with a sensory bin can be astonishing.  A small group of friends at a play group will love to explore in a water bin.  It would be fun to set up a few bins and let the kids go crazy with sensory play.  This Spring soap foam sensory play (House of Burke) is so much fun!  If it’s warm where you live, these water bins would be perfect outdoors. 

RELATED READ: Simple Spring Sensory

Planning an outdoor play date this spring?  This invitation to explore flowers from Buggy and Buddy would be a fin activity for an outdoor play date.  The kids could even gather their flowers first while on a spring sensory outdoor excursion (All Done Monkey) and then explore nature’s textures, scents, and sights with a sensory flower activity. 

Once you’ve got those fresh flowers collected, you could also set up a flower garden play dough (Fantastic Fun and Learning) play date.  Invite your friends to a flower themed play dough play date and you probably won’t have many “no” rsvps!

If you’re planning a play date this spring, a sensory bin themed play date sounds like a sure winner!  Set up a birds nest small world (Craftulate) or an insect sensory bin (Stir the Wonder) for guaranteed sensory-based learning and play.

An art-themed sensory play date sounds fabulous! Fun-A-Day shared this scented shaving cream art activity that would be a hit at a play date!  Throw down a dollar store table cloth on the floor or take the art process outside.  I love that this art work is scented and sensory!

This rainbow salt writing tray (Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails) would be a great way to explore pre-handwriting or letter formation skills with a spring sensory theme.  A group of friends would make this activity extra special!

I hope you were able to find a few fun ideas to make a spring play date super fun!

How to Make Feather Flowers

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How to make a feather craft

If you have feathers and a few other craft materials on hand, you’ll this tutorial on how to make feather flowers. It’s a great fine motor craft for occupational therapy sessions because of the sensory textural experience and the fine motor opportunity. Kids of all ages will love these feather flowers!

How to Make Feather Flowers

These feather flowers are a great flower craft that are easy to make.

This was a super simple flower craft for the kids to make one afternoon.  We used a few craft materials we had on hand and loved the results!
 
Other feather activities include our burlap weaving activity and our feather beading activity. Each feather activity develops fine motor skills in different ways.

 

 
Easy flower craft for kids to make
 

 

 
 

 

How to Make Feather Flowers:

  1. Start with paper and paint.

    Paint paper with any type of paint. We used a regular painter’s brush for something different this time.  The brush strokes turned out textured and great for a background. This is a great opportunity to reuse and recycle crafts into artwork.

  2. Glue on a section from an egg carton.

    Paint the egg carton section, too. Once the paper was dry, glue on a purple section of painted egg cartons. 

  3. Add feathers.

    Add some glue to the paper around the egg carton and stick on the feathers.  These were our flower’s petals.

  Baby Girl is as much a fan of purple as she is of painting.  We have a lot of papers with purple paint all over them around here…

 

Crafts with Toddlers are messy!  Fun, absolutely!  Messy, definitely!

Once the flower was covered with yellow feathers, we used a few quill feathers as the stem and petals.  Keeping with the feather theme.

Our feather flower was done!  It’s now hanging beautifully in our dining room.  Baby Girl is proud of her flower craft. 

Looking for more fine motor activities? Grab one of our Fine Motor Kits!

Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:

Letters Fine Motor Kit
Kit de motricidad fina de verano
Summer Fine Motor Kit
Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
Space Fine Motor Kit
Spring fine motor kit
Valentines Day fine motor kit
winter fine motor kit
Winter Fine Motor Kit

Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:

Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

Play Dough Color Match Learning Activity

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Play dough is such a fun way to play and learn.  We are big fans of the fine motor fun to be had with play dough.  In fact, we’ve done other fine motor color matching activities with play dough before.  Color matching with play dough is a fun way for preschoolers and toddlers to learn colors and so much more.
 This play dough activity was great for the Toddler age range.  Learning colors, matching, sorting, and fine motor work were all involved.  Baby Girl was a big fan!  

Color matching and learning activity for Toddlers and Preschoolers

 

 {This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  You can read our full disclosure policy here.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts}  
Kids can identify colors of play dough.

Color identification activity for Toddlers

We started with a bunch of colors of play dough.  We used modeling dough, but you could also make your own play dough for learning and play.   We worked on naming all of the colors of the play dough.
Kids can work on many fine motor skills with play dough and paper clips.

Color matching activity for Toddlers

I pulled out a bunch of colored paper clips
and showed Baby Girl how to press them into the matching color.  She did pretty well with the matching of colors.  The identification is a little harder for her.  She’ll name some of the colors but stumble on others.  (Baby Girl is 2.5 years old).  She’s getting there, though!  I love that she loves activities like this.  She was really into it.

 

I love the colors of this dough!

 

Fine Motor Activity for Toddlers, Preschoolers, and School-aged Children

Pressing those paper clips into the dough requires a tripod grasp.  The resistance of the dough is a great way to strengthen the hand, especially the arches of the hand.  This is so important for manipulating objects in self-care tasks like buttoning.  This is a great pre-handwriting activity, too.  Definitely, it’s a good warm-up activity for kids who are at the writing stage.  Pressing those paper clips into the dough would get the hand “awake” and ready for a coloring or handwriting task for older kids.  I would recommend this activity for the school aged range, too.

Picking up paper clips from a flat surface is a great way to work on fine motor skills.

Picking up the paper clips from a flat surface like the table is a great way to work on finger dexterity with children.  You’ll need a tip to tip grasp to pick up the paper clip and manipulate it within your hand.  What a work out for those little hand muscles!  In-hand manipulation is essential for tasks like managing coins, rotating a pencil in handwriting tasks, putting small objects like pegs into peg boards, and so much more.  Scatter those paper clips around the table…this is a great way to play and work on fin motor skills!

Toddlers can work on fine motor skills with play dough.

If you’re doing this activity with a younger child, be sure to keep a close eye on them.  As always, use your judgment in what works best for your child or group of children in a school setting.  The paper clips could be a choking hazard of course so if you are working with kids who may put them in their mouth, either work on one clip at a time or put this activity away for a few months.  Better yet, pin it to your Pinterest boards for safe remembering 😉

How many other ways can you think of to make this activity a learning opportunity?  Try sorting the paper clips by color or size.  Pattern the colors of dough or paper clips.  Count the paper clips as your child presses them into the dough.  Ask him or her to press a certain number of clips into each dough ball.  Sequence the number of paper clips that you’ve pressed into the dough.  There is SO much learning happening here!

Looking for more play dough activities?  We’ve been having a blast pinning to our play dough, clay, goop, and more board:

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