January 2015

Pattern Activities for Kids Math Play

July 11, 2019January 31, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Patterns are a beginner math exercise that we saw a lot of in preschool and Kindergarten. Starting with an AB pattern and working up to ABC, ABA, and ABCD, patterns are just the beginning of a math foundation. We’re always pointing out patterns in our play, and it seems like it helped once Big Sister made her way into the pattern world of Kindergarten. When I saw a Pattern Activity on Share It Saturday this week, I knew we had to find more for pattern fun. We’ll be using these pattern ideas with the younger kids.

Pattern activities for Kindergarten, beginner math

Pattern Activities for Kids

You can use so many different items in pattern math with kids!

Work on patterns with balloons (Mommy Crusader), pasta (The Imagination Tree), DIY shapes (Sugar Aunts), building blocks (No Time for Flash Cards), snow (Sugar Aunts), and pool noodles (Sugar Aunts).

More Fun ideas: Build pattern towers with spaghetti (Mamas Like Me). Create Mondrian Pattern Sticks (Lalymom) or make patterns with gems on the light table (Still Playing School).

Olive You Fingerprint Valentines Art

February 3, 2020January 25, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Looking for a Valentine’s day activity that doubles as a sensory activity AND holiday craft? The cuteness factor of this Olive You thumbprint art is too much and I can’t wait to create (a ton) more handprint, footprint, and fingerprint crafts with the kids. Print crafts are one of those mementos that are more than just cute, it’s something you want to pull out when the kids are grown and admire the smallness of their fingerprints. This is one craft that we will definitely be saving until my little fingerprint monsters are grown!

(Fingerprint monsters=any adorable kid that just so happens to put their fingerprints EVERYWHERE! Fingerprints on windows, fridge, walls, cabinets, ceiling…HOW are there fingerprints on the ceiling??!!)

Olive You Thumbprint Art

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We used green paint to make a whole page of green thumbprints. Let them dry. Once the green paint is dry, layer a smaller print of red paint right on top. We had Big Sister make the larger green prints with her thumb and Little Sister use the tip of her finger to make the smaller red spot. You could just have the child press harder with the whole pad of their thumb to get a bigger circle for the olive and use the tip of their pinkie finger to make a smaller red spot on the olive.

Lots of olive cuteness!

I cut out the olives and we glued them onto paper to make Valentine’s Day cards.

Olive you thumbprint art for kids. This is so cute for a homemade Valentines Day card!

The best part of this craft is the olive jokes that you get to say…all day.

Olive you a whole lot!

Olive you thumbprint craft for a Valentines Day card made by kids

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.

Magnet Activities and Toys for Kids

October 16, 2023January 24, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Is there anything more mesmerizing and interesting to kids than the properties of magnetism? Give a child a magnet and ask them to find things that stick to it, and an adventure has begun! We love these magnetic activities for kids and can’t wait to try a few fun magnet activities soon!

Amazon affiliate links are included in this blog post. As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Magnet Activities for Kids

Fishing magnets from Stir the Wonder
Magnet science with preschoolers from The Practical Mom
Mini Magnet Maze from Science Sparks
Make magnetic slime from Frugal Fun 4 Boys
Paint with magnets from Housing a Forest
Make a magnetic playset from Teach Preschool

Favorite Magnet activities from the archives:
Color matching magnet play
Magnetic letters on the garage door

Magnet Toys

These are Amazon affiliate links. See our full disclosure here.

Melissa & Doug Magnetic Wooden Alphabet

magnet fridge gears

Magformers Rainbow Set

Toysmith Mighty Magnet Set

MindWare Imaginets

Magna-Tiles® Clear Colors

Mega Magz, 130-Piece Magnetic Construction Set – 66 bars and 64 balls

Dowling Magnets Simply Science Magnet Mania Kit

One Zillion Valentines Heart Chocolates craft

December 12, 2022January 21, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Valentine’s Day crafts and activities are some of our favorite ways to play. This fun holiday is all about love and fun. Ok, so it’s not a real holiday, and maybe you’re in the camp that it’s a made-up holiday but stores. Pair this chocolate activity with our hot chocolate craft for more fine motor fun.

Whatever your thoughts, you’ve got to admit, the pink and the hearts are a fun way to play after a month of cold wintery snowflakes and all of the red and green December brings. This Valentine’s Day craft was a fun way to create based on one of our favorite Valentine’s Day books, One Zillion Valentines by Frank Modell. And the message is perfect–Valentine’s don’t need to come from a store!

We love this book for it’s fun illustrations, great message, and it’s Valentine’s Day fun. When we read the book recently, we found a few things in the pages that we wanted to craft. We made this Valentine Heart Box of Chocolates on a miniature scale for the cuteness factor and a little imagination play.

Make a miniature heart Valentine chocolate box from a cardboard tube. This is too cute!

Valentine’s Day Box of Chocolates Craft

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Reading the book, One Zillion Valentines
shows us the friendship of Martin and Melvin as they trek around town and notice a huge heart shaped chocolate heart in a store window. They decide that Valentines are not just for girls (and that they don’t need to come from a store!)

When we saw that giant heart shaped valentine, we knew we had to make one just like it (only on a smaller scale!)

We started with a cardboard tube. In case you didn’t know, we kind of like cardboard tube crafts.

Shape the tube into a heart shape. Cut two red hearts from red cardstock.

Cut the cardboard tube into 1/2 inch thick heart shaped rings. This is a job for an adult, as cutting through the cardboard takes a little muscle.

Cut one of the hearts at the point and snip off a small piece. You will want to tape the heart back together so it is smaller than the other cardboard tube heart and the larger one will fit on top of the smaller heart . The larger heart will be the lid for the bottom heart.

Dip the edges of the hearts into glue and press onto the red cardstock
hearts. Let these dry.

Once dry, you can decorate however you like! We used a piece of ribbon to look like the chocolate heart box in One Zillion Valentines, but you could also draw on heats, flowers, or add bits of ribbon to decorate.

This isn’t the only craft we made based on the book, One Zillion Valentines. We made another fun craft that will be coming your way soon!

This post is part of the Read and Play series where bloggers share crafts and activities based on books. This months post is all about Valentine’s Day books for kids. You can find more creative Valentine activities and crafts all in one place on The Pleasantest Thing.

Looking for more Valentine’s Day crafts and activities? Try some of our favorites:

Heartbreaker Smashing Peanut Shells

Valentine’s Day Goop Painting

Valentine’s Day Bead Sorting

Marbled Milk Paper Towel Snowflakes

February 23, 2023January 20, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Have you seen the magic milk experiment? This Marbled Milk painting is a little like the magic milk experiment, and such a neat activity for the kids (I think I loved it just as much!) When the weather is cooler and the house is filled with paper snowflakes, a pop of color makes the winter season even brighter! Marbled milk paint is a creative painting activity with a bit of science mixed in.

We’ve done a similar milk and soap science and art project in our published book. This is such a fun way to explore science and art! A true STEAM activity for kids!

make beautiful napkin snowflakes using a marbled milk dying process.

Snowflakes dyed with Marbled Milk

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We first saw the Magic Milk experiment over at Coffee Cups and Crayons. Our process ended up being a bit different than theirs, so if you’ve never seen the full effects of the Magic Milk experiment, it’s definitely something you will want to check out.

We omitted an ingredient in our dying process and skipped the “magic” I suppose…but this Marbled Milk dye is pretty magic in itself, I would say!

We started with a little milk poured onto a bread plate. You will also need liquid food coloring in a few colors.

Drip the food coloring in different areas of the plate of milk.

Swirl the food coloring around with toothpicks. It was fun to see the swirling of the food coloring in the milk.

At this point, we pulled out a handful of snowflakes we had snipped from paper towels. Drape them into the milk and watch the colors creep across the paper towel.

It’s amazing how fast the colors creep across the towel and how they become marbled all on their own. We were sure to keep the colors from being a brown mess in the milk and when we swirled the food coloring, were very gentle.

Drape the wet snowflakes across cooling racks with a dish towel below to catch any drips. Let them snowflakes completely dry. They will dry hard and a little crispy on the edges.

These marbled milk snowflakes decorated our window for a while (until a certain three year old pulled them down!) We’ll be making these again for sure. Let us know if you do, too!

Looking for more creative painting activities? Try some of these:

DIY Shape Stamps | Paint with Bottle Caps | Sparkle Art Painting | Creative Painting Ideas

marbled milk snowflakes. These brightly colored snowflakes are dyed with marbled milk!

Painting Bubble Wrap | Textured Paint Sensory Play

Red Crayon Play Dough Recipe

July 11, 2019January 19, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

We are slightly obsessed with making crayon play dough recipes. It all started with our crayon play dough. We were brainstorming for an activity to go along with the book, Harold and the Purple Crayon and we made homemade play dough using crayons as a main ingredient. We love this dough so much because of it’s soft and smooth texture and it’s bright and bold color.

We decided to try a new version of our crayon recipe and make shades of red crayon play dough. This is perfect for Valentine’s Day, but we’ll be using this play dough long after February 14th!

Make a bunch of different shades of red crayon play dough using a pack of crayons!

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Red Crayon Play Dough Recipe

Shades of red crayons. Use these to make red play dough!

We grabbed a couple of packs of these Red Hot crayons and knew they had to be used for all red play dough. You can use broken crayons that are floating around the house, though.

Shades of red play dough using crayons! Save those broken crayon pieces!

This pack has some pretty red shades. Red, maroon, brick red, mango tango…the bonus of using crayons for dying play dough is that you get a pure, bright, and bold color. Even reds (which don’t always come out brightly colored with other play dough methods) are vivid.

Start by chopping the crayons into small pieces. I used two crayons for each shade (so we ended up using two packs of the Red Hot crayons to make eight shades of red crayon play dough.

You can get the measurements on our how to make crayon play dough post.

Once you chop up the crayons, melt into the oil over a stove. After the crayons are melted, slowly stir in the water. You can then add the dry ingredients and keep stirring until the dough pulls together. Be sure to mix with a spoon or whisk as you slowly pour in the dry ingredients.Dump the play dough onto a floured surface and let it cool for a few minutes. Once the dough has cooled enough to knead, you will want to knead until the dough is smooth and even in texture.

You can get the measurements on our how to make crayon play dough post.

Troubleshooting crayon dough problems:

There are a few problems you might run into when you’re making crayon play dough. If you have white spots in the dough after kneading, it means the flour wasn’t mixed in evenly. Keep kneading the dough and it will eventually get all of the flour flecks mixed in.

If the dough seems too dry, you can add a bit of oil and knead some more.

If the dough seems too moist or oily, add a bit of flour and knead.

Always add small increments to get the right texture, with a lot of kneading in between.

Crayon play dough. This recipe will give you a bright and bold shade of color.

Crayon hearts for Valentine’s Day!

Little Sister loves play dough so all of these shades of red are making her happy!

Use Red Hot crayons from Crayola to make different shades of red play dough with bright and bold colors. Very vivid red play dough!

Crayon Play dough Valentine treat bags that don't use candy!

We even made a few Valentine’s Day treat bags using sandwich bags and pink paper. Pop the play dough into the baggie and fold over the opening. Tape a strip of paper with a heart for a cute non-candy Valentine’s Day treat bag!

More crayon play dough colors:

Harold and the Purple Crayon play dough | Rainbow Crayon Play Dough

If you like the idea of using your broken crayon pieces in something as fun and creative as play dough, then you will love to try a few different ideas, too. We’ve given crayon play dough a run for it’s fun and tried a few different versions. Check them out and if you make a batch, let us know how you get creative with crayon play dough!

Gold, Silver, & Bronze Metallic Crayon Play Dough

Patriotic Crayon Salt Dough Recipe

Crayon Salt Dough Recipe

Crayon Floam Dough Recipe

Crayon Shaving Art

Shades of Red Crayon Play Dough

Harold and the Purple Crayon Play Dough

Heartbreaker Valentine’s Day Activity Smashing Peanut Shells

February 4, 2020January 18, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

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Sometimes, you need to let out a little steam. Valentine’s Day comes with a season of hearts, pink, and love everywhere. This heart breaker Smashing Peanut Shells activity is perfect for the broken hearted…or for just having fun with a fun holiday! Add it to an occupational therapy Valentine’s Day themed session or two.

DISCLAIMER- This sensory play activity has sensory benefits, but it is not for everyone! Be cognizant of peanut allergies as the activity can leave peanut residue in the air or play space. Children who may place small items in their mouth should not participate in this activity. Use protective eyewear such as safety goggles as the peanut shells may fly. As ALWAYS, use common sense when choosing an activity to do with a child. The OT Toolbox is not responsible for your use of this activity.

Now that the important stuff has been addressed, let’s get onto the fun stuff. I love to pull sensory play into our activities. This smashing peanut shells activity was a great one for getting out a little aggression and adding a little proprioception into our day. Kids will need to use their visual perceptual skills for this activity as well, so this was definitely a way to work on sensory in a very fun Valentine’s Day-themed way!

Broken heart? Celebrate Valentines Day with a smashing good time! Proprioception activity for kids with peanut shells.

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We started with just a few items. A bag of peanuts, red and pink

acrylic paints, and the wooden hammer from our peg pounding toy.

I started by cracking some peanuts. The kids were happy to join in for a snack they love. Let those kids crack their peanuts! Cracking peanuts is a fabulous fine motor activity. When we had a pile of shells, I gave them a quick rinse under cool water to remove the salt and any peanut dust. We popped the shells into an oven set at 200F for about 10 minutes to quick dry the shells. You could let them sit overnight as well.

Once the shells are dry, pull out the paints. I painted hearts on a few, and painted the rest red or pink. Little Sister (age 3) helped out with this part. She is my paint-loving kid. Painting the peanut shells was a fun twist on her favorite activity and a pretty cool way to be creative.

Paint peanut shells for a sensory experience with kids. This is fun for Valentines Day. I'm NUTS about you!

Let the paint dry. Admire the adorable-ness.

Valentine’s Day Proprioception Activity

Now for the fun part! My kids were anxiously waiting for those peanuts to dry! Once we were ready to start, I pulled out our big cutting board and we got started with our shell smashing fun.

This activity is awesome for proprioceptive input.

What is proprioception?

Proprioception is a sensory process of the body that allows input to be regulated and responded to with motor movements and positions. Whaaat, you ask? The proprioceptive system receives input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, stretch, movement and changes in position in space. Our bodies are able to grade and coordinate movements based on the way muscles move, stretch, and contract. Proprioception allows us to apply more or less pressure and force in a task. Instinctively, we know that lifting a feather requires very little pressure and effort, while moving a large backpack requires more work. We are able to coordinate our movements effectively to manage our day’s activities with the proprioceptive system. The brain also must coordinate input about gravity, movement, and balance involving the vestibular system.

Banging that hammer and smashing those nuts requires work to smash the nut shells. You can place the hammer on the nut and press down to get a satisfying “crunch” or you and hold the hammer over your head with both hands and swing it down HARD on the peanut shell. Either way is fun (and we tried both techniques!)

SMASH! CRUNCH!

Valentine’s Day Visual Perceptual Activity:

Visual perception is anther piece of the sensory systems in the body, and this Valentine’s Day activity is a great way to practice visual scanning and eye-hand coordination.

What is visual perception?

Visual perception is the ability for the eyes to process information, resulting in sight. Visual perception includes many abilities including scanning, figure ground, tracking, visual memory, visual closure, form constancy, visual discrimination, and eye-hand coordination among other skills that allow us to see and use that information for function.

Locating the red and pink nuts on the surface of the cutting board requires visual scanning. Using the hammer in a coordinated way to bring it down and hit it requires eye-hand coordination.

What a lot of systems the body is using to do a simple (and fun!) activity!

Side-note: (This is your warning!) This activity makes a MESS! As much effort as I used to keep the dust and nut fragments contained, we still had shell pieces everywhere! I had the kids playing right on our hardwood floors, so clean up wasn’t too bad. A quick sweep up with the broom did the job. But, if you are concerned with bits of shells and the mess is a concern for you, I would consider doing this activity outside. Other options would include a large shallow pan or working on a table cloth that can be shook out over the garbage can. Also note that kids with allergies should not participate in or near this activity. As always, use your best judgement with your kids. If they tend to put small items in their mouth, this is not an ideal activity. Hold onto it, Pin it. And come back to it at another time. All activities that we document on this blog are supervised. The information on this website should not be used as medical advise. Please contact a therapist for an individualized evaluation if therapeutic advise is needed.

I’m nuts about YOU, readers!

Looking for more Little Heartbreaker Activities? Try these:

Anti Valentine’s Day Baked Cotton Balls from Lalymom

Breaking Hearts: Fine Motor Play from Still Playing School

Fine Motor Gelatin Heart Sensory Play from And Next Comes L

Candy Heart Breaking Fine Motor Activity from Fun-A-Day

Catapult Science for Kids- Can You Break My Heart? on Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tail

Color Mixing with Heart Snowball Smashing from How Wee Learn

Bubble Wrap Heart Breaking from House of Burke

Love Bug Craft

February 8, 2021January 17, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

If you are searching for a Valentine’s Day occupational therapy activity, then a love bug craft ideas is it. These love bug Valentine crafts are beyond cute, but they are also powerful fine motor crafts that help kids develop, refine, and strengthen fine motor skills. Check out the craft ideas below and choose one that strengthens the skills you are specifically looking to improve.

Love Bug Craft

The hardest part about setting up these cute bug crafts is to decide which to make. I wanted to pull together some love bug craft ideas from around the net to help you find exactly the craft that helps kids develop specific fine motor skills.

When kids work on crafts like the ones described here, they have the opportunity to build many fine motor skills that are needed for tasks like handwriting, manipulating and managing clothing fasteners, coloring with endurance, manipulating toys and materials in play, and participating in daily tasks with coordination. Here are some fine motor skills that love bug crafts can help kids develop and refine:

Precision and dexterity
Eye-hand coordination
Pinch and grip strength
Separation of the sides of the hands
Arch development
Endurance and strength
Open thumb web space
Finger isolation

Is there anything cuter than a Love Bug craft for kids? These Valentine’s Day love bug crafts would make a great activity for school parties, play dates, or any day leading up to Valentine’s Day!

Love bug crafts for kids this Valentine's Day

Love Bug Valentine Crafts

This Sticky play love bugs from Best Toys 4 Toddlers pairs the fine motor power of stickers with a cute bug craft. When kids peel and place stickers, they are building precision and neat pincher grasp that is needed for dexterity in tasks. read more about the benefits of playing with stickers here.

This Pine Cone Love Bugs from Fireflies & Mudpies helps kids build hand strength and bilateral coordination. By manipulating and twisting pipe cleaners, children can develop the skills needed for handwriting, cutting with scissors, and manipulating clothing fasteners like shoe laces.

While this bee craft is considered an insect, it still works as a cute love bug! Use this bee craft idea to help kids work on precision, bilateral coordination, open thumb web space, and separation of the sides of the hand as they peel and stick bandages to make a bee.

An Egg carton love bugs craft from Kitchen Floor Crafts is a fun way to help children with precision and eye-hand coordination as they thread pipe cleaners into egg cartons and beads onto pipe cleaners. This precision task develops arch strength, separation of the sides of the hand, and an open thumb web space, all of which are needed for a functional pencil grasp.

There is power in play dough! This Play Dough Love Bugs from Fantastic Fun and Learning uses play dough to create love bug crafts in a fine motor activity that kids will love. When children play with play dough, and better yet, add manipulatives to play dough, they are building so many fine motor skills. Work on precision, eye-hand coordination, tripod grasp, and more with this fun love bug craft.

Love bug caterpillar craft made from a painted egg carton with string legs to help kids develop fine motor skills.

Make this caterpillar craft using an egg carton, and work on eye-hand coordination, hand strength, bilateral coordination skills, and much more.

These Cork Love Bugs from No Time For Flashcards are a cute way to work on neat pincer grasp as kids manipulating and place the small craft pieces. It’s a powerful eye-hand coordination activity, too.

These Fingerprint Love Bugs from I Heart Arts and Crafts help kids with scissor skills, bilateral coordination, and finger isolation. These fine motor skills carry over into many functional tasks.

Although ants are in the insect line, these ant crafts are great ways to build fine motor skills, too.

Extend the bug theme with this visual closure bug activity that helps kids develop visual perceptual skills needed for reading and writing.

And for more hands-on bug pretend play, make a quick bug sensory bin. This fine motor activity helps kids with pouring, scooping, and manipulating sensory bin materials with their hands. Pair the bug sensory bin with a Valentine’s sensory bin and you’ve got yourself a love bug theme!

Want more Valentine’s Day Activities that help build motor skills?

The Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit is here! This printable kit is 25 pages of hands-on activity sheets designed to build skills in pinch and grasp strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, precision, dexterity, pencil control, handwriting, scissor skills, coloring, and more.

When you grab the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit now, you’ll get a free BONUS activity: 1-10 clip cards so you can challenge hand strength and endurance with a counting eye-hand coordination activity.

DIY Easy Felt Cookies Pretend Play

July 11, 2019January 13, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

It’s so much fun to watch the kids in their pretend play. They love pretending to play school, restaurant, house, Frozen, and so many fun ideas. I love to eavesdrop on their pretend play. One thing they play almost every day is restaurant, complete with aprons, notebooks for taking orders, and “tea” (“tea”=water in a cup…with little floating things…it’s this mom’s favorite part when they say, “Really drink it, Mom!” Yep, it’s the best part. Not really.)

We’ve created no-sew felt cookies years back and they are used in pretend play almost every day. We made a new set of Easy DIY felt cookies for Valentine’s Day that is pretty, pink, and probably going to be used every day as well.

Easy no-sew felt cookies for Valentine's Day or any day! These are so cute for pretend play.

No-Sew Felt Cookies for Pretend Play this Valentine’s Day

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These felt cookies so easy to put together. When it comes to making imagination play activities for the kids, easy is key. And no-sew is even better! We started with felt sheets in pink, white, red, and beige. Cut them into circles, hearts, and little bits for sprinkles. It’s that easy! We pulled a few pieces in from our kitchen set to pretend to bake cookies, and added a few spatulas and spoons from the real kitchen.