May 2015

Use a Marble Run on the Water Table Sensory Play

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

Recently, we posted an image on our instagram page of an outdoor sensory play activity. We pulled out our marble run toy and the water table for sensory and fine motor fun. This was such a hit on a hot day that we have played with the marble run and the water table many more times since. We wanted to share the fun with you!

Water table activity for kids: use a marble run and water beads for scooping and pouring fine motor and sensory fun this summer!

Use the marble run toy on the water table with waterbeads!

We’re including affiliate links for our convenience. We love our marble run (this is the one we have and I love it because it’s not too difficult that my kids can’t build runs themselves, but it does include a lot of different pieces.) We pulled it out one hot day and placed it in our
water table
with water and some expanded water beads. If you’ve never played with water beads before, these are a sensory must! The small beads are perfect for sensory play and go right down the shoots of the water table. We poured, scooped, and dumped water and water beads down the shoots and ramps and watched the beads pile up at the bottom of the marble run.

This sensory play activity was not only perfect summer fun on a hot day, it was a great fine motor and eye-hand coordination activity for preschoolers.

Looking for more water table activities? Try these:

Monochromatic water table sensory play

Sand, Sticks, & Stones simple water table play

Nature water table

Painting snow

Painting toys

Honey Peanut Butter Rice Krispy treats

July 11, 2019May 12, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

One of our favorite easy lunches is a peanut butter and honey sandwich. The combination of peanut butter and honey is so good, with sweet, chewy, and packed with protein. When we heard that the A-Z Cooking With Kids recipe for this week was H is for Honey, we knew that we had to go with our favorite sweet/salty combination! These Rice Crispy (or is it Krispy? Krispie?) Cereal Treats are made with honey and peanut butter and NO marshmallows or butter. These crunchy and chewy cereal bars will satisfy your sweet tooth while staying on the healthier side!

Honey Peanut Butter rice krispy treats recipe. This is great for cooking with kids!

To make these cereal bars, skip the marshmallow and grease. You’ll need just a few ingredients: Affiliate links are included in this post for your convenience.

1/2 cup honey
(But if you are able to grab up some local honey, go for that option!)

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
–This is my FAVORITE brand.

4 cups Rice Krispies cereal (or any toasted rice cereal would work)

Cooking with Kids: Honey Rice Krispy Cereal Treats

Mix together: 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup peanut butter. Pour these together in a saucepan. Heat on the stovetop and continue stirring until the mixture begins to boil.

Remove from heat and pour over 4 cups of Rice Krispies cereal. Mix together until the cereal is coated with the peanut butter/honey mixture.

Line a 9×9 inch casserole dish with parchment paper. We have used wax paper in a pinch. Pour the cereal into the casserole dish.

Use another piece of parchment paper to firmly press down the cereal. You will want to press down pretty hard so that the cereal bars are not crumbly. My kids LOVED this job. Pressing down on the cereal bars allowed them to get a little pre-nap time sillies out 😉

Honey (No marshmallow) rice krispy treats recipe

Allow the cereal treats to harden for several hours. Pop them right out onto a cutting board in one big piece. Using the parchment paper made this so easy. Use a sharp knife to cut the rice crispy cereal treat squares.

Honey and Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats recipe

We have been enjoying these honey peanut butter rice crispy bars allllll day. And then they were gone!

See what the other bloggers in the A-Z Cooking With Kids series made with honey:

Honey Mustard Dressing from Mum in the Mad House

Honey Granola from Rainy Day Mum

Fried Ice Cream Sundaes from Still Playing School

Homemade Honey Caramel Sauce from Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

The rest of our cooking with kids A-Z recipes can be seen here:

A is for Apple Dumplings Recipe

B is for Banana Cheesecake Bites

C is for Carrot Veggie Puffs Recipe

D is for Dough recipe

E is for Egg Strata Recipe

F is for Flour Strawberry no milk/no egg Pancakes

G is for Grapes Mini Fruit Pizzas

Jellyfish Art and Craft Ideas

January 10, 2023May 9, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Looking for a few jellyfish art and craft ideas to create with a beach theme? Today, we’ve got a collection of creative jellyfish crafts, jellyfish handprints, and fun themed activities to build skills. Whether you are heading to the beach or planning a beach themed summer camp, these craft ideas are for you!

Add these ideas to your summer occupational therapy sessions.

Jellyfish arts and crafts

Jellyfish crafts are maybe one of the cutest crafts to make during the summer. While the real creatures that you dodge while swimming in the ocean are not so nice, they sure are beautiful to watch in an aquarium.

The jellyfish ideas below are just some ways to build skills through crafting. Consider kids crafts such as:

Jellyfish handprint
Jellyfish puppet
Cupcake liner jellyfish
Paper bowl jellyfish
Tissue paper tentacles
Pipe cleaner tentacles
Egg carton jellyfish
Cardboard tube jellyfish
Toilet paper roll sea life
Coffee filter jellyfish

As you can see there are many ways to make colorful jellyfish crafts using everyday materials! When building these fun crafts, you target several areas of development:

Scissor skills
fine motor skills
Hand strength by cutting and tearing paper strips
Tactile discrimination and tactile defensiveness by using sticky tape or a glue stick
Functional skills by managing a hole punch, tape dispenser, or school glue bottle
Motor planning
Bilateral coordination
Crossing midline

We put together a collection of jellyfish crafts with colorful tentacles and gorgeous summer colors. Now the question is, which of these to make first?

JELLYFISH CRAFTS TO MAKE WITH THE KIDS:

J is for Jellyfish from Crystal and Co. supports fine motor skills by using a template to create jellyfish tentacles and other parts
Paper bag Jellyfish craft from No Time for Flashcards works on bilateral coordination skills, scissors skills, and more.
Paper Plate Jellyfish craft from Happy Hooligans is a great hand strengthening activity using a paper plate or paper bowl
Easter Egg Jellyfish from Teach Beside Me Supports eye hand coordination skills

All of these ideas are full of ocean fun and a creative way to develop skills in 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.

Dyed Pasta Tic Tac Toe

July 11, 2019May 8, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

We love a fun game of tick tac toe. We play with pretty much any manipulative and on paper with shapes, letters, numbers, or drawings. This Pasta Tic Tac Toe game used dyed pasta and has kept us busy for many a game of tic tac toe!

homemade tic tac toe game with dyed pasta

EASY Tic Tac Toe game with dyed pasta

We’re sharing affiliate links for your convenience. Start with

food coloring and pasta. You can use any shape or type of pasta. Add the dried pasta and a few drops of food coloring to a plastic baggie. Add a squirt of
hand sanitzer and shake the bag. Allow the pasta to dry overnight until the dye is dry. You are ready to play. We drew a board quickly and have been playing a lot of tic tack toe. Have fun with your tic tac toe manipulatives!

I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More Color Identification Game

February 23, 2023May 7, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Preschool Book Club is back again, this time with a craft activity and game based on the book, “I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More!”. We’ve created a body part identification book activity for this book before, and were excited to read an play the book again! This time our activity addressed colors and body parts, and was it ever fun!

This is a creative art idea that you’ll want to explore. Use more of the creative painting ideas we have here on the website to identify body parts, too.

Painted birdhouses craft and Body Part, Color Identification Game based on the book, "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!"

Body Part Game and Craft

This post contains affiliate links.

I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More!
by Karen Beaumont is a colorful and exciting book. A creative little boy paints first his house, walls, and ceiling and then when his mama objects to that, decides to paint his body. My kids LOVE the rhyming nature of this book. As we read the book (again and again!) they guessed the body parts that the little boy painted.

We decided to paint birdhouses like the boy paints his house. Out birdhouses became colorful works of art with colors mixing and spinning together. This was such a fun and engaging craft for the kids. We started with a wooden birdhouse that we received from www.craftprojectideas.com. Use acrylic paints (also from craftprojectideas!) to paint the birdhouses.

I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More Book Activity

Once the paint dried, we created a game based on the book. We used colored craft sticks to create color identification and body part identification game. Write the names of body parts on the colored craft sticks.

Now play the game! To start, we had each child choose 5 colored craft sticks. They closed their eyes and to pick the colors. We read the book again and as we saw colors in the story or heard body parts, the kids could place their colored craft sticks into the birdhouses. This was such a fun way to combine art and a learning game.

After we played our I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More! game a feeeew times, we gave our colorful birdhouses to the birds! They are now decorating the trees around our house. we are waiting to see if any birds decide they want to live in a colorfully painted house!

Stop by to see how the other bloggers in the Preschool Book Club explored I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More!:

Counting Game from Buggy and Buddy

Hand print Keepsake from Mama. Papa. Bubba.

Painted Doll House from Homegrown Friends

Body Painting from Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

Sensory Gardening with Kids

July 11, 2019May 6, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

It is that time of year when we start to dig up the dirt and grow our garden…all with the kids! Digging in dirt and kids go hand in hand so when we started our garden for the first time last year, the kids were all over it. They were my biggest helpers when it came to planting, weeding, and of course, taste-testing! This post includes pictures from last year’s garden, and we can’t wait to get started on our garden again this year!

Gardening with kids. Make these small adjustments to your garden to make it a sensory sanctuary in your own backyard!

This post contains affiliate links.

Sensory Fun Gardening with Kids

You know we LOVE sensory play, right? Gardening is the ultimate sensory activity when it comes to kids. There are so many of the senses addressed when a child is outside in the dirt. There is the calming and relaxing environment of quiet outdoors, soft dirt, cool colors, and the warm sun. Digging and turning dirt is a wonderful proprioception activity for kids (and adults) who need to address movement and grading of muscle use in activities throughout their day. The resistance of weeks that need pulling will provide feedback to muscles and joints. Kids can taste, see, feel, and smell so many textures, tastes, colors, patterns, and olfactory experiences depending on the fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs that are planted.

Kids can explore all of the senses in a relaxing and calming sensory garden! Sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, proprioception, and vestibular senses are addressed with gardening!

Make a Sensory Garden for Kids

Gardening is already such an amazing wealth of input to the senses. How can you make it even more of a sensory haven for kids to calm, relax, or provide stimulation?

Sight: Plant brightly colored flowers.

Plant flowers in a pattern order.

Use brightly colored garden markers.

Add flowers or bushes that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Garden Hanging Butterfly Feeder
or hummingbird feeders can easlily be added to gardens by hanging to branches or walls.

Add textures to borders.

Add height and depth to gardening surfaces by using wall hangers, raised potted plants, or tables. A Vertical wall planter
encouraged overhead reach and visual attraction to different planes.

Sound: Add bird feeders or wind chimes
to the garden.

Add water features to the garden. A solar powered water feature
can be easily added to a garden space.

Plant ornamental grasses or taller plants that will add a soft sound in the breeze.

Taste: Plant a variety of sweet, bitter, tart vegetables and fruits.

Add edible flowers to borders.

Encourage cooking with kids using the produce from the garden.

Touch: Plants can provide a variety of textures. Some leaves are soft and fuzzy, and others are sharp and prickly.

Pulling weeds in different soil experiences is a great sensory activity. Pull weeds from dry soil and wet soil.

Add rocks, pebbles, bricks, and gravel for texture.

Play in mud puddles.

Walk barefoot in the grass and dirt.

Scent: Dirt is such great scent! Add novel scents like mint, lavender, tomato plants, basil.

Proprioception: Add plants that require a bit of “oomp” to pick or harvest, like radishes, potatoes, carrots.

Have children dig! Moving soil provides heavy input to upper and lower extremities.

Push wheelbarrows with varrying weights of dirt. (I love the sze of this Kids’ Wheelbarrow!)

Lift and carry buckets of water.

Pull the hose from the hose hook-up.

And wind it back up when done!

Use gardening tools like a hoe, garden rake, scoops, shovels. Kids can use adult sized tools but a child sized rake, spade, hoe, shovel set. would be great too.

Vestibular: Encourage children to get down on the ground to garden.

Jump in mud puddles.

How to incorporate sensory play into playing gardening with kids

Sensory diet activities can be specific to sensory system like these vestibular sensory diet activities. Sensory activities can be prescribed according to need along with environment in order to maximize sensory input within a child’s day such as within the school day. Using authentic sensory input within the child’s environment plays into the whole child that we must understand when focusing on any goal toward improved functional independence.

Many sensory diet activities can naturally be found outdoors. In fact, outdoor sensory diet activities are a fun way to encourage sensory input in a child’s environment and without fancy therapy equipment or tools.

It’s a fact that kids are spending less time playing outdoors. From after-school schedules to two working parents, to unsafe conditions, to increased digital screen time, to less outdoor recess time…kids just get less natural play in the outdoors.

Knowing this, it can be powerful to have a list of outdoor sensory diet activities that can be recommended as therapy home programing and family activities that meet underlying needs.

That’s where the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards and Sensory Challenge Cards come into play.

They are a FREE printable resource that encourages sensory diet strategies in the outdoors. In the printable packet, there are 90 outdoor sensory diet activities, 60 outdoor recess sensory diet activities, 30 blank sensory diet cards, and 6 sensory challenge cards. They can be used based on preference and interest of the child, encouraging motivation and carryover, all while providing much-needed sensory input.

Here’s a little more information about the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards

90 outdoor sensory diet activities

60 outdoor recess sensory diet activities

30 blank sensory diet cards, and 6 sensory challenge cards

They can be used based on preference and interest of the child, encouraging motivation and carryover, all while providing much-needed sensory input.

Research tells us that outdoor play improves attention and provides an ideal environment for a calm and alert state, perfect for integration of sensory input.

Outdoor play provides input from all the senses, allows for movement in all planes, and provides a variety of strengthening components including eccentric, concentric, and isometric muscle contractions.

Great tool for parents, teachers, AND therapists!

Be sure to grab the Outdoor Sensory Diet Cards and use them with a child (or adult) with sensory processing needs!

Outdoor sensory diet activity cards for parents, teachers, and therapists of children with sensory processing needs.

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Get the things you’ll need:

Lighthouse Cupcake Liner Craft Summer

July 11, 2019May 5, 2015 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Are you planning a vacation or holiday with kids to the beach or shore this summer? We made this lighthouse craft using cupcake liners to prepare kids for beach itineraries and experiences such as lighthouse visits! We’ve made a few cupcake liner crafts and this is one of our new favorites!

Cute lighthouse craft using cupcake liners! This is a fun craft to make with the kids before going on vacation this summer.

Lighthouse craft for kids

This post contains affiliate links. See our full disclosure.

You’ll need a few materials for this lighthouse craft:

red cupcake liners
card stock
(in various colors)
glue
scissors

I drew a long triangle shape for my daughter to cut from yellow card stock. Use the red cupcake liners to create the lighthouse. Fold two cupcake liners in half red side our and two cupcake liners white side out. Line them up and add a bit of glue so they stay put as shown in the picture above. Use the scissors to cut a slightly slanted line up both sides of the stack of cupcake liners.

Lighthouse cupcake liner craft. This is so cute for a summer craft with kids!

Glue all of the pieces to a piece of blue card stock. We added a black top and brown beach to our lighthouse picture.

Are you going to the beach with the kids this summer? Try one of our other beach activities to prepare:

Beach activities for kids and families. Do these fun ideas before going to the shore this summer!

Island Luau Sensory Play

Don’t forget to make a DIY beach souvenir

Beach Play Activities

Beach themed play dough

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Pencil Grasp Activities with Fine Motor Play