There are so many ways to make sensory bottles. Today I wanted to share a super simple sensory bottle idea that is perfect for those calm-down moments we all crave. You know the times we all have when a child (or mom!) is just needs to refocus and calm down. It’s a time when many of us fidget, bite our nails, or seek out sensory input. This sensory jar is an easy way to calm down and it’s an easy recycled jar to make, too.
Recycled mason Jar Sensory Calm Down Jar
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For this sensory bottle, we used items that we had on hand. Mason jar Glitter glue Yarn in various colors Water Glue
To make this sensory jar, cut the yarn into 6 inch lengths. Pour a glob of glitter glue into the bottom of the mason jar. Add the yarn and fill the jar with water. At this point, you can add extra loose glitter, but if you don’t want that added cost, it’s an easy step to skip.
Be sure to add glue to the jar lid at this point to secure the lid. Close the jar and give it a shake.
Watch the falling glitter from the glitter glue and the swirling yarn as you and your child calms down.
**We used a glass mason jar for this activity. You can substitute the glass for a recycled plastic jar for safety reasons. Use your judgement regarding what is best for your individual children.
Kids grow up fast. They are snugly newborns one day and before you know it, they are heading off to preschool (I don’t want to think about those older years!). Those first few years of childhood are loaded with learning and growth. One area of independence is when kids learn to dress themselves. Many parents have questions about when kids learn to get dressed on their own, how to help their child in this area of self-care, and what might be stopping their child when there are difficulties.
Read all of our Functional Skills and tips for creating childhood independence here.
This month’s post in the Functional Skills for Kids series is all about teaching kids to get dressed on their own. If you’ve been following along with this series, you know that each month ten Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists are joining together to cover functional skills of childhood. You can catch up on all of the posts in this series here.
How to Help Kids Get Dressed on Their Own: Childhood Independence with Dressing Skills
When you are cooking with kids, easy and healthy recipes are key. We’ve covered a bunch of recipes here but it seems like there is always a household favorite. This Easy Omelet Recipe is one that my kids request for breakfast (and Breakfast for Dinner!) all the time. They are kind of big egg recipe fans. I love that it’s so easy. My kids and I made up an omelet one day and had to share the recipe with you.
Easiest Omelet Recipe
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This recipe calls for just a few ingredients: 3 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon butter 1/2 cup diced ham 1/2 cup spinach 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
*The ingredients that we used can be substituted for other items. Use what you’ve got in the house. Other ingredients that can be added or substituted to your omelet include: green peppers, red peppers, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms, and cooked onions.
I loved seeing my eight year old make this dish. She’s getting so big!
To make the omelet, crack whisk the eggs. Stir in the milk. Add the butter to a large omelet pan. Let the butter melt slightly and then pour in the egg mixture. Let the egg mixture cook for a few minutes and then add the chopped ingredients. Using a wooden spoon, gently lift the edge of the omelet. Cook the eggs/ingredients 3-4 minutes and then, using a spatula, fold one third of the egg toward the inside. Turn the other outer 1/3 toward the inside of the omelet. Allow the omelet to cook 1 minute more.
Carefully slide the omelet out onto a plate.
Enjoy!
Looking for more kid-made breakfast ideas? Try these:
This fine motor activity is one that works on the super small motor skills of the hands. We’ve shared tips and ideas for building precision of grasp and release before, and this is one more way to build those skills, with a math and engineering twist. This is a fine motor math activity with major benefits.
If your kids are anything like mine, then they love blocks. If I pull out a bin of blocks, then we’ve got ramps, castles, and houses all over the living room floor. They are an imagination booster and it really is so much fun to see where the creativity goes with just a bin of blocks. The OT in me loved this activity for it’s creative math twist and for it’s fine motor power punch!
You might also want to check out our math maze activity for more hands-on math fun.
What is precison of grasp and release?
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Precision handling of very small items with controlled movement is necessary for dexterity in functional grasp. To manipulate items with small motor motions, the hand needs to be in a functional position. The index and middle digits must oppose the thumb with tip-to-tip finger contact and interphalangeal joint range of motion. opening and closing the grasp on items with control is precision and allows the hand to grasp small objects from a refined area and enables the hand to release objects in a specific location.
Precision in of grasp and release allows us to pick up a specific colored bead from a tray of many colors and place it on a string. We used foam blocks and small balls of clay to practice precision of grasp and release.
Fine Motor Precision Activity
Rolling balls of clay develops the intrinsic muscle strength of the hands. It opens up the thumb web space and encourages flexion of the interphalangeal joints in the fingers. Once we had rolled a collection of small clay balls, we used them to work on precision grasp and release with the foam blocks.
One area that my kids have discussed in both kindergarten and second grade this year is the term vertices. We talked about the number of vertices on different shapes and placed a small clay ball on each vertice. Carefully placing the clay on each corner required precision to pick up the clay and to place it precisely on the corner.
Math Engineering Activity
Once we had each corner covered with clay, we thought it would be fun to engineer a tower. It was fun to explore the different ways we could build the towers using graded controlled movements to prevent the whole tower from falling.
This was such a fun exercise in fine motor skills and one we’ll be doing again!
Looking for more learning activities with foam blocks? Try these:
We love to share creative ideas for sensory bottles. They are an easy way to explore the senses with so many different themes. This month’s sensory bottle is Nature themed and it’s a calming sensory tool that kids will love. We made our calming nature sensory bottle with items we had in our backyard but this idea could be adapted to include so many different nature-made materials.
Calming Nature Sensory Bottle
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Usually, our sensory bottles are made with recycled bottles. Some of our favorites were made with spice containers, peanut butter jars, and even popcorn containers. This sensory bottle is a little bit different because it has a handle, making it perfect for calming proprioceptive input. We had ours in the house, but you can grab a similar container here.
Inside the paint can party favor container, we added small pebbles and sticks from our backyard. I broke sticks into various sizes and had my Toddler drop them into the container. She loved this activity so much that we’ll be doing this easy eye-hand coordination activity again. The tin bottom made a satisfying “clink” sound when she added the sticks and the stones. Once our nature sensory bottle was full of nature, we popped the lid on and it was done!
Calming Sensory Bottle Idea
This was such a simple way to create a proprioception sensory tool. My kids could haul the sensory bottle around, using a hook grasp to hold the handle. The weight of the sensory bottle adds proprioception input through the carrying arm. This was a fun sensory bottle to turn over and over again as we watched the small pebbles roll and drop down between the sticks. The metal bottom of the container added auditory input. Watching those pebbles fall was very relaxing and mesmerizing!
Looking for more nature themed sensory bottles? Try some of these:
I love reusing recyclables in crafts and activities. One thing my kids might love even more is science and STEM activities. We decided to use some materials we had in the recycle bin to make a lever and fulcrum. This is a perfect STEM activity to do with the kids over the summer to promote learning, creativity, and problem solving. The Summer Slide is a real thing and simple, easy projects like this one are fun ways to build skills as a family. Our Lever and Fulcrum STEM activity led to cheers with all four of the kids. This is a fun STEM fine motor activity kids will love.
And when the kids are cheering for science, engineering, and math, it is perfectly OK for Mom to do an inner cheer, too.
Recycled Materials Lever and Fulcrum STEM Activity
There are so many items found in your recycle bin that can be used in STEM activities. Today, we pulled out a few materials to build a lever and fulcrum. We used a recycled chopstick, a toilet paper tube, and two coffee pods.
To make the lever and fulcrum: Poke a hole in each of the coffee pods. We used a sharp skewer to do this. you will want the holes to be at the same height on each pod. Insert one end of the chop stick into each pod. Finally, fold the toilet paper tube into a triangular shape. The cardboard tube will be the fulcrum and the chop stick can rest evenly on the tube and act as a lever.
Now for the fun part: It was time to play and learn with our STEM activity!
We added crafting pom poms to each cup and counted how many were needed to keep the lever even.
We talked about the distance between the ends of the chop stick and how the fulcrum needed to be in the center in order for the lever to be even.
We tried moving the fulcrum and measured the distance between the ends of the chop stick and the fulcrum.
When the fulcrum was off center, we counted how many craft pom poms were needed to make the lever even again.
I was kind of amazed at how much all four of my kids were totally absorbed by this STEM activity. It was enough to make me smile (and cheer some more, on the inside!) for their love of science, technology, engineering, and math.
Here we are covering dressing skills as an ADL that are used in occupational therapy dressing interventions, as well as dressing skills for preschoolers and all ages, specifically the underlying fine motor skills needed for dressing skills.
These self-dressing skills are typically initiated in the toddler years, however if a toddler has little to no awareness or regression in these skills, a look at toddler behavior red flags may be in order. Self-dressing is part of child development at this stage. Let’s cover this in greater detail…
Dressing skills
“I can do it myself!”
It’s a phrase that most parents hear at one time or another as their child begins to develop the skills needed for independence in self-care. Sometimes, however, there are factors that interfere with appropriate development of function.
Parents may wonder when their child will begin to pull on their shirt or don shoes and socks with independence. The ability to dress one’s self with independence requires the development of many fine motor skills.
This month in the Functional Skills for Kids series, we are exploring Dressing as an activity of daily living. Stop by to see all of the posts in the series here.
Dressing Skills that Require Fine Motor Skills
Pulling on socks, managing buckles, and tugging on a hat. There are many portions of self-dressing that require fine motor skill development;
Pulling socks off requires a pinch grip, strength in the hands, and bilateral coordination.
Putting socks on requires arch development, opposition of the thumb, intrinsic hand strength, bilateral coordination, wrist extension and ulnar deviation.
Pulling pants up requires eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, and wrist and hand stability.
Fastening snaps and pulling up zippers on pants (Clothing fasteners will be addressed in another month’s topic)
Donning and doffing undergarments requires pinch grasp
Threading a belt through belt loops requires bilateral coordination, prehension grasp, pincer/tripod/functional grasp and wrist positioning
Fastening a belt buckle requires tripod grasp and bilateral coordination, hand dominance or preference, extended wrist and ulnar deviation.
Donning and doffing a shirt requires bilateral coordination, crossing midline, extrinsic and intrinsic muscle strength of the hands, and forearm supination and pronation.
Donning an doffing a coat requires bilateral coordination, crossing midline, extrinsic and intrinsic muscle strength of the hands, and forearm supination and pronation.
Clothing fasteners such as buttons, zippers, snaps, buckles, and ties require intrinsic and extrinsic muscle strength, prehension grasp, in-hand manipulation, hand preference and bilateral control and eye-hand coordination.
Pulling on boots requires a hook grasp of the hand, strength, and proximal stability.
Donning a winter cap requires precision grasp, bilateral coordination, and motor planning.
If it seems as though every step of dressing requires fine motor skill development, that is because it’s true! Each step of each dressing task requires many fine motor skills.
Fine Motor Manipulation Skills that are Necessary Independent Dressing
Let’s break down these fine motor skills a bit to see how they are helping a child complete tasks independently.
Fine Motor Skills Needed in Dressing:
Extrinsic Muscle Strength: The extrinsic muscles move the fingers and thumb in full flexion and extension. They enable a power grasp on functional items. The extrinsic muscles are essential for cohesive work alongside the intrinsic muscles of the hands during dynamic grasp patterns.
Intrinsic Muscle Strength: The intrinsics allow us to use graded movements, shape the arches of the hands, and enable dexterity and precision. They control the flexion and extension of the Metacarpophalandeal joints and power movements such as finger adduction, finger abduction, thumb abduction, thumb adduction, thumb flexion and thumb opposition.
Prehension: There are three types of prehension grasps-static grips, gravity dependent grips, and dynamic grips.
In-Hand Manipulation: This fine motor skill typically develops around two years of age. Between 2-3 the child progresses in palm-finger translation and shift. However, at this age, they may prefer to manipulate objects between two hands instead of within one. Read more about in-hand manipulation skills here.
Hand Preference and Bilateral Control: From the age of 2-3, a child will switch hands to avoid crossing the midline, They may show use of a preferred hand, but it may switch between activities.
Eye-Hand Coordination: Eye-Hand Coordination is accuracy of reach and control of the arm in space, guided by vision. During dressing tasks or any functional skill, the reach should be accurate and controlled, and directed by the shoulder’s stability and mobility. In reaching for items, the hands and eyes should work together with smooth visual tracking of the hand and with the eyes guiding the hand.
Precision of Release: There should not be immature releasing patterns noted during dressing tasks. These might include flinging or dropping objects. Rather, the child should be able to release items while their arm is positioned in space and with controlled motions. Read more about precision of release.
Motor Planning: During functional tasks, there should be coordinated movements with appropriate positioning and posturing. Read more about motor planning here.
Separation of the Two Sides of the Hand: Separation of the two sides of the hand allows for stability and power with precision of the thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger.
Biomechanical Postural Control in self-dressing
Before the fine motor skills can be used in functional tasks, such as dressing, there are biomechanical skills that are prerequisite.
These are proximal stability skills that enable distal precision and control.
Postural Control– Proximal to the arm is the upper body. Postural instability will effect the use of the forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers and complicate the motor planning and use of the hands in functional reach. When we reach with two hands, we shift our weight and move our body’s center of gravity. Without dynamic control of one’s posture, shifts in weight will result in over or under reach of distal motions.
Shoulder stability with motion– Fine motor use of the hands requires stability of the shoulder joint. The joint needs to maintain stability even during motion and in all planes for controlled arm positioning.
Control of the forearm– The arm between the elbow and wrist moves in supinated and pronated motions. Supination is essential for many precision tasks and allows us to see what our fingers are doing in tool or fastener use. Pronation is typically used for power grasps and hook grasps in functional tasks.
Wrist Position– A functional wrist position is essential for precision grasp and manipulation. Extension of the wrist controls the length of the finger flexor muscles to an optimal position for grasp and precision. Positioning the wrist in 40 degrees of wrist extension allows for efficient muscle function. The wrist also moves with radial and ulnar deviation. A position of 15 degrees of ulnar deviation promotes stability and force in the ulnar side of the hand.
Palmer Arches- While palmer arch development is a component of fine motor skill development in itself, it is also a proximal stability source for precision of the distal fingers. Appropriate arch development provides positioning and stability to allow for fine motor dexterity of the fingers.
Tips to Promote Independence in Dressing Skills
When fine motor skills are the problem area behind decreased independence in self-dressing, it is helpful to build individual skills.
Children should be provided with many repetitions of self-care skills in environments where dressing tasks are happening naturally.
Dressing practice happens at the beginning and end of the day but there are many opportunities for working on the fine motor skills needed in dressing tasks.
Donning shoes and socks can happen before going outdoors and when coming into the home.
Toileting is a way to practice lower body clothing management throughout the day.
Children can further build independence with dressing through pretend play by using dress-up clothes.
Repetition can be a strategy for increasing opportunities for practice.
Provide various dress-up clothes in different social roles for many ways to practice dressing skills.
Encourage role play as a technique to build fine motor skills in dressing: Children can dress a baby doll.
Provide alternate opportunities to practice fine motor skills needed for dressing such as toys to help kids practice dressing skills.
Develop fine motor skills needed for functional tasks with these activities:
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.
I kind of love to share tricks for improving handwriting. There are so many “parts” to written work. There’s fine motor dexterity, pencil grasp, strength, endurance, visual perceptual skills, cognitive skills among other parts to handwriting. You can see more about these topics on our Handwriting page. One big way to develop the skills needed in written work is to address visual perception.
Kids love to play. It’s in their soul. Play is the primary occupation of a child and so it only makes sense to work on functional skills like handwriting though play. Practicing writing over and over again sounds pretty boring to me and I can bet that any kiddo will agree. Today’s activities are designed to work on the visual perceptual skills needed for handwriting using tangrams.
Get ready to play and build your way to neater handwriting!
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Visual Perception and Tangram Activities
If you’re looking for fun ways to work on handwriting, these activities are the way to go. I’ve come up with creative puzzles, drawing activities, and building challenges that will work on all of the skills needed for improving line awareness, letter formation, and neatness in written work.
Our Melissa and Dough tangram set is used a lot in our house. It’s a great open-ended toy that doubles as a therapy tool for building skills such as eye-hand coordination.
We created these file folder activities using the tangrams and came up with activities that will work on all of the areas of written work. Building skills like Position in Space and Visual Discrimination are important when it comes to improving neatness in written work.
We printed off some worksheets and attached them to a file folder with paper clips. I set out the tangram shapes and showed my kindergartner and preschooler how to copy the forms. While they built shapes, they were developing and refining skills like Eye-Hand Coordination and Sequential Memory.
We set up a few different activities using the file folder station. It’s a nice activities because all of the pages can be attached to the same file folder using the paper clips. The pages can be rotated out and more complex sheets added in. When you’re done, simply close the file folder and slip it away with the tangram box to play another day.
Visual Perceptual Skills and Handwriting
This activity workbook has information on all of the visual perceptual areas necessary for written work:
All printable sheets in the workbook were created with design creation tools (The handdrawn examples in the images in this post are just a mock-up for a visual example of the activity.)
Looking for more ways to learn and play with Tangrams? Try these:
There are some kids out there who absolutely HATE handwriting. Let me re-phase that. There are a ton of kids who completely despise to their core the act of working neat handwriting, pencil grasp, slowing down so people can read their words, and writing on the lines. A ton. I’ve worked with many (many!) kids like this. I’ve recommended fun activities to about a zillion parents and teachers of these kiddos. It just isn’t fun and it is work for them. Poor handwriting can result from so many factors: fine motor development, motor planning, visual perceptual skills, and attention, are just a few of the areas that interfere with neatness in written work.
So how do you possibly get through to build those areas up when the child is resistant to pick up a pencil and copy written work?
You make it completely NOT handwriting practice.
I’ve got a super creative way to sneak in skills like pencil control, line awareness, spatial awareness, and letter formation. And kids won’t realize they are building their ability to write on lines, space between words, and form letters the correct size. And it all uses art!
Work on Handwriting with Tangle Art
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I was lucky enough to snag a copy of my friend Jeanette’s new art book, Tangle Art Drawing Games for Kids: A Silly Book for Creative and Visual Thinking. This book is completely creative with easy and fun ways to get arty. I flipped through the book and loved every single project. They are no-prep art ideas that require only a pen and paper for most of the ideas. You could do every project in the book and then go back to the beginning and re-do them all and still be inspired to create new and fun art.
One project in the book drew me in when i saw it. Ice pop stick tangle art is the perfect workout to build the skills needed for neatness in handwriting while creating fun art.
We followed the directions in the book to make shapes using craft sticks. Just tracing the craft sticks is a great way to work on bilateral coordination. When a child writes, it is essential that they hold the paper with their non-dominant hand. Then need to stabilize the paper in order for the pencil to glide across the page.
Just try writing without holding the pencil and you will notice a difference in neatness. This small task is often one that slides when kids loose attention in a handwriting task. You might see them slouch over at their desk and write without holding the paper.
Tracing those craft sticks is a nice way to physically attend to the bilateral coordination needed in handwriting tasks.
We used both the jumbo-sized craft sticks and the regular size to build more pencil control. Use a sharpie marker to get a thicker line for building line awareness.
It is fun for kids to make hidden messages in the shapes by spelling out a name or word with all of the letters.
If your kiddo is VERY anti-letters, try working on spatial awareness and pencil control by practicing the writing strokes needed for letter formation. Instruct them to make counter clockwise circles close to one another, diagonal lines, horizontal and vertical lines, and mountain shapes.
For the younger crowd, this activity is great for pre-writing skills, too. Coloring in the shapes encourages the motor skills needed to move the pencil in handwriting.
