Another free therapy slide deck in this week’s St. Patty’s Day theme is this St. Patrick’s Day writing activity. It’s an occupational therapy activity that addresses handwriting, legibility, self-correction in writing, and fine motor skills. Sometimes it can be hard to work on handwriting in teletherapy and this activity strives to make that fun and motivating for kids. Use the St. Patrick’s Day writing prompts as activities to get kids started on letter formation, sizing, spacing, and the motor skills needed to hold the pencil with a fun March theme.
This slide deck goes really well with our recent freebies: Four Leaf Clover balance exercises and Shamrock Theme Visual Perception Activities.
All are part of the free slides teletherapy resources here on The OT Toolbox.
St. Patrick’s Day Writing
Working on handwriting isn’t fun for a lot of children. That’s why the slide deck starts off with a writing “ice breaker” activity of sorts. Kids can check out the St. Patrick’s Day items on the slide and try to memorize the items. Then, you can move to the next slide and ask the child to tell you two items that are missing.
This visual constancy exercise is a way to help kids notice details about what they see, and can be a powerful way to work on handwriting accuracy and formation of letters. Use this as a building block to work on self-correcting handwriting mistakes.
When children write, that self-assessment piece is important to legibility and accuracy of writing, so when kids can notice and recall missing information or details, they can self-correct for legibility issues.
As kids go through the slides, ask them to write down the items that are missing. This handwriting activity challenges kids to write without a model, so they are building letter formation skills.
Then, the next slide shows the answer to the missing pieces. Kids can check their letter formation for accuracy and correct letter formation.
There are two different exercises like this one.
Depending on the child, you can then have them write down all of the St. Patrick’s Day items.
Next, users are asked to write the St. Patrick’s Day words in alphabetical order. This activity challenges visual shift from the vertical plane to the horizontal plane and back again. This skillset is needed for copying material from a blackboard or classroom environment. Putting words into alphabetical order also challenges the visual attention and visual memory needed for reading and math work.
The next several slides of the therapy deck include a fine motor piece where kids are challenged to spell St. Patrick’s Day words in American Sign Language. They will need to visually shift their attention from the word to the sign language sign and form that letter.
Spelling several words with sign language is a fine motor exercise that helps with finger dexterity, precision, finger isolation, arch development, and motor planning skills.
St. Patrick’s Day Writing Prompts
Then, the final piece of the St. Patrick’s Day writing task is to use the words that have been used throughout the slide deck to write sentences. It’s an open-ended St. Patrick’s Day writing prompt that incorporates multisensory learning into the whole lesson.
Encourage kids to self-check their writing for accuracy and to help with carryover of writing skills.
Free Writing and Fine Motor Slide Deck
Add this therapy slide deck to your toolbox. Enter your email into the form below and you will get a copy to use in teletherapy, home programs, or in the classroom.
Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
- Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
- Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
- Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
- Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
- Colors Roll & Write Page
- Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
- Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
- Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
- This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.
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.