This ping pong bounce game is a fun way to build skills in eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, bilateral coordination, visual scanning, visual tracking, and more. We used a fun DIY ping pong bounce game to work on reading fluency but you could use this activity for any multisensory learning.
Ping Pong Bounce Game
A ping pong bounce game is exactly as it sounds, a game where you bounce ping pongs! You’ll need a target to bounce the ping pongs into, and this target can be any container which the player can use.
Younger children or those working on motor control and hand-eye coordination may use a larger bowl or a basket.
To play a ping pong bounce game, you’ll need just a few items:
Ping pongs
Container
Marker (to write on the ping pong balls)
Water (to put in the target bowl to make the task easier)
Ping Pong Bounce Skills
Playing a ping pong bounce activity like this one builds several skill areas at once:
Hand eye coordination
Motor planning
Fine motor control
Grasp and release
Visual tracking
Visual scanning
Visual convergence
Crossing midline
Force modulation
Ping Pong Bounce Game Ideas
We’ve been doing a bunch of tricky word games and activities recently as we practice Big Sister’s words for school. It’s fun to come up with creative ways to practice sight words and decodable words.
Manipulating Sight Words without flash cards really helps when it comes to encouraging new readers to go over (and over and over) novel words. Adding a different component (even taking the words outside for a Sight Word Scavenger Hunt) can make the learning easier.
Tricky Word Games
We made this tricky words ping pong ball bounce game one afternoon when we were practicing sight words and had a little fun bouncing our words around as we practiced.
This isn’t the first time we’ve used ping pong balls in our sight word practice…Sight Word Scooping and Matching was a lot of fun and part of the inspiration to get a little active with our sight words.
Amazon affiliate links are below.
We started with a handful of paper roll rings we’ve been using for all kinds of crafts and activities. The paper roll rings came in handy for this activity.
We used some of our pin pong balls (affiliate link) and I wrote words onto them with a permanent marker.
The ping pong balls were the perfect size to fit in the paper roll rings. We played for a while with this, just putting the ping pong balls into the rings, moving them around, and reading the words.
It was ping pong bounce fun!
The bouncing part was hard to photograph, but we would bounce the ping pong balls toward the tray and try to get them into the rings. Little Guy really liked this part and he got pretty good at bouncing the balls into the rings.
Looking for more tricky word activities? Try one of these:
This granola superfood recipe is a staple in our house. It’s one of the occupational therapy recipes we love to make with kids as a life skill cooking tool, but it’s also got superfood powers (more than you may think when you think of granola as a superfood…) We’re talking about the calming benefits of heavy work through the jaw and crunching this granola superfood is one way to achieve that regulation technique!
Granola Superfood
This mama has been on a granola kick recently. We shared a picture on our Instagram feed not too long ago about a yummy pregnancy craving involving granola, peanut butter, and apples. When the granola ran out, there was nothing to do but make a batch from scratch!
This granola recipe has some major super food ingredients and is one of the many batches I’ve been experimenting with. I wanted to share this recipe because it is SO good, and the kids have been gobbling it up. Every mom wants Healthy snacks for kids and this one hits the mark! They’ve even choosing it over all of the boxed cereals we’ve got for breakfast choices.
Granola is a Calming Sensory Food
When we say that granola is a superfood, I’m not just talking about the ingredients.
Chewing crunchy and chewy foods offers calming heavy work through the jaw and mouth. This is a self-regulation tool that offers regulating and calming input. We talk about this in our resource on oral motor exercises.
Granola as a calming food can be used in a sensory diet that includes food as a tool for adding in the sensory input an individual needs throughout the day. We all need calming and organizing sensory input in the form of heavy work tasks that provide proprioceptive input through the muscles and joints.
Heavy work snacks like this granola superfood can also be incorporated into lunchboxes, breakfasts, and after school snacks to help the sensory system feel calm and restful. At school, heavy sensory input for the whole class can be incorporated at regular intervals during the day during snack time.
Incorporating heavy work (and other sensory system input) into daily functional tasks, or setting up a sensory lifestyle, are all concepts covered in the book The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook.
Granola Superfood Ingredients
What ingredients go into granola superfood? There are several and many of them are the typical super foods you think of when it comes to healthy eating with brain benefits: almonds, flaxseed, wheatgerm, walnuts, etc.
Almonds! These little buggers were chopped up and one of the super foods in this recipe.
I went with ingredients we had on hand. The cool thing about granola recipes is that you can adjust so many ingredients based on what you’ve got handy or individual tastes, and you get totally different (YUMMY) results.
There was some stealing happening.
How to make granola superfood
Spread 2 cups of uncooked Oats (another super food!) on a large cookie sheet.
Mix in 3/4 cup almonds.
Add in 1/2 cup cranberries (super food!)
Mix in 1/4 cup uncooked quinoa (super food!)
Combine 2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar, 2 teaspoons Ground Cinnamon(affiliate link), and 1/2 teaspoons. Ground Nutmeg (affiliate link). Mix those spices into the granola mixture.
Add 1/2 cup ground flax seed (super food!) and 1/2 cup wheat germ (super food!) to the mix.
Toss all of these super foods together and drizzle 3 teaspoons of vanilla, 2 teaspoons of olive oil (super food!), and 1/2 cup honey (…super food on some lists, although not the link I shared above…).
Mix it all up and throw into the pre-heated oven set at 250 degrees F for 45 min. Keep an eye on your granola and stir it all up at least 3 times. Watch it towards the end of the 45 minutes.
Now for the super super food part…I added How pretty does this look? The flax seed will give your granola a nutty taste, but it’s not overpowering and goes well with the almonds.
Yumminess. Try not to eat it while it’s still hot. Let the goodness sit on the cookie sheet until cooled and then scoop it up with a spatula into a container.
The kids gobbled up this banana-peanut butter-granola snack!
We’ve been loving our granola over Greek yogurt, with apples and peanut butter, and with milk as cereal. I love all of the healthy foods that the kids are getting with this snack/breakfast.
What other alternatives can you think of to add or substitute to your granola recipe?
Granola Superfood Substitutes
We’ve also done some of these substitutes and are definitely going to try some others. These granola add-ins also offer chewy and crunchy input through the jaw, which are calming sensory movements that activate the joint receptors and the proprioceptive sensory system.
Each of these chewy ingredients support the calming benefits of granola!
This list of 105 creative painting ideas is a fun way to build skills through creative art. We’ve pulled together creative painting to support child development through creation play! Whether you are looking for painting ideas for toddlers, preschoolers, for the classroom, or for the occupational therapy clinic, these creative paint activities will get your brain ticking with ideas to support creative expression, emotions, sensory play, fine motor skills, and more!
In Occupational Therapy interventions, OTs and OTAs love to support their clients through creative outlets, specifically those that are meaningful to the client. For some children, art and painting is just that: a tool that inspires movement, sensory challenges, visual motor integration, crossing midline and more. OTs can use creative painting as a motivating strategy to develop skills…and maybe add in a bit of creative expression at the same time! Some of these are sensory paint ideas but most involve problem solving and creativity expression through creative paint!
Why Use Creative Painting?
Creative painting with clients develops skills. When painting in creative ways, you’ll see movement and sensory experiences that they typical canvas and brush don’t allow:
Fine motor skills
Gross motor skills
Crossing midline
Problem solving
Executive functioning skills
Motor planning
Tactile exploration
Sensory experiences
Bilateral coordination
MORE!
Creative Painting materials
The ideas listed below will get your creative juices flowing for your next paint project. Kids love when a creative painting idea is presented to them because it’s a bit of the unexpected! Out-of the box thinking when it comes to painting ideas is part of the magic.
Gather some of these materials for your next painting adventure:
Paints– tin of watercolors, washable paints, acrylics, finger-paints, etc.
Painting surfaces– canvas, cardboard box, paper, newspaper, paper towel, clothing, paper plates, styrofoam, bubble wrap, piece of paper, watercolor paper, etc.
Sensory mediums to mix paint into– shaving cream, sand, salt, dough, bubbles, etc.
Tools to paint with– brushes, paintbrushes, rolling pin, flowers, feathers, forks, ice, crayons, cotton swabs, pencils erasers, etc. You can even go on a nature walk to gather items to use to paint with.
This list is just a starting point…the creative ways to paint is literally in your imagination. Take these ideas and run with them to make your next creative painting masterpiece.
The Mess of Creative Painting
It can be common to immediately think about the mess involved with all of this creative art making, however there is therapeutic benefit as well, and focusing on those aspects can help with the mess issue.
Plus, the clean up portion of painting is a great time to work on those OT self-care goals that aren’t some of the more fun parts of childhood:
hand washing – a paint activity is great motivation for washing little hands!
cleaning the body
scrubbing hard enough to remove the paint
cleaning up one’s surroundings
wiping down a table
cleaning out a sink
washing paintbrushes
drying a table
Creative Painting Ideas
There are so many fun ways to explore color, texture, and creativity through paints listed here. We can not wait to try them ALL! There is just something about painting that is relaxing and satisfying…
. Mix those spices into the granola mixture.
.JPG)
