This week, we’re all about the polar bears. You’re going to love this polar bear therapy slide deck, and actually, my kids are loving it, too! The polar bear gross motor activities go well with an arctic animal theme. We’ve been using the gross motor activities as a warm-up for the Winter Fine Motor Kit and all of the winter activities in that resource. You’ll want to grab this therapy slide deck to get your new year off to a great start and get the kids moving with whole-body movements.
Why Use Polar Bear Gross Motor Activities in Therapy or the Classroom?
Polar bear–themed gross motor activities are a fun and motivating way to target developmental skills like balance, postural control, coordination, and core strength. These types of movement-based exercises engage the whole body while also fostering attention and focus.
Because the activities are winter-themed and playful, they are ideal for use during the colder months when outdoor movement breaks may not be possible. This makes the slide deck perfect for indoor recess, brain breaks, and OT sessions that need a high-engagement activity for younger learners.
Supports Direction Following and Body Awareness
This movement-based slide deck also encourages direction following, body awareness, and spatial orientation. These are key components of self-regulation and classroom participation. Children are challenged to move like a polar bear, crawl, stomp, or balance in ways that require them to think about where their body is in space.
These foundational skills are part of a child’s proprioceptive system, which plays an important role in coordination and calm behavior. Adding themed visuals and verbal prompts can help children improve motor planning while making learning fun.
Integrating the Slide Deck into the Daily Routine
The polar bear gross motor activity slides can easily be incorporated into daily routines in the classroom, therapy clinic, or at home. Use the slides as a warm-up before handwriting or seated work, as a structured movement break between transitions, or as a full gross motor circuit during group therapy. These fun exercises promote active learning and help reset the nervous system after long periods of sitting. They also support core strength, which is critical for seated posture, attention, and fine motor control.
Winter-Themed Movement to Support Learning
A winter-themed movement activity like this polar bear deck is a targeted tool to promote gross motor development in a way that’s engaging and meaningful. With classroom demands rising and kids sitting for longer stretches of time, intentional movement breaks are more important than ever. Movement with purpose, especially when tied to visual supports and themed play, can boost learning outcomes, reduce sensory overload, and improve participation.
Be sure to grab the free polar bear deep self-regulation activity. It’s a wintery breathing exercise that went up earlier today. You’ll find a bunch of other polar bear activities listed in that blog post, so that your therapy theme for the week is full of movement-based activities that help kids develop skills.
Included are some slides to incorporate propriocepetion and vestibular input as well.
Because incorporating gross motor skills in teletherapy is sometimes a challenge, this gross motor slide deck was designed for teletherapy in a way that instructs kids to copy various positions as they balance and strengthen their core. All of these skills can be addressed with this gross motor slide deck in teletherapy sessions:
- Core strength
- Stability
- Balance and equilibrium skills
- Coordination
- Range of motion
- Flexibility
- Motor planning
- Crossing midline
- Movement patterns
- Posture and postural control
- Muscle tone
- Proprioceptive input
- Vestibular input
Polar Bear Resource: DON’T MISS IT:
Grab the Winter Fine Motor Kit, with 100 pages of done-for-you therapy activities, including polar bear themes. Grab it now before January 9th and you get a bonus of 3 fine motor slide deck activities.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE WINTER FINE MOTOR KIT.
More therapy slide decks
Be sure to check out these other slide decks to use in OT teletherapy sessions, distance learning, or homeschooling:
Try this Alphabet Gross Motor Slide Deck.
Here is a Space Theme Therapy Slide Deck.
Here is a Strait Line Letters Slide Deck.
Try this self-awareness slide deck with an animal theme.
Kids love this football theme slide deck.
There are gross motor activities in this outer space slide deck, too.
Polar Bear Therapy Slide Deck
Use this polar bear theme therapy slide deck in virtual therapy sessions or as a brain break.
Be sure to make a copy of this slide deck and not change the url to indicate “edit” at the end. When you make a copy of the slide deck onto your Google drive, you will end up with your own version that you are free to adjust in order to meet your student’s needs. By changing the url to “edit”, you can potentially mess up the original version that many other therapists and The OT Toolbox users are given.
You can grab a copy of this Google slide deck and use it to work on specific skills.
Enter your email address below and you will receive a PDF containing a link to copy the slide deck onto your Google drive. Save that PDF file, because you can come back to it again and again and send it to the kids on your caseload (or classroom) so they can make their own copy on their Google drive.
Please use the copy of the slide deck and do not change the url.
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.
