Colleen Beck OTR/L

Colleen Beck, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and author of The OT Toolbox website. She manages all of The OT Toolbox social media accounts and runs the popular newsletter. Read about Colleen's experience and career as an occupational therapist, including how The OT Toolbox began on our About The OT Toolbox page: https://www.theottoolbox.com/about-us/ Colleen created The OT Toolbox in 2011 and since then has written thousands of blog posts designed to support therapy providers, educators, parents, counselors, admin, and caregivers in promoting the healthy development of kids. Check out Colleen's blog posts below:

Animal Cracker Oral Motor Exercise

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Do your kids like to snack constantly?  Mine are allllllways hungry.  Always.  So, when I pulled out this Animal Cracker Oral Motor activity that we designed to address oral motor sensory processing, they were just a bit excited. Make that completely-jumping-and-cheering-excited.  Anything that involves play and food makes the Best Thing of the Day column.  It’s an oral motor exercise that kids will love. Why? Because it’s an out-of-the box way to work on oral motor skills for tasks like drinking from a straw, lip closure for safety when feeding, and sensory benefits of an oral motor activity.


We used animal crackers and a couple of straws to provide calming oral input.  This was an easy way to add in an oral motor strengthening exercise, too. Here is some information on development of oral motor skills. 

Oral sensory processing oral motor activity that is perfect for sensory input like proprioception for calming activities and self regulation activities as well as oral motor exercises for weak cheek mussels or weak lip closure and tongue protrusion.

Oral MOTOR EXERCISE



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Problems with oral motor skills can be an indication with feeding. That seems pretty obvious, right? But when there truly is a problem with oral motor skills and feeding, real issues can result. That’s why we wanted to cover a few big issues along with this oral motor activity. Be sure to check out that link to read more about the vast area of skills that make up oral motor processing and how it impacts feeding and other areas.

Sensory processing allows us to take in information from our environment and process it appropriately.  Typically, we adjust to sensory input and adjust appropriately.  Sensory input to a person’s mouth is no exception.  We must process movement of the tongue, textures of food, adjust to drinking liquids, monitor and adjust the force required to bite and chew, and move our mouth/lips/tongue in order to speak.  


When there is a difficulty with oral sensory processing, a child might drool excessively, chew on their shirt or hair, have difficulty eating certain foods, have trouble moving their tongue to swallow all of their food, show difficulty removing all of the food from a utensil, be unable to use a straw, refuse certain food textures or tastes, or have trouble with articulation in speech.


Children with proprioceptive sensory needs may present as benefiting from calming, resistive activities.  Sucking from a straw is one activity that involves the oral input and is typically effective in calming a overactive child.  

Oral sensory processing oral motor activity that is perfect for sensory input like proprioception for calming activities and self regulation activities as well as oral motor exercises for weak cheek mussels or weak lip closure and tongue protrusion.

Oral Motor Exercise

First, a quick disclosure: Be sure to provide direct observation during this activity. Use judgement in deciding if this oral motor activity is right for the child or not. This activity and all others on this website are not intended as interventions. This is for educational purposes only. Consult your physician or medical professional when oral motor interventions and assessment is needed. The OT Toolbox is not liable for any action on your part. Your reading this website and webpage indicates your understanding.

For this calming activity, we used just a few items.  Some brightly colored straws were the perfect tool for adding proprioceptive input to the mouth.  I love the bright straws for their high contrast and tendency to draw the eyes toward the mid-line.  When we added the learning portion to this activity, attention and precision were important so the bright colors helped.


You can find many fun oral sensory activities out there that involve blowing as a sensory processing activity.  The one that we did used straw sucking as a way to add proprioceptive input.  When a child sucks on a straw, their lips are forced to close while their cheek muscles tighten  and the tongue retracts.  This activity would be beneficial to a child who needs to build strength and endurance of the cheeks and muscles or a child who demonstrates tongue protrusion.

Oral sensory processing oral motor activity that is perfect for sensory input like proprioception for calming activities and self regulation activities as well as oral motor exercises for weak cheek mussels or weak lip closure and tongue protrusion.

With the straw, I had my preschooler suck in order to pick up an animal cracker.  She placed the straw flush on the cracker and sucked in order to pick the cracker off of the table.  This was a real workout for her!  She was able to figure out that turning the animal cracker over so that she placed the straw against it’s back side made the task easier.  Sucking the animal cracker up off the table in order to move it provided a lot of calming proprioceptive input.  

Oral sensory processing oral motor activity that is perfect for sensory input like proprioception for calming activities and self regulation activities as well as oral motor exercises for weak cheek mussels or weak lip closure and tongue protrusion.

To grade this activity down (to make it easier for kids who are building their oral motor musculature and can not yet pick up the animal cracker), try smaller/lightweight crackers like Annie’s Homegrown Bunny crackers.  These were much easier to move with the straw yet still provided sensory feedback to the mouth. 

Oral sensory processing oral motor activity that is perfect for sensory input like proprioception for calming activities and self regulation activities as well as oral motor exercises for weak cheek mussels or weak lip closure and tongue protrusion.

To add a bit of learning and motor planning to this activity, I provided a few small shape containers to the table.  Ours were from a local dollar store, but these shape sorter shapes would work perfectly for addressing shape discrimination and actually comes in more options than the shapes that we talked about with our containers.  We use these containers as lunch box compartments but the bright colors and shapes made a great shape recognition activity for her.  She is working on identifying a triangle and rectangle and often times gets the two shapes mixed up.  When she was doing this activity however, she was able to move the animal crackers and bunny crackers to the right shapes.  


We practiced a bunch or rounds with this activity, because she loved it so much!  

Oral sensory processing oral motor activity that is perfect for sensory input like proprioception for calming activities and self regulation activities as well as oral motor exercises for weak cheek mussels or weak lip closure and tongue protrusion.
 

You’ll love these other oral motor activities:

Plastic egg Boats

Oral Motor Road Trip Sensory Breaks

Easter Bunny Oral Processing Activity

Simple Spring Sensory Play Ideas

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Spring is in the air and simple sensory activities make play time memorable.  I wanted to share a place where all of our Spring sensory activities could be found in one place.  These are easy ways to play while addressing sensory needs with tactile sensory play.  Getting messy in the dirt or exploring the scents of the season will bring sensory play to the basics.  And what mom doesn’t like to hear about simple play ideas that build skills?  Here are some of our favorite sensory ways to play this season:





Easy Spring-themed sensory ideas for tactile sensory play, sensory processing, proprioception, scented sensory play, and more. Easy set-up and mess-free with easy clean up ideas for sensory activities.

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Simple Spring Sensory Activities



This Easy Spring Water Sensory Bin will help with eye-hand coordination while adding a scented sensory experience.  It’s easy set-up and easy clean-up, too!


This Spring Sensory Bag is mess-free and addresses visual percepetual skills like scanning, eye-hand coordination, and proprioception.  We created our sensory bag with a bug theme, but this is an activity that can be modified to many different areas. 


A Dandelion Sensory Bin is an easy way to explore texture and the sense of touch.  It’s an easy set-up sensory activity that is sure to build memories.  My kids are still talking about this activity from last Spring.  


Grow a Sensory Garden and touch all of the senses as you create your garden.  The best thing about a sensory garden is that it is a sensory goldmine that lasts throughout the summer and fall, too!


Get MORE Spring sensory activities with our Spring Occupational Therapy ebook.  It’s loaded with easy sensory ideas and will keep your kids playing with the senses all season long!

Easy Spring-themed sensory ideas for tactile sensory play, sensory processing, proprioception, scented sensory play, and more. Easy set-up and mess-free with easy clean up ideas for sensory activities.

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More easy sensory ideas you will love:
Attention Exercises
Sensory Processing and Handwriting

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Alphabet Dice Letter Formation Fine Motor Activity

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I love to add a fine motor spin to learning activities.  When it comes to teaching kids to write letters, knowing correct formation (and the order of making lines in writing a letter) is so important for handwriting legibility and eventually speed of written work.  


This fine motor peg board activity incorporates eye-hand coordination and tripod grasp to manipulate pegs in order to build letter formation skills, and using a dice, which adds a power in-hand manipulation component to the activity…with a bit of fun mixed in.  Overall, this was a fun activity that all four of my kiddos loved!




his fine motor peg board activity incorporates eye-hand coordination and tripod grasp to manipulate pegs in order to build letter formation skills, and using a dice, which adds a power in-hand manipulation component to the activity...with a bit of fun mixed in.

Fine Motor Alphabet Letter Formation Activity with Dice and a Peg Board

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To make the letters in this activity, I pulled out one of may favorite tools from my Occupational Therapy bag: My trusty pegboard and small pegs. The pegs are small enough to encourage a tripod grasp allow for in-hand manipulation, and removing the pegs works on intrinsic strength and arch development of the hand. We used the pegs and the alphabet dice from our Scattergories game (you can get just the dice here.) to work on forming letters with correct lines.

his fine motor peg board activity incorporates eye-hand coordination and tripod grasp to manipulate pegs in order to build letter formation skills, and using a dice, which adds a power in-hand manipulation component to the activity...with a bit of fun mixed in.

I had my kids take turns at this activity.  They rolled the dice and then used the pegs to form the letters.  I gave just a few verbal cues to show them how to make the curved lines of certain letters like “G” or “C”.  To make this activity easier, you can draw a letter on a piece of paper that is cut to fit the pegboard.  Kids can press the letters through the paper and into the holes of the peg board.

his fine motor peg board activity incorporates eye-hand coordination and tripod grasp to manipulate pegs in order to build letter formation skills, and using a dice, which adds a power in-hand manipulation component to the activity...with a bit of fun mixed in.


Fine Motor Skills When Playing with a Peg Board

Using a peg board works on so many fine motor skills. I’ve shared a ton of info on this before. A basic break down of the fine motor benefits of playing with a peg board:


Fine Motor Skills Used When Rolling a Dice

The bonus for this activity is the fine motor benefit to rolling a dice.  Cupping the palm to roll and release the dice encourages fine motor skills necessary for many functional tasks:
 
 Looking for more ways to play and learn with dice? Try these:

Place Value Game with Dice from Still Playing School 
Rainforest Dice Long and Short Vowel Reading Game from Learning 2 Walk
Preschool Rainbow Grid Game from Preschool Powol Packets  
Fun Shapes Dice Game for Kids from School Time Snippets 
Writing Game Using Dice from Teach me Mommy 
Venn Diagram Dice Probability STEM Activity from Schooling a Monkey 
Block Stacking Dice Game from Kidz Activities 
Simple Addition Dice Game from Powerful Mothering 
DIY Dice from Sugar Spice & Glitter

his fine motor peg board activity incorporates eye-hand coordination and tripod grasp to manipulate pegs in order to build letter formation skills, and using a dice, which adds a power in-hand manipulation component to the activity...with a bit of fun mixed in.

More Fine Motor Activities you will love: 

Scooping and pouring fine motor and hand dominance with beads
  Hand Dominance and Fine Motor with Scooping and Pouring
  
Creative Scissor Skills Practice
Precision in Grasp and Release of Fine Motor Skills
Chain Link Counters Color Sort
Hand-Eye Coordination Heart Math

Hand Strengthening Activity with an Egg Carton

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bilateral coordination activity with an egg carton
This hand strengthening activity with an egg carton is an easy way to use a recycled egg carton to work on fine motor skills, hand strength, pincer grasp, tripod grasp development, intrinsic hand strength, eye-hand coordination, and other fine motor hand strength skills.
 

Fine Motor Activity with an Egg Carton

 
Recently, I shared how intrinsic muscle strength benefits handwriting and specifically a functional grasp on the pencil.  Today, I’ve got a super easy way to work on endurance with the lumbrical muscles that are used in maintaining a nice pencil grasp.  
 
This will enable a child to write at appropriate speeds and lengths of time without fatiguing and allow a child to color in a picture without stopping because their hands are tired.
 
The bonus to today’s activity is that the strengthening tool is very easy to re-create and (almost) completely free.
 
This would be an awesome compliment to our recent 31 Days of Occupational Therapy activities using Free or Almost Free Materials!

 

 

 

 

Work on pencil grasp by strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands including the lumbricals using a recycled egg carton and straws!

 

Intrinsic Muscles of the Hands Lumbricals Strengthening Exercise

This is a great finger strength exercise…and it only uses an egg carton and straws. The reason it’s such a great strength activity has to do with the lumbrical muscles in the hand.

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For this activity, we used a recycled egg carton, a wooden skewer (Amazon affiliate links), and cut pieces of straws.
 
Use the top of the egg carton and poke holes using the wooden skewer.  Wiggle the skewer until the holes are larger.  Cut the straws into one inch sized pieces, and you are ready to go!

Work on pencil grasp by strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands including the lumbricals using a recycled egg carton and straws!

 

Show your kiddo how to poke the straw pieces into the holes.  We used both sides of the egg carton, but using the inside of the egg carton sections especially works on the lumbrical muscles in the hand.  
 
Holding the small straw sections requires a tripod grasp and when the child is required to push the straw through the hole in the section of the egg carton, they are positioning their hand in an Intrinsic Plus Position.  


Ask your child to hold several straw pieces in their hand at once to address in-hand manipulation. This skill is needed to manipulate the pencil and rotate the pencil during handwriting tasks.


We cut off the lid of our egg carton for this activity.  It was a good way to work on bilateral hand coordination which is necessary for holding the paper and pencil with two different hands during a hand writing task. 


Once the straws are partially in the holes of the egg carton, your child can press them the rest of the way through the hole, utilizing finger isolation.  Then, turn the egg carton over and use a tripod grasp to pull the straws the rest of the way through the holes.

 

Work on pencil grasp by strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands including the lumbricals using a recycled egg carton and straws!

 

Read about how and why this is great for handwriting here.
 

Need another activity with an egg carton?

Looking for more ways to recycle an egg carton?  Try these: 
 
 egg cartons 
Egg Carton Mache Molds by Teach me Mommy 
Flowers by The Gingerbread House 
Daffodils by Nemscok Farms 
Space Station by Peakle Pie 

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!

Developing hand strength, dexterity, dexterity, precision skills, and eye-hand coordination skills that kids need for holding and writing with a pencil, coloring, and manipulating small objects in every day task doesn’t need to be difficult. The Spring Fine Motor Kit includes 100 pages of fine motor activities, worksheets, crafts, and more:

Spring fine motor kit set of printable fine motor skills worksheets for kids.
  • Lacing cards
  • Sensory bin cards
  • Hole punch activities
  • Pencil control worksheets
  • Play dough mats
  • Write the Room cards
  • Modified paper
  • Sticker activities
  • MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Spring Fine Motor Kit
Spring Fine Motor Kit: TONS of resources and tools to build stronger hands.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

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.

Fine Motor Weather Writing Prompts

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This fine motor weather craft is a fun way to work on a few fine motor skills while encouraging creative writing and handwriting, too!  We’ve talked about pinch grip strength and clothes pins before and this craft is a fun way to extend those strengthening skills.  I love to add a bit of strengthening and proprioceptive input before a handwriting task, so these clothes pins fit the bill before a weather themed handwriting task!  Warm up the hands with a few pinch exercises and then work on handwriting skills during a creative writing or journal topic about weather!


Fine motor weather craft with clothes pins. These are great for a creative writing journal prompt based on weather and a warm up exercise before handwriting.

Fine Motor Weather Clothes Pin Craft


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We started with a pile of wooden clothes pins and a few other materials:
glue

Fine motor weather craft with clothes pins. These are great for a creative writing journal prompt based on weather and a warm up exercise before handwriting.
Cut the weather shapes from the materials and glue to the clothes pins.  For the sun, cut a circle and cut rays.  For the cloud, cut a cloud shape from the fleece and raindrops from the blue card stock.  For the thunderstorm, cut a cloud shape from the blue card stock and a lightning bolt from the yellow craft foam.  For the snowflake, simply glue the foam shape on the clothes pin.

Fine motor weather craft with clothes pins. These are great for a creative writing journal prompt based on weather and a warm up exercise before handwriting.

Weather Themed Writing Creative Journal Prompts

Fine motor weather craft with clothes pins. These are great for a creative writing journal prompt based on weather and a warm up exercise before handwriting.
We used these weather clothes pin crafts in a creative writing assignment.  Have your child choose a clothes pin and clip it to their notebook or top of their paper.  They can use the weather type to brainstorm creative journal topics based on the weather.  For example, if they choose the sun, they could write about activities they like to do in the sun, their favorite thing about sunny weather, or their favorite memory from a sunny day.  I ask my second grader to write like she’s been instructed at school: One topic sentence, three supporting sentences, and a closing statement.  

Fine motor weather craft with clothes pins. These are great for a creative writing journal prompt based on weather and a warm up exercise before handwriting.


Fine Motor Warm Up before Handwriting

Using the clothes pins as a fine motor warm up is a great way to build strength and “wake up” the muscles needed to write.  Let me know if you try this activity at home. I would love to hear about it!

Looking for more weather themed activities?  Try these:

Fine motor weather craft with clothes pins. These are great for a creative writing journal prompt based on weather and a warm up exercise before handwriting.
You’ll love these fine motor activities:

 

Easy Bite Sized Chocolate Dipped Pretzels

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My kids love to cook.  They come running when I say it’s time to help me cook. When melted chocolate is involved, they come running just a little faster.  Who am I kidding?  They come running at full speed when chocolate is involved.  


We made these easy chocolate dipped mini pretzels one day when I had a niece and nephew over for the day.  (I’m totally going for the Best Aunt award, here. Chocolate covered pretzels?  I’ve got this!) 


Sometimes, it’s nice to have a little treat, but a mom wants to keep the sugar intake on the low side. We made these mini pretzel rods for a bite size chocolate-y treat that would be perfect for parties or special events.


Chocolate diped pretzel bites are perfect for cooking with kids and a cooking activity at preschool or a play date! Love these for kids parties, too!

Mini Chocolate Covered Pretzel Bites



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Chocolate diped pretzel bites are perfect for cooking with kids and a cooking activity at preschool or a play date! Love these for kids parties, too!

 

You’ll need just a few ingredients for this recipe:
Mini pretzel rods
Chocolate melts 
Sprinkles, dried coconut, chocolate chips, nuts, or what ever you’ve got in the house.

Chocolate diped pretzel bites are perfect for cooking with kids and a cooking activity at preschool or a play date! Love these for kids parties, too!

This recipe is easy enough to make with kids without a huge mess.  Melt the chocolate melts over the stove top.  This is a job for an adult or an older child.


Using a spoon, drag the melted chocolate over the mini pretzel rods.  Place them on a sheet of wax paper.  For easy, use a lipped tray like a jelly roll pan.  This will contain the mess and keep sprinkles and toppings from rolling on the floor.


Pour sprinkles into small rubbermaid containers.  This is a great way to incorporate fine motor skills into the cooking process.  Kids can pinch or scoop the coverings on the melted chocolate. 

Chocolate diped pretzel bites are perfect for cooking with kids and a cooking activity at preschool or a play date! Love these for kids parties, too!

 

HINT:  Use larger containers for dumping sprinkles over the pretzel rods.  We also used halves of the mini pretzels for an even smaller treat.  These pretzel bites were perfect for a small snack!

Chocolate diped pretzel bites are perfect for cooking with kids and a cooking activity at preschool or a play date! Love these for kids parties, too!

 

Stop by and see what the other bloggers in the Kids in the Kitchen blogging team have cooked up:

Homemade Taco Seasoning | Royal Little Lambs
Mud Pudding  | Raising Little Superheroes
Roll-Out Butter Cookies | The Gifted Gabber
Marble Pound Cake | Kitchen Counter Chronicles
Easy Zucchini Muffins | Mess for Less
Chocolate diped pretzel bites are perfect for cooking with kids and a cooking activity at preschool or a play date! Love these for kids parties, too!



Looking for more cooking with kids recipes?  Here are some of our favorites:

Vegetable Quesadilla Recipe   Honey Nut Popcorn  Antipasto Skewers
M is for Mushrooms: Veggie Quesadilla Recipe | N is for Nuts: Honey Roasted Nuts Popcorn | O is for Olives: Antipasto Skewer Kabobs | P is for Peppers: Asian Chicken

Musical Bell Color Matching Dominoes

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These DIY dominoes are a great tool for addressing auditory processing needs!


When I saw the theme for this week’s Learning with Manipulatives series was dominoes, I was excited.  My kids love playing with dominoes!  They love dominoes of all kinds, from craft stick dominoes to our math sensory bottle that had slowly sinking dominoes.  I had a few different learning activities in mind…but then I couldn’t find our dominoes!  Not to worry, I threw together these DIY bell dominoes that were perfect for color matching with an auditory processing twist. 

Auditory processing dominoes made with bells are perfect for a color matching activity, and can be graded to meet the auditory needs of all ages.

DIY Bell Dominoes



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Auditory processing dominoes made with bells are perfect for a color matching activity, and can be graded to meet the auditory needs of all ages.

To make these bell dominoes, you need just three items:
Corrugated cardboard
Pipe Cleaners
Bells (Ours were from www.craftprojectideas.com)


You’ll also need scissors and a black marker.

Auditory processing dominoes made with bells are perfect for a color matching activity, and can be graded to meet the auditory needs of all ages.

 

Cut rectangles from the sheet of corrugated cardboard.  Using the wire in the pipe cleaner, poke a hole in one end of the rectangle.  Thread the bell onto the pipe cleaner.  Bend the pipe cleaner over and poke it through the cardboard again.  Gently twist the ends of the pipe cleaner together and snip the long end of the pipe cleaner.  Repeat on the other end of the domino.  


I used random colored bells to create dominoes that were perfect for color matching.  My preschooler loved this game and we played several rounds, just working on color matching.

Auditory processing dominoes made with bells are perfect for a color matching activity, and can be graded to meet the auditory needs of all ages.

Auditory Processing Activity with Bell Dominoes

Many children demonstrate auditory processing difficulties.  Difficulties with processing the sounds around them, in classrooms, and in conversation can present in many different ways. I came up with simple ways to use these DIY dominoes to address auditory processing problems in fun and game-like ways.

Auditory processing dominoes made with bells are perfect for a color matching activity, and can be graded to meet the auditory needs of all ages.
Auditory Processing Listening Activities
  • Play the bell dominoes game and ask your child to close their eyes when it is not their turn. They need to listen for the sound of the bells and tell with it is their turn by saying when the bells have stopped. Listening for the bells’ sounds addresses auditory attending.
  • Play from further distances by having the child cross the room after they’ve taken their turn.  They need to listen to hear when the bell has stopped before coming back to take their turn. This addresses auditory attending and auditory discrimination.
  • Play with various background noises.
  • When playing, take turns tapping out patterns before placing the domino in it’s place in the game.
  • Grade these games by rolling a dice and assigning a number on the dice with a colored bell.
Auditory processing dominoes made with bells are perfect for a color matching activity, and can be graded to meet the auditory needs of all ages.
Want to see more ways to play and learn with dominoes?  Try these:

 

Robot Domino Math Game from Learning 2 Walk
Domino Addition Game from The Kindergarten Connection
Name Recognition with Dominoes from Line Upon Line Learning
Dominoes Sensory Bin from Something 2 Offer

 

You’ll love these domino activities that we did:
 
 

The Ultimate Guide to Play

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Play is work of the child.  Through play, a child learns about the world around him.  He learns communication skills, problem solving, builds fine and gross motor development, enhances social interactions, and develops the skills needed for independence in all aspects of growth.  

This month in the Functional Skills for Kids series, myself and nine other Occupational and Physical Therapists have teamed up to share everything play. This is an ultimate guide to development, progression of skills, environmental aspects, modification of play, and how play is used as a therapeutic tool.  

You can see previous Functional Skills for Kids series here.  

Childhood development and play


Play and the child in fine motor skills, gross motor skills, developmental progression of play, helping attention and social skills through play, and using play as a therapeutic tool in Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy with kids.

How Play Makes Therapy Better | Therapy Fun Zone

Play and the child in fine motor skills, gross motor skills, developmental progression of play, helping attention and social skills through play, and using play as a therapeutic tool in Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy with kids.

Be sure to stop back next month to see what the Functional Skills for Kids team does next month!

Kindergarten Math with Farm Themed Fingerprint Art

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Making math concepts fun with hands-on learning is one of my favorite things to do with my kids.  This Farm themed math activity is one way I worked on a few math concepts with my Kindergarten kiddo.  He’s just started bringing home worksheets about counting items, adding a few more, and counting total number.  We made baby chick fingerprint art and used it to work on early addition math skills.  This was such a fun hands-on math activity, that my second grader (and preschooler) loved it too!

Be sure to read through our name practice for kindergarten as this activity supports development of many skills needed for handwriting and other fine motor tasks in the kindergarten age.


Farm themed math addition activity with baby chick fingerprint art

Farm Themed Math Math Activity

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That big red barn in our math activity was a leftover from our Big Red Barn craft from last year.  It made the perfect tool for our math activity today!  To make a barn of your own, follow the directions here. (It’s easy, I promise!)


Other than the red craft sticks in the barn craft, this activity is super simple to set up.  Grab some yellow finger paint, a black marker, and white paper.

Baby Chick Fingerprint Art

Farm themed math addition activity with baby chick fingerprint art

Dip fingers into the yellow paint.  Create rows of yellow fingerprints.  Let the pain dry and then add details to the baby chicks.  Next, cut the rows of chicks into strips. 


Now, get ready to practice some farm math!

Farm themed math addition activity with baby chick fingerprint art

 

I showed my kids how to pull the strips of paper through the barn door.  I told him things like, “Three baby chicks walked through the barn door.  Two more joined them.  How many are there in all?”


It was a fun counting activity to figure out beginning math sentences to put together numbers. 
We made this activity work for my second grader by adding more strips of chicks to the barn so she could add up to 20. 

 
Farm themed math addition activity with baby chick fingerprint art

Some of my favorite ways to work on hands on math: