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:
We brought our water table inside one day when the weather was WAY too cold to go outside. There have been a lot of people affected by cold temps this winter and big winter storms have been making this winter feel verrrry long! And cold…really cold! We LOVE creative painting activities and this idea was one of our favorites.
This is a Winter Sensory Bin activity that is motivating and fun for kids because they might not have experienced painting snow before!
So when it’s too cold to go outside, and the kids are going bonkers inside…what do you do? You can only play with the same toys so many times when you’ve been stuck inside for so many snow days. This Watercolor Snow Painting activity was just the thing we needed to get creative and have some winter fun!
We’ve done both indoor snow painting and outdoor snow painting before and both were very fun. For the outdoor version, check out how to paint snow to incorporate more motor skill work.
This watercolor version was just as much fun in a different way!
Painting Watercolors in Snow
{Note: This post contains affiliate links. In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post. Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected. You can read our full disclosure policy here. As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}
We started by pulling our water table
in from the garage and a few bins of snow were all we needed to fill it. A few paint brushes and some watercolors
and we were all set.
This was so much fun. The snow lasted in the house for a couple of hours and as it melted on the edges, we had more water for painting. When Big Sister came home, we brought in a few more bins of snow so she could paint too. This started a whole new round of painting fun.
The colors were so bright and pretty on the snow. AND we were toasty warm!
A few kitchen utensils were brought in for some scooping and serving “snow cones”.
Love this cuteness!
What a fun sensory experience!
Our friend Jaime over at Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails did some snow painting too. You have to check out what they did when they got some snow. Very fun stuff!
Looking for more wintery fun activities to learn and play while the temps are COLD? Follow along on our Winter Fun and Play Pinterest board for some great ideas:
We love to create fun snacks and foods for the kids. It’s so much fun to make healthy foods look fun for holidays. Valentine’s Day is coming up this week and we’ve got some non-candy snacks to share. Get ready to create in the kitchen, because the kids are going to gobble up these Valentine’s Day snacks!
Valentine’s Day Snacks for Kids
This granola recipe is AWESOME! We’ll be sharing soon, so stop back and see how we made this super-food granola. Can’t. stop. eating it. And the kids are loving it too. I made this pretty little parfait for the kids and I to share one day. It’s got our super-food granola, vanilla Greek yogurt, and sliced strawberries. This is the perfect Valentine’s Day healthy dessert, breakfast, or yummy snack to hold off the sweet intake on this candy-driven holiday! Put it in a wine glass, and it’s just right for your romantic dinner dessert.
Seriously. SO good!
My kids looooove grape tomatoes. We could (and have) gone through a whole pack of them in a day. A quick slice with a knife and you’ve got hearts. The kids cheered when they say these. And then gobbled them all up!
Kids love cheese, pepperoni, and crackers at snack time. These hearts were made with a heart shaped cookie cutter. Hint: stack a few slices of cheese or pepperoni and then cut your hearts. Quicker is better when the little ones are running around and starving 😉
We hope these snack ideas will give you a few fun ideas for this Valentine’s Day. Make it simple, meaningful, and fun.
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.
You’ve done baking with kids before, right? You know how messy a normal (sans-kids) baking session can be. Crumbs, ingredients all over the counter, semi-burned crispy-ness on the cookie sheet…It’s fun 😉
Add kids to the scene, and baking can be an all-out kitchen destroyer! You’ve got spills, fingerprints, and the inevitable, “I want a grilled cheese sandwich!” in the middle of a mixer bowl-filled, chocolate chip, broken egg shell war zone.
BUT, we are big suckers for sweets and our little sweeties love to create in the kitchen…so we get the damp wash cloths ready, pull up the kitchen stools, and brace ourselves for sure-thing messiness. This cupcake decorating session came about one snow day recently when the weather outside was somewhere around a high of 2 degrees F and we were going no where near the outdoors. We needed something to keep the kids occupied and having fun. Baking cupcakes was it!
Our cupcake decorating turned out to be pretty low key and not so bad stickiness-wise with just a few easy tips.
Tips for Decorating Cupcakes with Kids
This post contains affiliate links.
To make our cupcakes, Big Sister and I scrolled over our “Sweets” Pinterest board and found this yummy perfect vanilla cupcake recipe. We made the cupcakes with our pretty cupcake liners. (Is there anything kids love more than putting cupcake liners into the tin!!?) We made the cupcakes with just a couple of spills, only one dropped egg, and just a few sneaks of flour. (My kids LOVE to swipe flour…tell me yours do this too???) It was a success, mess-wise 😉
We waited for our cupcakes to cool…and this is the haaaaaaardest part of decorating cupcakes. It takes for-EVER for those cupcakes to cool when little fingers can not wait to get started! The icing recipe from the same post above turned out to be pretty good, although we only made half of the recipe and it was way more than enough. Just a note if you use that recipe: Caster sugar=granulated sugar and icing sugar=powdered sugar. Good to know and something new I learned!
Before decorating, I threw down a disposable tablecloth to catch all of the inevitable crumbs and icing smears. Watch for after-holiday clearance sales on these table decorations…You can get cheap-o table cloths for cents at 90% off sales. And a red Christmas table cloth is the perfect Valentine’s Day table décor. Shhhhh, we won’t tell! 😉
Now comes the fun part! Separating the icing colors into the cups of the muffin tin
made decorating a breeze with the kids. They used a different infant spoon
for each color of icing and that kept the kids from dropping sticky spoons all over the floor. A few of the sections of the muffin pan held sprinkles and a couple of other decorations for our cupcakes. We LOVE gel food coloring
for icings on cookies and cakes, and even for coloring homemade play dough. The colors are so vivid and our cupcakes showed it!
When you mix your colors, do it right in the muffin tin. Slap some plain icing into each section of the muffin tin, add your food coloring, and stir right there in the tin. No extra bowls=perfection!
Putting the icing all into one muffin tin makes for easy(-ER…easier, not easy when the kitchen is now covered in a sugar and crumb coating) clean up. You don’t need to wash a ton of tiny icing bowls. Grab up that table cloth and you are mostly cleaned up.
We had a great time with our cupcake decorating session and only a slight sugar rush. Hopefully you’ll find some of our tips easy to use and will jump in with both feet and not stress the mess. Hey, at least you end up with cupcakes to go with your sugar encrusted kitchen!
This sight word sensory bin is an old activity here on the website, from when our own children were just learning to read. When they were in kindergarten, sight words were all the rage. Now, these strategies are not used as much, but the practice of learning words and letters continues. You can use components of this sensory bin activity in beginning reading for kindergarteners to practice reading words, identifying letters, or matching uppercase to lower case. The sky is the limit, and all you need is recycled paper!
While we used recycled paper for this sight word sensory activity, you could use any sensory bin base material.
Sight Word Sensory Bin
I love this sight word sensory bin idea (or any way that you use the sensory bin idea) to involve motor skills and multisensory learning into reading skill development. As OT providers, we love play-based learning and hands-on activities, and this one fits the bill!
We’ve used a lot of fun and different materials to practice sight words this school year. Sight Words with Ping Pong Balls and Sight Word Practice with string are just two fun ways we’ve practiced the work list that comes home with Big Sister each week. Just recently, we got a note from her teacher saying “Awesome job on the sight words!” This was a pretty proud mama and all of our practice is paying off!
Shredded Paper Sensory Bin
This sensory based activity is a Sight Word Sensory bin…and just one more creative ways we’ve been practicing homework words. Putting a creative spin on the practice makes repetition fun and easy. You can find more links to our other creative sight word activities at the bottom of this post.
I had this sensory bin ready to go when Big Sister came home from school one day. It was a fun way for Baby Girl and Little Guy to play while they waited for their sister to get off of the school bus.
Put those paper shreds to work and use them in fun play. Shredded paper is a great sensory bin filler.
We’ve used it a few other times and it actually about today because Little Guy remembered doing this Snowy Farm Sensory Bin activity and asked if we could pull out some shredded paper again.
The shredded paper can even be dyed to give your sensory bin a colorful spin. We dyed shredded paper pink in our Valentine’s Day sensory bin.
Big Sister played in the sensory bin and said the words as she pulled them out. We made sentences together with the words from the bin.
Big Sister wanted to add her entire sight word collection to the sensory bin. It turned out to be mostly sight words! I think we’re on to a new sensory bin filler 😉
Looking for more sight word activities for beginner readers? Try these fun ideas:
This month is all about Love and today we are talking acts of service for kids! Use these kindness activities to help kids complete service acts for others. The ideas outlined in this post can inspire random acts of service and kindness for kids.
Acts of Service Love Language
Acts of Service” is one of the five love languages identified by Dr. Gary Chapman in his book (Amazon affiliate links) “The Five Love Languages.” It refers to a person’s way of expressing and receiving love through actions and acts of service.
Another great resource for understanding the love languages in general is the version of this book for kids: 5 Love Languages of Kids.
The book is helpful to discover the key to effectively communicating your child’s love language and empowers you to:
Uncover your child’s unique love language.
Foster a supportive environment for successful learning.
Harness the power of love languages for more constructive discipline.
Cultivate a foundation of love for your child. (Co-regulation, anyone?)
These strategies support kids and parents by nurturing the child’s primary love language and helps you build a stronger, more thriving parent-child relationship.
This sounds so great for self-regulation needs in kids, right??
While the books offer tools for each of the love languages of kids and parents, today, we are talking about the acts of service. This is important because helping kids identify acts of service they can do supports empathy and social emotional skills.
We used the concept of a service act to create service ideas for kids using the craft below. First, we talked about service ideas for kids and the power of showing kindness to others as a service act.
Acts of Service are evidence of love shown by servicing others. You know the saying, “actions speak louder than words”?
We show our loved ones love by doing things for them; …Washing the dishes, preparing them meals, finding that missing Teddy Bear at 2 am are ways we show our families love through service.
We came up with ways for children to show their love for friends, family, and random strangers through acts of acts of service and kindness. When a random act of kindness is bestowed, it grows love forward! Not only does the giver feel generous, giving, and significant…but the recipient of that random act of kindness feels special, cherished, and loved.
This kindness craft idea is one kids can make and then use to do acts of service.
Kindness Craft Idea
To keep track of our kindness acts, we created this kindness banner. That way, we could decide on what task to do next. This was such a fun project to do, each step of the way! For kids that love crafts, a kindness craft hits the mark. You may find other crafts for kids that can be expanded into kindness craft ideas, too.
You’ll also want to check out our friendship activities for more ideas to spread kindness through crafts and activities.
I cut small banners from cardstock and glued on a patterned top for a touch of color.
These were taped to a long strand of ribbon and strung on our wall. We put it up at child-height so the kids could see the words of giving on each banner, and mark off the acts of kindness as they were completed.
The kids loved hearing all of the kind acts and deciding who should receive our acts of service.
After a task was completed, we stuck a foam heart sticker on the banner. Our finished banner looked so pretty and makes a great Valentine’s decoration!
The acts of service listed below can help you come up with specific service ideas for kids.
Acts of Service Examples
You’ll find a list of service acts below, and these are great examples for kids to expand on. There are so many ways kids can serve others:
Help family members
Help friends
Support neighbors
Help other classmates in learning needs
Help the homeless
Support the community
Serve the school by donating needed items
Create a food drive for the neighborhood needy
Find a charity and create a fundraiser
Start a service club
Clean up litter
Support a church
Older kids can attend a mission trip through a youth group
All of the types of service ideas can be expanded on. The trick here is to get creative and thoughtful. Select a group or individual that is in need and think of how you can support them.
Random Acts of Kindness for Kids
Use the service ideas below on the kindness banner craft.
Service Ideas
So what are some service activities that would be great for Random Acts of Kindness for Kids? We wanted to come up with a list of service ideas that kids could choose from to serve others with kindness.
Here are some ideas listed below. Use these service ideas to fill your kindness banner:
Collect canned goods for the food bank.
Pick up trash in the neighborhood.
Invite a new friend over for a play date.
Complete household chores without being asked
Send thank you notes to the fire department and police station.
Hold the door for someone.
Bring in a neighbor’s trash cans.
Write kind notes for siblings.
Put out birdseed for the birds.
Bake cookies for a neighbor.
Smile and say “Hello!”
Do the dishes or clean up the kitchen.
Deliver flowers to a neighbor you don’t know that well.
Donate toys or clothes
Give outgrown clothing to a smaller friend.
Donate books to the library.
Leaving kind notes.
Wave hello to a neighbor.
Shovel snow from a neighbor’s walkway.
Bring a treat to school for your teacher.
Draw a picture for the mailman.
Preparing a meal or breakfast in bed for family.
Help prepare and deliver a meal for a family with a new baby.
Tell the trash collector “Thank You!”
Write a note to Grandparents saying why they are special.
Give neighbors some candy chocolate “hugs” and a note saying “hugs from your neighbor!”
Draw a picture for your librarian with a note saying “Thank YOU!”
Bring bubbles to the park and some extras to share with other kids.
Write encouraging messages in chalk on the sidewalk to brighten someone’s day.
Have you done any random acts of kindness or acts of service with your children? What kind of activities have you done? Do you have a blog post to share that focuses on love, kindness, an activity you and your child completed together where love was apparent??
Exploring Books Through Play is an e-book with kindness activities, crafts, and games that teach empathy, kindness, and friendship. These are great activities to use in discussions on acts of service with kids!
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.
A while back we tried Embark12 for online learning. Do your kids love learning and playing with online games and apps as much as ours do? It is so amazing how much kids can absorb when they are playing on tablets and computers. If there is a way to encourage learning during “screen time”, we will jump at it!
Pre Kindergarten Curriculum
When we heard about EmbarK12 (Kindergarten readiness programs by K12.), we were very interested in the preschool programs with fun and innovative approach to early learning. Learning and playing in kindergarten is essential to fine motor milestone development, but we know that kids are driven to screens. So in moderation, using the meaningful and motivating tools available can support development alongside play. This sounds like a great addition to a pre kindergarten curriculum.
K12 is the leader in online education for kindergarten through grade 12 and includes EmbarK12 Comprehensive and EmbarK¹² Online.
We love that the programs encourage learning through fun and engaging music, activities, and videos!
There are two preschool programs that promote learning and development for Kindergarten readiness. These are great for pre K school readiness, especially.
EmbarK¹² Online is perfect for the 3-6 age range. Early learners have access to more than 830 activities, all developed by educational experts.
Learning is fun and dynamic with this supplemental Pre-K program. There are 12 units of activities with related activities that little learners can explore. Some of our favorite topics are “Story Time”, “Our World”, and “travel and Explore”. The EmbarK¹²
Valentine’s Day activities are all around! If you are looking for a few Valentine’s Day activities to add to your OT line-up, I’ve got you covered with activities that pack a developmental punch. Have you been cutting any hearts yet? Covered a box in paper for a Valentine’s exchange? Bought cards for the kids to give out at school? We’ve done a few activities…there was this Valentine’s Day Painting and even a Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin that you may have seen.
Painting noodles is such a fun creative painting activity that you can use to make bracelets and necklaces while building fine motor skills.
This Noodle Painting activity started out as a fine motor activity for Baby Girl and turned into a pretty Valentine’s Day craft and decoration.
{Note: This post contains affiliate links.
Fine Motor Activity for Toddlers
Baby Girl (age 2) LOVES to paint. She will ask to paint almost every day. One day I decided to bring out something besides paper for her to cover with paint. I pulled out a small handful of different dried pastas and put them into a divided dish. In the center was our spill roof paint cup
with red paint.
Baby Girl got busy painting. She explored each noodle and had fun painting! Manipulating the little pastas was a great fine motor dexterity task…and very sensory too, as she covered her fingers with paint.
We let the painted pasta dry and ended up using it another day to make our Valentine’s day craft.
Valentine’s Day Noodle Garland craft
I cut some hearts from red construction paper and gave Baby Girl glue. She squeezed the glue all over the hearts…however she liked!
Squeezing glue is a good way to encourage hand strengthening in children. Squeezing the glue bottle requires a gross grasp on the bottle. A gross grasp is using the whole hand in a squeezing manner and really strengthens the muscles of the hand.
She put the painted noodles in the glue with a tip to tip (pincer grasp). Picking up small objects with just the tips of the fingers requires precision and dexterity.
The hearts dried and we strung them along a strand of yarn in our dining room. They make a pretty Valentine’s Day decoration!
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.
Kindergarten Math is new for us. Big Sister is half-way through kindergarten now, and has been learning SO much! Being that she’s our oldest, it’s all new for us, too! We’ve gotten used to the homework and the worksheets that come home each day and can see all of the creative ways her teacher works on learning objectives. This math activity was a little practice for her math homework that we’ve seen in worksheet form.
I created a snowman math theme for her to practice composing and decomposing numbers a lot like what she does on worksheets. This was a hands-on activity for Big Sister to practice counting and putting numbers together and taking them apart to make larger numbers. Plus, it was a fun way to practice the skills she’s been learning!
Snowman Math
Snowman Math Theme for Kindergarteners
This hands-on math activity used just a few materials. We started with Styrofoam egg cartons, cut into sections of three. They made the perfect snowman shape with just a few snips. There’s nothing better than using recycled materials in a craft or activity, and this was no exception!
Once the snowmen were cut from Styrofoam and ready to go, I pulled out our white pom poms. These were received free from www.craftprojectideas.com, and just what we needed to count for our snowman math.
I wrote numbers on the center circle of the snowmen and had the pom poms ready to go for counting when Big Sister came home from school one afternoon. I showed her how the snowmen look like the circles that come home on her math worksheets. Together, we counted out pom poms to make the numbers on each snowman.
Composing Numbers: Kindergarten Math
Now, I am no Kindergarten teacher, but our math practice was a fun way to practice the skills that Big Sister is bringing home from school. We started by composing numbers to make our snowmen. Big Sister has been bringing home a bunch of worksheets where she had to use manipulatives in the classroom to build numbers.
Composing numbers is building numbers and the beginning stages of adding. There are no addition or equal signs introduced yet. Tow handfuls of manipulatives are all that are needed to count the total.
So, when Big Sister composed the numbers to make the number I had written in the snowman, I first had her count out the number of pom poms that she needed. For the snowman with “13” written on it, we counted out 13 white pom poms.
Then, she grabbed two handfuls of those 13 pom poms. She counted how many were in each hand and put one handful in the “head’ section of the snowman…and the other handful in the “bottom” section of the snowman. We were able to compose thirteen in a few different ways by doing the same activity over and over again with those same 13 pom poms.
Decomposing Numbers: Kindergarten Math
Decomposing numbers is just the opposite. We worked on taking apart the numbers and exploring how many ways we could take apart the 13 pom poms. We started with the 13 pom poms in a pile on the table. Big Sister grabbed a handful and put them in one of the circles. She then counted how many were left over. She put the remainder into the other circle of the Styrofoam snowman.
This was such a fun math activity for Big Sister and I! We got to work on “homework” in a fun and creative way and practice a little early math…with a snowman theme!
This post is part of the Project: Recycle & Create series that we are taking part in each month. You may have seen our Cardboard box small world Pretend Zoo post from January’s cardboard theme.
For more resources related to the kindergarten age range, check out our blog post on name practice for kindergarten. Hands-on and multisensory learning supports development and skill-building through play!
Valentine’s Day is less than two weeks away. We are loving all of the sweetheart ideas over on Pinterest these days. The red and pink hearts and sprinkles and CHOCOLATE are just so happy! The Share It Saturday features this week highlight some great recipes for Valentine’s day sweets for your loves. These are perfect ways to get baking and creating in the kitchen with the kids. OR, surprise your littles with a fun Valentine’s Day treat.
Cooking with and for kids with Valentine’s Day Treats
