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:

Fruit Loop Rainbow Craft Ideas

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Fruit loop rainbow craft

This blog post has a collection of Fruit Loop rainbow crafts and ideas to make during the Spring, or even for St. Patrick’s Day activities. We love using Fruit Loops or other colorful loop cereal in crafts and activities, because they are a great inexpensive fine motor tool for kids.

It’s that time of year, when kids are making Fruit Loop rainbow craft time!  Yes, you heard it right, Fruit Loop Rainbow Crafts! With spring slowly moving near, it’s time to transition to rainbow-themed crafts for your toolkit. Whether you are wanting to make rainbows for St. Patrick’s Day, want to celebrate the season, or simply just have some fruit loop-loving kiddos, these craft ideas will be very popular with the kiddos in your life. 

Pair these craft ideas with the other rainbow activities here on the website, including our popular rainbow breathing for self-regulation as well as fun skill-building.

Fruit loop rainbow craft

Fruit Loop rainbow crafts can be simple or complex.

Fruit Loop Rainbow Craft

You’ve probably seen them before…the colorful cereal loops that make their way onto paper to form a bright rainbow. But did you know there are many fine motor skill benefits to this occupational therapy craft?

From toddlers to preschoolers to kindergarten and beyond, this fun rainbow craft is a skill builder! 

The best thing about cute rainbow crafts like this is that young children can make the activity while developing skills in pincer grasp, in-hand manipulation, separation of the sides of the hand, visual discrimination, and more. 

A Fruit Loop rainbow can easily be used in therapy sessions for skill development, in the classroom as stations, or even just at home for fun, but despite where you use them, the children will likely think you’re the best adult ever! 

In this fun post, you will find all kinds of unique and colorful fruit loop crafts that will involve craftiness, learning, and flat-out eating time excitement. These activity ideas will help give you some creativity to your fine motor and visual motor skills repertoire of activities and with an OT-eye you can upgrade or downgrade and expand them as you see the need for ALL of the kiddos in your world. 

How to make a Fruit Loop Rainbow

There are many variations on this rainbow craft, as you can see from the list below. However, a simple rainbow craft is all you need to do to work on fine motor skills and visual motor development. 

You need just a couple of items:

  • Box of Fruit Loop cereal or an off-brand round loop cereal that comes in different colors
  • bowl
  • Rainbow template on a piece of paper
  • Glue
  • Cotton balls if you want to add clouds at the end of the rainbow

Children can use the rainbow template to glue the colorful cereal pieces onto each layer of the rainbow. When they do this, they are using a pincer grasp to pick up the cereal pieces from the bowl.

A tip to expand on fine motor skills is to use a more narrow or smaller bowl or small cup. This requires the child to define their grasp into a separation of the sides of the hand, and encourage in-hand manipulation as they move the cereal pieces from the fingertips into the palm of the hand and then back to the fingertips. One easy way to do this is to use a narrow drinking cup that is labeled with the the colors of the rainbow like in our rainbow order stacking cups.

A rainbow template can be as simple as a rainbow lines drawn onto construction paper or a paper plate, or it can be a printable rainbow template like the ones we have inside the Member’s Club. These printable rainbows have both a row for the colorful cereal to be placed into according to color, and others have circles for placing each colored cereal piece. 

Skills that are addressed with this portion of the activity:

The entire rainbow can be made by sorting colors out the cereal into bowls or piles of colors, then gluing them onto the paper. The color of the fruit loops can be matched up to count out the number of each color while working on finger isolation in order to count each piece. We used a similar concept in our rainbow sorting activity with an ice cube tray.

Finally, work on hand strengthening by pulling apart a cotton ball to fluff it up and gluing that onto the paper at the end of the rainbow shape. Stretching out  a cotton ball with the finger tips is a great way to address several areas of development:

Finally, if you wanted to extend the activity further, you can incorporate scissor skills by cutting a pot of gold out of paper and gluing that together. Then glue the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Rainbow Crafts with Fruit Loops

A different way to work on other skills such as pencil control and more refined dexterity is to ask the child to draw the lines of a rainbow. They can make a very large rainbow to cross midline or they can make a smaller one. Simply use different colored markers or colored pencils. Show them how to:

  1. Use the red marker to make the red line of the rainbow 
  2. Use the orange marker to make the orange line of the rainbow…and so on with the rest of the colors.
  3. Then, show them how to place the red fruit loops on the red line, the orange fruit loops on the orange line, and so on.
  4. They can make the rainbow form without actually gluing the cereal onto the page. 

This task requires refined motor skills because placing the cereal onto the line without glue requires precieion to not bump the cereal pieces already on the lines.

Fine Motor Fruit Loop Activities

If you target a few specific areas, you can build skills in precision, finger dexterity, pincer grasp, open thumb web space, eye-hand coordination, and more.

Take this a step further:

  1. Draw the colorful marker lines on a piece of cardboard or a cardboard box.
  2. Press a toothpick along each line. 
  3. Carefully place the colored cereal loops onto the toothpicks to match the marker lines.
  4. Work on crossing midline, visual scanning, and visual memory by using a rainbow ladder. Children can place the loop cereal on the colored marker lines of the ladder.

This activity is even more difficult because it encourages wrist extension and a tripod grasp to press the toothpicks into the resistive surface, as well as the other fine motor skills mentioned above.

As you can see, a simple cereal rainbow craft is a goldmine of important skill development, as well as so much fun to make! And, if young children want to have a fun snack at the same time as making a craft, that can happen too.

Fruit Loop Rainbow Craft Ideas

But first, let’s get started with these Fruit Loop craft ideas. These could each be added to a rainbow theme. You’ll love the Rainbow theme inside the Member’s Club for many skill development printables.

Got kiddos that like to destruct?  Well, these two are for them!  Crush Fruit Loops involves the crushing of the cereal into small bits to create a colorful rainbow of art. And how about crushing up more Froot Loop cereal and creating a layered Froot Loop Sand Cup by Kellogg’s. 

Fruit Loop Nature Activities

Sequencing with Fruit Loops- This idea provides a fun way for young children to work on colors during any rainbow unit you might have in your closet.  It is a simple one, but a great one to work on fine motor skills and bilateral and eye-hand coordination. Oh, and don’t forget the fun color sequencing that’s added. 

Fruit Loop Flower Craft- This idea screams spring.  This fun craft has children sorting and pasting fruit loops to create some colorful flowers.  They can even draw the stems and leaves and add some cute buttons for added skill work.

Fruit Loop Cloud Craft- This idea has a threading aspect, but with this one, the child can draw their own cloud with a fun face to cut out and then string the fruit loops after sorting them. 

Fruit Loop Animal Crafts

Fruit Loop Fish- This craft provides children with a threading activity that makes fish from fruit loops and pipe cleaners. Threading a cereal loop onto the end of the pipe cleaner is a great fine motor and eye hand coordination task. Cute and fun!

Loop Cereal Starfish Craft- This craft gives the opportunity for rainbow color sequencing to create a decorative starfish.  It’s a great way to sequence the colors of the rainbow after maybe cutting out the starfish first. 

Fruit Loop Cereal Jellyfish- This craft is a fun tracing activity of the hand that turns into a jellyfish. Following the tracing and cutting out of the hand, the child will then glue fruit loop pieces onto it to make it more colorful. Kiddos will sort fruit loop colors and work on the functional skills of pencil, scissors, and glue to make this cute craft. 

Another fun idea craft that includes a threading aspect which is important for fine motor skill development, plus if you can find a jellyfish printable can include a coloring aspect too!  Oh, and don’t forget the eye-hand coordination skills needed to string those fruit loops.

Mouse craft- This craft is a cute craft that allows for color matching of the fruit loops to the whiskers and then the child threads the mouse’s whiskers. This one can easily be re-used as a station activity or if you prefer, sent home as a craft. Fun!

Fruit Loop Shapes and Learning:

Make Shapes with Fruit Loops- This idea allows for some great sequenced threading so fine motor, eye-hand coordination, and bilateral coordination skills are involved while the kiddo creates some fun shapes.   

Estimate with Fruit Loops- This idea is a fun one to have a child trace the hand and try to guess how many fruit loops will be able to fit inside their handprint and then place the pieces and see how close they get to their estimate. 

Fruit Loop Name Craft- This idea provides a child the opportunity to write their names, trace the letters with glue and then turn their name into a rainbow-colored craft by using Fruit Loops in a pattern sequence or simply by color. 

Force Regulation Activity- This idea works on more destruction skills, but look at how force regulation can be worked on and eye-hand coordination too while also learning!

Scissor Skills Activity- Here is a unique craft that the child coordinates by possibly cutting strips of paper to create the rainbow stripes and then writing the letters of their name on the strips followed by the pasting of strips to a cotton ball cloud to create the rainbow pattern. The last thing is to sort the fruit loops to glue onto each matching strip. A little more time-consuming and skill involved so possibly for older kiddos.

Fruit Loop Treats

Cooking with kids is a tool for developing self-regulation, social emotional skills, fine motor skills, and of course, executive functioning. Try these recipes that kids will love to help make:

Fruit Loop Rainbow Treat- this recipe is a fun way to make self-treats for home or snack time by sorting and layering the fruit loops and marshmallows to create a rainbow treat bag. 

Fruit Loop Rainbow Snack Craft- This idea is where kiddos first create the craft on a plate and then eat it! Or another idea would be to use the fruit loop cereal turned into Rainbow Bars. Some life skills can be involved with this one in the use of kitchen tools and appliance operation (with adult supervision of course).  Shh, one more easy idea, not a craft but a yummy mixture of rainbow goodness. 

Fruit Loop Turkey Donuts- This recipe is really more of a Thanksgiving food craft, but we had to toss it into this collection of fruit loop fun!  It includes food items that are put together to create a colorful turkey that can be eaten when done. What skills does this one work on? Well, fine motor and eye-hand coordination and when copying a model, some visual perceptual skills too.

Fruit Loop Jewelry

Fruit Loop Bracelets are a powerful fine motor tool. We break down the fine motor and visual motor components in our rainbow bracelet craft.

All you need is a bowl of Fruit Loop cereal and pipe cleaners.

  • Make a necklace like this craft or this necklace idea is a fun way for children to engage in the threading of rainbow-sequenced fruit loops to create a jewelry piece to wear. 
  • One more, bracelet craft is created the same as the necklaces above, but with a shorter string and worn on the wrist.  They could even turn it into a friendship bracelet. 

Fruit Loop Activities

Not exactly crafts, but these ideas are great to pair with the rainbow theme using a box of rainbow loop cereal!

How about an edible Fruit Loop Rainbow Sensory Bin? This is a great way to explore tactile differences and work on scooping and pouring, as well as fine motor skills.

Stack Fruit Loops

These towers include multiple fine motor skills to create the playdough balls. You can also place the cereal loops onto a spaghetti stick, and sort and place the fruit loops onto the sticks to create the rainbow towers.

Stick toothpicks into marshmallows and stack the loop cereal for an added means of fine motor development.

So, there you go, rainbow fruit loop crafts and other ‘just because’ ideas to simply help you charge forward to the new season and the new holiday.  Now all that’s left is to do is to run to the store and buy some Froot Loops to get started!

Note- Consider food waste: Using stale fruit loops is the way to go, if you have those in your house, use them to make a rainbow Fruit Loop craft!

Regina Allen

Regina Parsons-Allen is a school-based certified occupational therapy assistant. She has a pediatrics practice area of emphasis from the NBCOT. She graduated from the OTA program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute in Hudson, North Carolina with an A.A.S degree in occupational therapy assistant. She has been practicing occupational therapy in the same school district for 20 years. She loves her children, husband, OT, working with children and teaching Sunday school. She is passionate about engaging, empowering, and enabling children to reach their maximum potential in ALL of their occupations as well assuring them that God loves them!

Colors Handwriting Kit

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.

Click here to get your copy of the Colors Handwriting Kit.

February Lesson Plans

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February lesson plans

These February lesson plans are perfect for developing skills in occupational therapy sessions, OT at home, or even other areas where child development is being addressed. We love to come up with themed lessons to support skill building and these February themes do just that.

February Lesson Plans

When we say February lesson plans, you might think classroom curriculum. But being an occupational therapist, we know that in the schools, OT professionals support all aspects of education as a supplement. At home or in the clinic however, it’s a great idea to have weekly therapy themes and motivating activities to use in therapy planning.

Use these ideas to support skill-building!

You’ll want to add these tools to your February Lesson Plans:

You’ll want to add a couple of resources to your therapy toolbox as well to support data collection and activity materials for the month of February:

  1. Occupational Therapy Screening and Data Collection Kit– This has a packet for each month of the year and includes themed and motivating materials for all aspects of pediatric OT: handwriting, cutting with scissors, coloring, self-dressing, fine motor skills, visual motor skills, and more.
  2. Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit– Includes resources for heart and Valentine themed activities.
  3. Fix the Mistakes Mega Bundle– This huge set of handwriting activities covers the whole year including themes for each month. Work on handwriting carryover by asking users to correct handwriting mistakes.
  4. The OT Toolbox Member’s Club– This membership includes access to our therapy themes and skill-based themes.

It’s been a lot of fun coming up with creative activities for Occupational Therapy treatment ideas for the past couple of months.  Since sharing our December and January calendars, I’ve had a lot of great feedback from Occupational Therapists who are using the calendars in treating clients, parents who are looking for creative activities to do with their kids at home, and teachers who are applying the ideas to the needs of the kids in their classroom.  These OT activity calendars are fun (for me!) to make, and I’m loving that they are being used to help so many kids with creative Occupational Therapy goals.


This calendar is meant to be a resource and not treatment.  All activities should be applied and modified to fit the needs and goals of your particular child or student.  Please contact an Occupational Therapist for assessment and evaluation of your child, as all kids are different and what works for one child will not necessarily work for another.

Occupational Therapy ideas

This post contains affiliate links.


Activities for Occupational Therapy Students in February:



1. Smash Peanuts Proprioception– Work on hand-eye coordination, proprioceptive input, and strengthening with this Valentine’s Day activity.  Modify the fun for a non-holiday activity.  Read about it here.


2. Heart Eye-Hand Coordination–  Use DIY cardboard hearts to work on fine motor skills like tripod grasp, intrinsic muscle strength, and an open thumb web space while addressing eye-hand coordination, visual scanning, and figure ground skills. Read about it here.


3. Heart Wall Push-Ups- These are a great warm-up for fine motor tasks. They can also be used as a brain break, or proprioception heavy work activity.  You’ll need two foam hearts (affiliate link).  

Tape them to a wall at chest level for your child.  Show them how to place their hands on the foam hearts (affiliate link) and do wall-push ups.  For the child who is working on left-right discrimination, write left/right on the hearts.


4. Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin–  A sensory bin provides textural sensory play in a container or bin and can be modified in so many ways to address tactile defensiveness and sensory exploration.  Try this sensory bin to work on eye-hand coordination and motor control with scoops.  Other ways a sensory bin helps kids are: language development, self-confidence, motor planning, visual tracking, and figure ground skills.  Read more here.


5. Heart Flashlight Game-  Use the same idea that we did here and use a flashlight to work on visual scanning, and visual tracking.  Add movement into the activity with spinning, jumping, and skipping to provide vestibular sensory input to the activity.  Write numbers or letters on hearts like these.  

Then, simply tape foam hearts (affiliate link)
to the wall and turn down the lights.  If you are using movement in your activity, you will want low lights instead of having the lights off completely.  Call out letters on the hearts and have the child use the flashlight to scan for the correct heart and “tag” it with the light.


6. Valentine’s Day Sensory Goop Painting– Explore tactile sensory play with homemade sensory goop.  Create heart valentines with the goop painting.  You can re-create this activity another time with white goop and snowflake cookie cutters on blue paper.


7. Valentine’s Day Sensory Bottle–  Create a sensory bottle for a calm down visual sensory tool. Kids can help to make the bottle, working on fine motor skills.


8. Heart Bead Fine Motor Sort–  Work on eye-hand coordination, tripod grasp, and in-hand manipulation with this bead color sorting activity.


9. Fine Motor Sprinkle Art–  This fine motor craft works on tripod grasp and gross motor strength while providing a olfactory sensory input.  Work on scissor skills and handwriting to create Valentines’ Day cards for loved ones.


10. Heart Therapy Ball Activities–  Use something you’ve got in your home to improve core muscle strength and proprioceptive input to address attention issues.  


11. Snowflake Trace- Work on handwriting and proprioception to the hands with resistive handwriting.  Tape paper to a window and trace snowflakes as they shine through the paper.  You can draw snowflakes on one side of the paper and trace the other side of the sheet.  Work on line awareness and pencil control for use in handwriting like we did here.


12. Heart Balance Beam- Place foam hearts (affiliate link) on the floor to create a balance beam like we did with snowflakes.  Address vestibular sensory needs, core muscle strength, and motor planning with an indoor balance beam.


13. Heart Buttoning Skill Activity– Work on self-care skills with homemade heart buttons to work on buttoning and fine motor skills.


14. Heart Lacing Activity–   Lacing activities are powerful way to work on many skills.  Address eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, tripod grasp, visual scanning, motor planning, tool use, direction following, extended wrist, and more with lacing cards.  Make a heart shaped DIY lacing card like we did here.  Read more about all things lacing cards.


15. Fine Motor Snowman Craft–  This craft works on precision and tripod grasp to build a snowman with stickers.  You can also address task completion, direction following, and problem solving with this OT craft.


16.  Snowman Smoothie- Make an icy treat with milk or ice cream and add snowman details to the glass like we did here.  Add a straw for proprioceptive oral sensory input.  Sucking a straw is calming and organizing for a child.  Try this activity during or right before a task that requires attention and focus like homework.  


17. Snowman Hopscotch- Draw a snowman on the sidewalk or on a large sheet of cardboard.  Add more circles for the snowman’s body and show your child how to hop along the snowman.  Activities like hopscotch provide vestibular and proprioceptive input.  Throwing a rock is a functional hand-eye coordination task that also addresses visual scanning, tracking, and motor planning.


18.  Play the Snow-key Pokey-  This is a fun game for indoor play.  Sing the hokey pokey song with a snow theme by substituting “hokey” with “snow-key”.  Add other winter themed details like putting your right mitten in and putting your boots out.  How creative can you get with the snow-key pokey?


Movement games like this provide vestibular input.  This game, in particular is a great listening skills and attention task.  Kids need to listen to follow directions and not miss instructions.  The Snow-key Pokey works on range of motion, too.


19. Snow Hop- This activity works on many skill areas:  handwriting, motor planning, gross motor skills, balance and coordination, direction following, listening skills, and proprioception.  Create a map of a snowy land using couch pillows and blankets.  A white sheet works well for this activity.  

Pile pillows up in some areas and cover them with a blanket. This is your “snowy land” with hills and valleys. Drawing a map addresses handwriting skills while using visual perceptual skills and spatial reasoning skills.  The child can hide a toy in the snowy land and draw an “X” on their map to show where they’ve hidden the toy.  Then, take turns navigating the land to find the toy.  This is a heavy work activity as the child moves cushions and pillows.  Walking on an unstable surface is a good balance and coordination activity, as well as a way to incorporate the vestibular sense.


20. Snow-barrow Races-  Do a wheelbarrow race with a snow theme.  Ask the child to put on winter clothing like boots, scarves, and gloves.  They then have to do a wheelbarrow (or SNOW-barrow) race across the room.  This activity is a fun one to do with several kids, but works well as an individual activity with an adult.  Wheelbarrow races provide proprioception sensory input and is a great upper body activity.  Quickly dressing with the snow items is an exercise in motor planning and self-care.


21. Frozen Snow Dough– Make a batch of snow dough for sensory tactile input.  This is a great activity for kids who are tactile defensive.  Add scoops and other utensils to work on eye-hand coordination and tool use.  


22. Build a Snowman- This activity provides proprioception while working on strengthening and motor planning, problem solving, bilateral hand coordination, crossing midline, and more.  Grab three pillow cases and towels and small blankets.  Use the blankets to stuff the pillow cases until they are mostly full. Try to get the pillow cases into a circular-ish shape. Build a living room snowman with the stuffed pillow cases.  Use pillows to prop up the snowman.  


23. Paint Snow–  Work on tool use to paint snow like we did here. Don’t have snow?  Use a wet paper towel for creative painting.  Add a hand strengthening and power grasp component by using squeeze bottles to paint, like we did here.


24. Salt Truck Craft– Work on scissor skills when making this snow truck craft.  Use scissor skills modifications to work on goal areas like accuracy and positioning of scissors when cutting.


25. Soda Dough Snowmen– Cook up a batch of baking soda dough and use it to work on fine motor skills like strengthening, tripod grasp, intrinsic strength, and in-hand manipulation like digital rotation while creating snowmen using this resistive, yet soft dough. 


26. Winter What’s Missing Tray-  Work on visual memory with a winter-themed tray.  Grab many winter-objects: gloves, tinsel, fake snow, cotton balls, to work on visual memory.  Ask the child to stare at the tray for 3 minutes, remembering as many items as they can.  Then, take the tray away and remove 3-5 items.  See if the child can recall the missing objects.


27. Paper Icicles– Practice scissor skills with this paper icicle craft.  Use thicker paper for proprioceptive input.


28. Snowman Fine Motor- Fill a large bin with cotton balls.  Use tweezers to pick up and transfer the cotton balls to bowls.  Add other small pieces like a snowman hat, scarf (use foam crafting sheets to make these parts), and toothpicks for snowman arms.  Transfer the pieces to work on tripod grasp, open thumb web space, intrinsic muscle strength, and extended wrist.


29. Motor Planning Snow Maze- Create an indoor maze using yarn like we did here.  Use white yarn to wrap around chairs.   Try to transfer winter items like scarves and gloves through the maze without dropping any items or bumping into the yarn maze.  This is a great exercise for motor planning while working on core muscle strength and the vestibular sense as the child bends over and around the yarn.




Use these ideas all month long to add Occupational Therapy into creative play while working on so many areas! 

Even MORE great pages you where you will find tons of Occupational Therapy treatment ideas and info that can be incorporated into simple play at home, using frugal (mostly free) items that you already have:
 
Sensory Play Ideas
Visual Perceptual Skills
Fine Motor Skills
Occupational Therapy Data Collection Kit

The Occupational Therapy Data Collection Kit includes activities for each month of the year with themes to make building skills fun and engaging. Follow along as your child makes progress in handwriting, copying and forming letters, coloring, cutting, completing self-care tasks, and more.

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.

Drawing Milestones

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Drawing milestones

In child development, one of the underappreciated areas of development is the developmental stages of drawing, and specifically drawing milestones. Here, we are talking all things drawing, and what to look for when a child draws. This post will delve into the typical drawing milestones for young children or learners beginning to draw (as not all learners develop at the same pace).  You will also learn about what a drawing might say about a person.  The post will also include helpful strategies for developing drawing milestones as what to look for. Let’s explore development of drawing skills in detail. 

Also be sure to check out all of the ideas on our creative painting list for more self-expression fun.

Drawing milestones

Drawing Milestones

What do you look for when analyzing a learner’s drawings?  Design copy, clarity, number of details, realism, or psychosocial issues?  It can be all, some of the above, or something entirely different.  

From a toddler scribbling to a teenager drawing realistic art representations, there are various developmental stages of drawing that progress as grip, visual motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and imaginative thinking (and other areas) develop.

The following is a general guide to the development of drawing skills.  Not all learners develop at the same rate or age, however they tend to follow a similar pattern.  

According to the Empowered Parents group, caregivers should not teach drawing skills, or use coloring books, as this stunts the learner’s natural creativity.  This is a presumptive statement, as learners who are neurodivergent, or who have special needs, do not learn in the same way as their typical peers.  

Due to lack of insight or awareness of their environment, some learners will need to be taught or shown a model. 

Developmental Stages of Drawing

There are definite developmental stages of drawing, however, not every individual will progress through these stages in the same timing. 

Unlike other areas of developmental milestones, the development of drawing skills is fluid. Consider the ages and stages listed below as approximate as well as the characteristics for each stage.

  • At about 12 months of age, babies can make a mark on the paper about an inch long
  • 15-18 months babies draw scribbles and lines. This scribbling stage is the stage of cause and effect, with uncontrolled motor movements.  
  • Age two years is the start of controlled scribbling.  Learners may be able to draw lines and circular loop strokes.  They may be able to write a figure that looks like the letter T, but not purposefully intersecting lines yet. At this age learners understand that their movements are able to make marks on the paper. Drawing occurs through movement in the elbow and use of the whole hand. Fine motor control is becoming more of a contributing factor to line drawings. 
  • Three year olds are able to make basic circles, crosses, dots, loops, and sometimes poorly formed squares. Their drawing of a person resembles a tadpole, with a large head and floating legs.  Very little detail is added at this stage. They may be able to tell you about their picture, even if it is not recognizable.  Drawing continues to use the whole hand to make pencil movements. They do not accurately use colors to represent images. Hand eye coordination plays a role but it is primitive at this stage of drawing.
  • By four years learners begin making patterns and attributing meaning to their artwork. They are able to make circles and squares, and attempt a triangle, although usually poorly formed. They start pre writing skills at this stage. Their drawing of a person contains some details such as arms, eyes, and fingers.  Some children will begin to form a trunk at this stage.  Learners can start adding items together to form something like a house or a car.  Often they learn these skills by watching others.
  • At five years, drawing has some realism as well as detail to it. Their person may have hair, ears, glass, fingers, and clothing.  They start to be able to draw other familiar objects such as houses, horses, dogs, trucks, and rainbows.  They use color to represent certain features such as eye color, hair, or color of a house.  Objects are generally out of proportion and floating, as learners have not developed visual perceptual skills to understand these concepts yet.  Interesting tidbit from Empowered Parents: children often place themselves large, and in the center of their drawing as they are egocentric at this stage.
  • Ages 6-7: learners start to develop a specific drawing style.  Their shapes and representations are more clearly defined at this stage. They start to draw things in perspective. such as a tree being bigger than a person, or the family standing in the grass. Colors are more realistic at this stage. Learners tend to draw what they know or are interested in.  They draw their perception of the world, such as a horse being very large next to them or windows being very high on a house.
  • Seven to twelve: drawings start to have a pattern to them, learners develop a more artistic style, and some learners begin to excel at drawing. 

Just as the average adult reads at a fifth grade level, I would venture a guess that most adults can draw at this childhood level also!  

Drawing Milestones Tests

One of the famous drawing milestones tests was seen in a scene from Silence of the Lambs. In the movie, the subject was asked to draw a person, a tree, and a house, so the examiner could determine if the man was psychotic.  

Other drawing tests are used to determine visual motor integration levels. Occupational therapists are familiar with the use of basic shapes in order to determine visual motor skills and visual perceptual skills. 

One of these drawing tests is the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOT2). This test includes a form copying portion to determine visual motor integration skills.

Another drawing test is portions of the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (Beery VMI). This test is an assessment of the child’s development of visual motor integration and includes drawing assessment to copy geometric forms arranged in order of increasing difficulty.

Draw a Person Test

The creators of the Draw a Person test claimed it was able to determine if a person had schizophrenia by the nature of the subject’s drawing.  Features such as a large head, no hair, omitted ears, and large hands, indicated various conditions such as paranoia, narcissism, oppositional behavior, impulsivity, and more.  

What do you look for when analyzing a picture? In school we learned that a person without eyes must have poor eye contact or difficulty seeing, whereas a person without ears feels they are not heard.  In practice it seems more likely that the learner forgot certain elements, doesn’t think about parts like ears, or has not mastered that stage of drawing milestones.

Have you seen any drawings that have made you pause?  Perhaps a young child drawing something graphic or violent, or possibly inappropriate?  As a rule of thumb, I try to analyze the learner as a whole, rather than becoming overly alarmed simply by their drawings. 

Clock Drawing Test

Clock-drawing tests are a traditional tool to assess the mental status of patients and is one of the most widely used screening tests for cognitive impairment in Alzhiemer’s Dementia. By drawing a clock from memory, this drawing test can assess various components such as executive functioning, visual spatial skills, and semantic memory. This drawing assessment shows presence of a cognitive decline in patience.

Benefits of Drawing 

What are the Benefits of Drawing?

  • Helps build eye-hand coordination
  • Works on bilateral integration
  • Develops fine motor skills
  • Enhances creativity when drawing freely
  • Begins the foundation of pre-writing skills
  • Helps develop grasping pattern
  • Addresses attention and focus
  • Develops cognitive skills, visual perception, and social function
  • While tracing and copying do not develop creativity, these activities will help build the other important skills above.  Hopefully copying drawings will develop into creative expression

How to Develop Drawing Milestones

  • Provide lots of tools/mediums for drawing and exploration including paint, chalk, markers, crayons, finger paints etc
  • Encourage creativity and free play with drawing tools and craft supplies
  • Entice young learners with fun objects such as glitter, sequins, pom poms, and colored paper to add to their pictures
  • Model drawing and coloring skills- color at a restaurant, while waiting for a doctor, or as a family
  • Play family drawing games such as Pictionary
  • Some learners may refuse crayons because of the texture or force needed to color.  Provide alternatives such as markers, bingo pens, or paint brushes to encourage expression
  • Look at all of the details of the drawing when critiquing. How many body parts are present, how many different colors were used, are the shapes open or closed at the corners, is the picture recognizable to others.  These measurements can be used to track their performance from previous work.

Despite what the folks at Empowered Parents say, I personally love a good coloring book.  It has not stunted my creativity,  because there are endless color combinations, glitter pens, and coloring styles!  

Drawing Milestone Activities

If a child (or older individual) has an interest in drawing, this is a great way to support development of skills. Try some of the drawing activities listed below.

The OT Toolbox is a great resource for drawing and coloring activities.  Check out some of these products:

Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.

What is Visual Attention?

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Visual attention

Visual attention is a hot topic when it comes to learning! There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to being visually attentive, however. Attention to visual information is an area of visual processing that is more than just focusing on a task or leaning activity. Attention and awareness of visual information is a skill necessary for noticing details, adjusting to patterns, reading, and so much more of the giant visual processing umbrella.

Be sure to read our resource on near point copying as visual attention plays a role in copying written work.

Visual attention

Visual Attention

Read on to discover what is visual attention and how this visual skill impacts so much of what we do.

Visual attention is a visual processing skill that allows us to notice and focus on details. Some aspects of visual attention occur automatically and immediately, and others require integration of other visual processing aspects such as visual perceptual work, focused vision, retained attention, visual mindfulness, and more.

 

What is visual attention?

First, it’s important to recognize where visual attention lies in the visual processing umbrella. Visual processing is an aspect that includes the cognitive components, once visual information is received through oculomotor skills and visual acuity.

Attention of visual information is an area of obtaining visual information and communicating that information with the brain. This collection of information requires several eye mobility skills including: voluntary eye movements, visual fixation, smooth pursuits (or visual tracking) and visual scanning.

Additionally, visual perceptual skills are included in the visual processing skill. These skills allow us to discriminate details and fill in “missing pieces” such as partially obscured portions of the form and to use the “mind’s eye” to visualize those aspects.

About Visual Processing…

For more information on visual processing and the aspects that are a part of visual skills (oculomotor skills, visual perception, visual motor integration, etc.) join us in a free 3-day email series, the Visual Processing Lab, as we discuss each aspect of visual processing with a fun, chemo or bio lab theme!

As a related component, the visual input from a picture story sequence can support needs of individuals to work on visual attention.

Visual Attention includes:

1.) Alertness- Defined as “the quality of being alert”, alertness is that watchful and attentive manner of being ready and responsive to visual information. Visual alertness requires focused vision and keenness to a specific object or area in the visual field.

2.) Selective Attention- The ability of noticing and processing specific information while disregarding other, less relevant information describes selective attention. This ability to discern visual information is needed for attending visually to information.

3.) Surrounding Attention- This aspect of attention refers to the surroundings and position in space. An awareness of our body position and the environment happening around us, including distance impacts attention at large.

4.) Mindful Alertness- The ability to be mindful and aware of visual input with a concentrated effort allows attention needed for participating in a visual task. The continuous alertness in a focused state allows us to attend with intention.

5.) Shared Attention- This aspect of visual attention allows us to shift focus between visual input. This can involve filtering of unnecessary information.

What is visual attention? It's a visual processing skill that allows us to read and maintain our place on a line of words. Visual attention allows us to copy written work and notice details. It allows us to recognize faces and letters or words. Visual attention is an important visual skill that many kids struggle with.Learn more here, as well as other information on visual processing.

 

Visual Attention and Preattentive Features

If visual memory and attention is depiction of and focusing on specific qualities of a form, then pre-attentive features are basic features of visual information that are automatically noticed by the eyes. These features are easily pulled out of a background or group in a visual display.

Pre-attentive features include:

  • Color
  • Orientation
  • Curvature
  • Size
  • Motion
  • Depth Cues
  • Vernier
  • Lustre
  • Aspects of Shape

Visual Attention and Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapy providers address functional skills in their clients. They help to support every day tasks. Visual attention is one of the underlying components that are required in the visual system and plays a key role in supporting visual processing for performance of everyday activities.

There are several types of visual problems:

1. Visual efficiency- This includes eye movements, eye alignment, and eye focusing. These three abilities relate to functional performance. 

Consider these questions related to the attentional mechanisms surrounding visual efficiency:

  • Can you be a good reader if you lose your place constantly while reading, because of poor eye movements?
  • Can you be a good reader if you are seeing double? Wouldn’t you express visual inattention as a result of double vision?
  • Can you be a good reader and learner if the words are moving in and out of focus and as a result you have headaches and eye strain? Wouldn’t these hardships signal the eyes to close one to shutdown, thus losing visual attention to the stimulus of the reading task?
  • Wouldn’t visual efficiency problems impact your ability to think with reasoning and impact comprehension as a result?

Looking at these questions, it’s easy to see the attentional effects that visual efficiency has on maintaining attention to visual stimuli. 

2. Visual Perception- Visual perceptual skills impact academic performance, and visual attention is one of these. These skills work together to allow for functional vision! Visual perception and attention skills enable the cognitive processes.

  • Visual attention
  • Visual memory (which requires attention)
  • Visual discrimination (which visual attention is a key component in order to discriminate between details)
  • Visual closure (in which visual attention is a skill that impacts the mind’s eye in closing a visual image)
  • Spatial attention in written work

3. Visual motor integration- The components of visual motor integration includes the  integrates the perceptual awareness with the motor output, and attentional skills are a main role. Consider:

  • Automaticity of movement
  • Rhythm and timing
  • Body knowledge and control
  • Laterality and directionality
  • Reaction time, which is related to the visual attention on a stimulus
  • Filtering out irrelevant information

All of these areas listed above impact everyday life! 

Visual Attention Tests

There are screening tools that can look at visual attention. These allow the examiner to determine both a focus of attention as well as efficiency and accuracy components. Attention tests won’t give the full picture when used in isolation, but they should be considered as contributing evidence of visual attention challenges. 

Some visual attention tests include:

  1. Basic vision screening- Follow a tongue depressor with a sticker at one end with the eyes, or follow the end of a pen with the eyes. The visual attention screening tool can be used to examine how the eye moves to follow a stimulus across various fields of vision. Another screening task is to ask the participant to scan between tow stimuli held at different sides of their field of vision. Both are also a way to see the attentional capacity to follow a moving target. Included in this screening is a look at pursuits (eye tracking) and saccades (eye scanning). You’ll find more information in our blog posts on visual tracking and visual scanning.
  2. Test of Visual Perceptual Skills (TVPS-4)
  3. Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration, or the Beery VMI
  4. Non-standardized screenings using Parquetry blocks (tangrams), block copying tests, and directionality tasks
  5. Copying materials from a near point and far point

Automaticity in Vision Attention

Automaticity refers to the ability to perform routine activities effortlessly and automatically, or without conscious thought. Every motor task that we do throughout the day required conscious through and effort when it was first learned. 

Once we’ve done a task for long enough, it becomes routine and automatic. We can then do other tasks at the same time. You see this when driving a car, for example. When the task of driving become so routine and ingrained that it is automatic, we can do other things at the same time: think about our day, remember a thought, carry on a conversation, change the radio station, etc.

Driving is an extremely complex task that moves to a conscious routine over time!

However, the issue is that we have a sort of blindness when we do other things even during an automatic task. Have you ever driven home from work, only to not recall the drive because you were thinking about other things?

We as humans also challenge ourselves, often unsafely, by thinking we can do other things while performing an automatic task. Think: texting while driving. The results from this is unfortunate.

What is at play with automaticity is the visual attention skill that moves from a conscious effort to an unconscious effort.

Similarly, this ability is present when we read or write. 

A proficient reader is able to automatically recognize, recall, and reproduce, or write, letters and numbers without conscious effort to identify each letter and number form. 

This attention to detail has become ingrained and automatic. 

When we see challenges with reading proficiency, comprehension, speed, and overall the student who is struggling academically, the automaticity may be missing. The visual scene is incomplete without the automatic integration of visual attention.

Visual Attention Activities

Visual challenges with spatial skills, omitting materials in reading or writing, and other functional considerations can mean working on visual attention can help. Attention tasks like the ones below can support this skill.

The goal for using these visual attention activities is to have comfortable, efficient, and accurate vision at various distances through the function of play and learning. We want to see eye alignment, eye focusing, and eye movements, all operating at an automatic and reflexive level, or without conscious effort.

  • Tangram activities
  • Laterality or directionality activities
  • Letter tracking in word searches
  • Brock string 
  • Bead stringing sequences
  • Directional jumps
  • Mazes
  • Code deciphering activities
  • Dots game
  • Sorting items (beads, buttons, etc.)
  • Hidden pictures activities
  • I Spy
  • What’s missing activities
  • Spot it game
  • Sequencing activities

For the individual with cognitive impairments such as following a stroke or other impairment in which visual inattention is present, some strategies can include:

  • Eye patching
  • Dynamic stimuli (flashing lights)
  • Activities to activate orientation and overall attention
  • Verbal cueing
  • Auditory cuing (bell, finger tapping, snapping, etc.)
  • Tactile cuing to engage the participant to look at the unattended side
  • Mirror therapy

Using an adaptive approach to visual inattention is important to foster functional participation, independence, and safety. These strategies can include:

  • Compensation strategies
  • Incorporate the patient’s awareness 
  • Place necessary items within the patient’s field of vision

How to work on Visual Attention

For more information and specific activities that can address visual attententiveness in fun and meaningful ways, grab the Visual Processing Bundle. In it, you will find 17 digital products, e-books, workbooks, and guides to addressing various aspects of visual processing. The bundle is valued at over $97 dollars for these products, and includes over 235 pages of tools, activities, resources, information, and strategies to address visual processing needs.


For one week, the visual processing bundle is on sale at $29.99. Grab the Visual Processing Bundle HERE.

 

References:
Wolfe J. Visual attention. In: De Valois KK, editor. Seeing. 2nd ed. San Diego, CA:
Academic Press; 2000. p. 335-386.

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.

Handwriting Assessment: Occupational Therapy

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occupational therapy handwriting assessment

Occupational therapy handwriting assessments analyze the components of handwriting to discover what may be leading to sloppy or illegible handwriting. One way that occupational therapy practitioners work with students in school based OT is by conducting handwriting assessments in occupational therapy. Here, we are covering areas that an OT looks at in an occupational therapy handwriting assessment.

Occupational therapy practitioners tend to get a bad rap in the schools because they are the go-to service for supporting handwriting needs. While we aren’t “handwriting teachers”, we do know a lot about the intricacies of underlying skills that impact legibility! Identifying those specific needs all starts with the handwriting eval!

To get started, you’ll want to begin with the occupational therapy eval request, and then we can go from there…

handwriting assessment occupational therapy

Handwriting Assessment Occupational Therapy

When it comes to analyzing handwriting, there is no escaping handwriting if you are a pediatric OT.  Handwriting evaluations and interventions is a main task of school-based occupational therapists. It’s no wonder when you consider that handwriting is one of the primary tasks that school-aged children engage in, and is one of the most prominent reasons for an OT referral in the school and outpatient settings.

Today we’re talking handwriting analysis and clinical observations related to assessing handwriting.

Check out our informative video on handwriting evaluations in the classroom environment:

Seems like handwriting should be pretty easy right? The challenge in teaching kids to use legible handwriting is often the limited exposure we receive prior to entering the field, and ensuring that we are providing a skilled service and not tutoring.

Handwriting analysis of writing samples is an important part of a handwriting evaluation. These underlying skills are essential clinical observations in handwriting assessment.

Handwriting Clinical Observations

In a handwriting assessment occupational therapy providers look at specific areas. These are the skilled components that are necessary for figuring out what’s going on.

When I was in school, we briefly touched on fundamentals of handwriting, and the Handwriting without Tears program. I later had some great exposure to handwriting during my Level 2 fieldwork in a school setting, but still felt unprepared to really dive into what prohibited kid’s from learning to write, and to then decipher those findings. For information on Handwriting Without Tears letter order, we have a comprehensive explanation on that aspect of this program.

Since practicing on my own, I have developed a set of clinical observations that are relevant to the handwriting process as it relates to OT and what they meant in terms of function. Check out the list of clinical observations below.

Working on handwriting and pencil grasp? Be sure to join the Pencil Grasp Challenge…a FREE five day challenge loaded with information, strategies, and resources related to a functional pencil grasp.

Below are strategies to use in analyzing handwriting. These are clinical observations that can impact the legibility of written work.

Fine Motor Skills in an Occupational Therapy Handwriting Eval

One major component to handwriting is fine motor skills, and this motor aspect is assessed in the handwriting assessment occupational therapy practitioners conduct.

Fine motor skills play a HUGE role in a child’s ability to participate in writing activities. From grasp patterns, to which hand they use, to endurance and in-hand manipulation skills—there’s a lot to make sure you are checking off during your observations and evaluations.

Let’s break down the components that are assessed in a handwriting evaluation. OT’s typically look at:

We’ve broken these skills down into categories below.

  • Pencil Grip/Grasp pattern
  • Dynamic finger movements
  • Finger mobility
  • Joint positioning and joint integrity
  • Hand and wrist mobility
  • Posture
  • Segmental Drawing
  • Hand dominance
  • Visual motor skills (segmental line skills)
  • Letter formation
  • Sizing, spacing, line use
  • Sequence and strokes of pencil lines
  • Uppercase and lowercase letter usage
  • Fluidity of handwriting

Pencil Grip

This one seems like an obvious one, but there have been many times that I have sat down to write an evaluation and realized that I didn’t note anything about the grip pattern.  Yikes! The major points of clinical observations of pencil grips to keep in mind are that you watch for dynamic finger movement, hyperextension of joints and overall functionality.

Here are some important things that therapists wish parents and teachers knew about pencil grasp.

Grasp pattern in a handwriting Assessment Occupational Therapy

When an occupational therapist conducts an OT handwriting assessment, they look at the grasp pattern the student is using when writing. The occupational therapist asks themselves what does this look like while the child is writing? Is it a dynamic tripod? Static tripod? Or some form of primitive grasp pattern like a fingertip pattern or a gross grasp? 

Make sure that you watch throughout the evaluation to see if they have any regression to a primitive pattern or switch how they hold the writing utensil frequently. 

If you notice grasp pattern regressions, fidgeting or switching of grasp positions frequently, it’s a sign of fatigue related to poor muscle endurance and strength. It may also be an indicator that there is poor separation of the two sides of the hand, under development of the arches of the hand, and finger to thumb opposition, and even potentially poor web space development. 

Bonus Tip! Watch for consistency of skills. If you notice that a skill is consistent, even if it’s an immature pattern, you can determine what is due to poor muscle strength and fatigue (inconsistent patterns) versus an established pattern or compensatory pattern (consistent patterns) that’s going to be difficult to change. 

Dynamic Finger Movements and Pencil Grip

Dynamic finger movement is a big key to preventing fatigue. If the hand or wrist move as a unit, fatigue and endurance significantly increase. Dynamic movements also allow for more control of the utensil within a given space.

 Once dynamic movements have developed, it is exponentially easier for the kiddo to color or write in small spaces, form multi-step lower case letters and produce smaller sized letters and numbers.  

Occupational Therapists Look at Finger Mobility in a Handwriting Eval

Similar to wrist and hand mobility, you will also want to assess finger movements and joint isolation. 

Mature patterns will allow for the thumb, index and ring fingers to move in synchronized flexion/extension patterns to great dynamic movements. If you don’t see this, or notice that the child uses their whole hand to form letters, this is another inefficient pattern that you’ll want to address in your treatment. 

If you’re not sure that this is an issue, have the child walk their fingers up and down a pencil to evaluate their in-hand manipulation skill focusing on shift. 

Whether you are assessing an 8th grader or a preschooler, fine motor components are addressed across the continuum to promoting independent and successful handwriting experiences. Working from this list of skills you can develop these skills further and take the stress out of handwriting!

Functionality of Pencil Grip

Current evidence-based practice in occupational therapy indicates that there are several functional pencil grip patterns outside of the standard tripod grasp pattern that we all identify as “the best” or “most functional” grip pattern. Other patterns include static and dynamic variations of tripod and quadropod grips.

However, I really encourage you to just take a minute to see if the child is functional with their current grip pattern. Trying to change the pattern they are functional with is not always the best option for addressing handwriting.

If they are able to control the utensil for accurate execution of strokes, are able to remain in the given boundary and are not showing signs of poor endurance or fatigue—then they are functional and other components of handwriting should be addressed.

Hyper-Extended Fingers and Pencil Grip

When a child hyper-extends a joint when holding a writing utensil, the grip typically appears “tight” or “too hard”. Hyperextension can lead to damage in the joint itself, along with uncomfortable feelings to the fingers, increased levels of fatigue, poor overall endurance, and hinder dynamic movement. 

Children with poor overall joint stability or poor strength often exhibit this pattern of pencil grips. The “tight” or “too hard” grip that leads to hyperextension is a compensatory strategy to increase motor control and dexterity within the task. Due to the variety of pencil grips that children display, it is important to assess the functionality of the grip before attempting to change it.

Analyzing Joint Integrity in an OT Handwriting Evaluation

Joint integrity of the joints of the fingers, hand, and wrist when holding a pencil is an important component of pencil grasp that needs to be assessed and documented during a handwriting assessment by the occupational therapist.

Joint integrity is super important because a child that has a grasp pattern that is too tight or too loose can have compromised joints. 

A grasp pattern that is too tight puts undue stress on the joints, ligaments and muscles which will lead to poor endurance, and hand cramps. And even potentially repetitive stress injuries. 

On the opposite end, a grasp pattern that is too loose or where the child has hyper extended joints, they will experience similar pain and concerns. They are more likely to have joint pain due to the bone on bone of hyper extension patterns. 

Both patterns are inefficient and will need to be addressed to help the child be successful with handwriting.

Analyzing Wrist and Hand Mobility

Related to the above factors is a more proximal look at the motor component. Occupational therapists will assess the wrist and hand mobility in a handwriting eval because the stability of the joint proximal to the arches and fingers offer the support to provide distal mobility and dexterity.

In this category, we want to look at how the wrist and hand move both as a unit, but also separately. Ideally, the hand and wrist should move independently of one another when writing with the wrist being stable and the hand moving.

If you see that the child is moving their hand and wrist as a unit with stabilization coming through the forearm, that is an inefficient movement pattern that you will want to work on addressing. This pattern is inefficient because it requires more energy from large muscle groups instead of utilizing them for stability.

Posture and handwriting

I want to touch on posture’s impact on handwriting quickly because you can learn some interesting things about a child’s handwriting this way.

If they are slouched over or use their hand to hold their head up, poor core and upper body strength may be the culprit. This will greatly impact their fine motor skills. Without a strong foundation, dexterity skills will not develop.

It’s also important to note if the hand that is holding the child’s head up is covering one eye consistently. This may indicate that there is an underlying vision issue that needs to be addressed. Children typically cover the eye that is making them see double or causing blurred vision.

This is not only an issue from a vision standpoint, but also because you now don’t know what the child is seeing for letters or strokes. Once the vision concern is addressed, the child may have to “relearn” the letters and strokes which can appear as a regression of skills.

Similar concerns are also noted when the child is consistently adjusting their head position in location to the paper.

Hand Dominance

Dominance plays a large role in handwriting and if a child does not display a dominant side, or has mixed dominance, delays in handwriting can occur.

Lack of dominance can prevent adequate levels of motor practice of strokes and letters from being completed. This can then lead to sloppy or illegible writing, along with confusion on the sequence of strokes to form letters. Children who display these motor patterns typically have delayed automation of handwriting, may have a higher incidence in reversals and struggle with getting their thoughts onto paper.

These three simple tips on hand dominance, laterality, and functional activities are a resource in establishing this essential skill.

When looking at hand dominance, you want to look and see if they are consistent with the use of one hand, or if they are trying to switch hands. If you observe challenges with consistency, this may indicate poor muscle strength and endurance. 

Visual Motor Skills

Visual motor integration is a major piece of the handwriting assessment that occupational therapists analyze. Visual motor skills enable us to write using specific aspects that highly contribute to overall handwriting legibility:

Each of these components plays a different role in overall handwriting legibility. In general, writing that has poor sizing, spacing, and letter formation will have challenges with letter formation. However, when some of the components are addressed (spacing between words and baseline use), legibility increases greatly allowing for functional handwriting. In most cases, functional and legible writing is possible even with mixed case use and inconsistencies with letter size. Think about your average medical doctor, whose scripts are written in mixed case and mixed size. Many adults work with these handwriting inaccuracies and the written output is legible and functional.

However, in the teaching moment of working on these skills, legible handwriting for children and students has a different version of functional, so that for the child, addressing letter size along with line use and spacing supports legible written output.

The handwriting occupational therapy assessment then needs to take all of these contributing factors into consideration in order to create an individualized plan of care to support legible written work.

Segmental Drawing

Segmental drawing is when a child “draws” or writes a letter using singular strokes with clear, and abrupt stops between the strokes. This is time consuming, and requires a high level of active thought for the child. Essentially, it’s very non-functional and needs to be addressed.

Segmental drawing not only provides a picture about the child’s writing skills, it also provides insight to the therapist on how they process information. Children who typically utilize segmental drawing are only able to process small or shorter pieces of information at one time. For example, they may need directions given in short bursts or in simple statements to be successful.

Sequence of Strokes and Handwriting

Building on segmental drawing is the sequence in which strokes are completed. Letters in our culture flow from top to bottom, and left to right. A child who is demonstrating a bottom to top orientation or sequence of strokes, when writing may have a significantly harder time learning to form letters correctly and fluidly. Their brains may be “wired” naturally to move in this pattern, or they may be compensating for a visual motor impairment such as spatial relations deficits.

uppercase/lowercase letters Assessment

The case a child chooses to write in, or the combination of case they use provides information on letters that they may be unable to recall, are unsure of their direction (reversal prevention/compensatory strategy), or are unable to execute. By analyzing the use of upper case and lower case letters you can determine where the break down in skill is.

Fluidity and Handwriting

Finally, as all of these observations come together, the final piece is fluidity.  This looks at a few different things including the child’s speed of writing, whether they talk to themselves or watch their hand when they write, and if they demonstrate any motor overflow.

The amount of time that a child takes to write can be an indication of poor memory recall and lack of automation of the writing process. The longer the task takes, the more difficulties the child is having retrieving the information from their memory and utilizing it effectively.

Children who are struggling with writing often talk themselves through the process—from where to start to the verbal cues taught to them. This external processing further indicates poor processing speeds. This can also be seen in the form of oral motor overflow. This is when a child’s mouth moves in odd patterns, they stick their tongue out or some combination of jaw and tongue movement.

Along with motor overflow and outward verbal processing, a child may watch her hand when writing. By watching her hand, the child ensures that the stroke she recalled from her memory is indeed correct and that she is able to execute it. This pattern further hinders the automation of handwriting and indicates challenges with processing and memory recall. When writing requires this much active thought for just the formation of the letters, spelling, sizing, spacing, and thought completion often go by the way side.

Use these handwriting analysis strategies to analyze pencil grasp and writing components during handwriting evaluations.

Final Thoughts

Handwriting is such a large part of being a kid, and being a pediatric OT, that it deserves more attention than it often gets. There are so many foundational skills that go into handwriting, and many places for the skills to become a challenge for a kiddo.

Hopefully everyone from seasoned OT’s to brand new grad’s found this post helpful and learned something new in handwriting analysis and clinical observations needed to assess handwriting.

The Handwriting Book is a comprehensive resource created by experienced pediatric OTs and PTs.

The Handwriting Book covers everything you need to know about handwriting, guided by development and focused on function. This digital resource is is the ultimate resource for tips, strategies, suggestions, and information to support handwriting development in kids.

The Handwriting Book breaks down the functional skill of handwriting into developmental areas. These include developmental progression of pre-writing strokes, fine motor skills, gross motor development, sensory considerations, and visual perceptual skills. Each section includes strategies and tips to improve these underlying areas.

  • Strategies to address letter and number formation and reversals
  • Ideas for combining handwriting and play
  • Activities to practice handwriting skills at home
  • Tips and strategies for the reluctant writer
  • Tips to improve pencil grip
  • Tips for sizing, spacing, and alignment with overall improved legibility

Click here to grab your copy of The Handwriting Book today.

Presidents Day Coloring Pages

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President's Day coloring pages

Today we have a fun printable resource: presidents day coloring pages! These are great for President’s Day, but also any any holiday with flags and stars. We know the power of coloring in developing fine motor skills, visual motor skills. Be sure to grab these free printable coloring pages of presidents and US holiday images! You’ll also want to use these occupational therapy coloring pages in building skills in therapy, at home, and in the classroom. 

President's Day coloring pages

Get this free printable at the bottom of the post, as well as way to use this US presidents activity in a variety of ways to support OT goal areas.

Presidents day coloring pages

Presidents Day is nearing and what will you do? How about coloring?  You can simply work on coloring or jazz it up and combine colors to create a new color!  Read on and you will find coloring sheets appropriate for multiple skill levels and sheets that help to celebrate past and current presidents.

Do you want to expand on how you use these sheets?  Use them as an opportunity to learn about the United States Presidents from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson to the current president, Joe Biden, and all others in between.  

Read on to find coloring and learning sheets designed for ALL ages!

February 21st is President’s Day but we designed these Presidents Day Coloring Pages to be used for various holidays in America. They include other items to color:

  • Flag
  • Stars and Stripes
  • Presidents of the United States
  • more

President coloring sheets and learning pages are great for American history, Presidents Day, and for the season. Once the weather begins to warm some, you can pull these out and share how some of these presidents have shaped our country.  You will find simple coloring sheets for youngsters and coloring pages with key facts about each president to supplement the educational program intended for the day. 

Need to more fully understand what skills are involved in learning to color or do you need other ideas for how to teach coloring skills?

Then check out our posts here at The OT Toolbox – How to Teach Coloring Skills which teaches the skills needed for coloring, coloring skills by age, and the tools you can use to teach coloring to multiple age groups, and The Benefits of Coloring with Crayons that teaches why coloring with crayons provides so many benefits and helps to build important basic skills. Don’t forget while you’re there to check out this post too – How to Teach Carryover of a Functional Grasp with Coloring which gives you tips to teach kids to carryover the grasp skills they’ve learned in therapy during coloring.

free presidents day coloring pages

Use these President’s Day coloring sheets in a variety of ways:

  1. Color in single objects to work on hand strength
  2. Address line awareness and spatial awareness
  3. Work on spatial relations by identifying objects in relation to others
  4. Direction-following skills: Ask the child to color a specific object on the president coloring pages a certain color and then another item a different color. You can make this specific to the child’s needs and grade the activity
  5. Play a Presidents Day I Spy game: Ask the child to find and color Abraham Lincoln for example
  6. Work on handwriting skills- Ask the child to color an object and then write the words on paper.
  7. Address scissor skills- Cut out pictures on the President’s Day coloring sheets
  8. Write sentences with patriotic vocabulary using the images on the free worksheets

How will you use this PDF file to develop skills with a president’s day theme?

We hope that you have enjoyed this collection of Presidents Day coloring sheets which provides a variety of sheets that addresses multiple skills while also giving the coloring aspect as the main reason for it. These are perfect for the upcoming holiday, so just print them and celebrate! 

Get your presidents Day activities sheets below

Enter your email address into the form below to access these printable pages. You can also find this resource inside The OT Toolbox membership under our therapy theme: President’s Day and US holidays. Level 1 members can access this and all of the free downloads on the website under freebie dashboard: Coloring Pages.

Free Presidents Day Coloring Pages

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    Regina Allen

    Regina Parsons-Allen is a school-based certified occupational therapy assistant. She has a pediatrics practice area of emphasis from the NBCOT. She graduated from the OTA program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute in Hudson, North Carolina with an A.A.S degree in occupational therapy assistant. She has been practicing occupational therapy in the same school district for 20 years. She loves her children, husband, OT, working with children and teaching Sunday school. She is passionate about engaging, empowering, and enabling children to reach their maximum potential in ALL of their occupations as well assuring them that God loves them!

    Self-Reflection Activities

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    self reflection activities

    In this blog post, we are addressing self-reflection activities as a tool to support self-understanding, self-awareness, and personal insight. In young children, this is a challenge that progresses as development occurs. But for some, the personal perspective becomes an area of frustration when empathy, executive functioning, and the ability to self-evaluate is a challenge. Challenges in the ability to self-reflect impact functional performance, social emotional skills, and learning. Let’s cover self-reflection activities and specific self-awareness exercises as a tool for development and personal growth.

    self reflection activities

    Self-Reflection Activities

    Self reflection leads to growth.  Without looking back at failures and successes, growth is inhibited. If you are one of the few who are actually perfect in every way, you can stop reading.  For the rest of the world, read on.  The start of a new year often brings bouts of goal setting and self reflection.  

    WHAT IS SELF AWARENESS?

    Self-reflection is a tool that kids and adults can benefit from. Reflecting on one’s actions and behaviors is a great way to grow as an individual and to meet personal goals. Think about a time you’ve set a personal goal. Maybe you wanted to start exercising and lose a few pounds.

    By self-reflecting on a day’s events, you can determine what worked in meeting your goal and what didn’t work. You can intentionally put a finger on the parts of your day that helped you meet your goal of going to the gym and what stood in the way of eating healthy meals.

    Self-reflection is essential for goal-setting! Most of these occupational therapy activities are free or inexpensive ways to address self-reflection in kids.

    Whether this is the start of a school year, or the turning of the calendar to a new year, self reflection activities and resolutions begin to surface.  For some, self reflection comes naturally, searching for meaning, purpose, and ways to become a better person.  Others find reflection difficult.  

    This post is full of self reflection activities to spark conversation, goal setting, and prompt growth.

    It has been said that the first stage of recovery or change, is to recognize there is a problem.  

    Many people are unable or unwilling to change because they do not believe there is a problem.  Becoming aware takes a lot of self reflection.  

    People need to recognize the skills they have, and those they are lacking.  They need to keep an open mind about who they are and where they are going. 

    These self-reflection activities can be a vehicle for helping kids to address areas of functioning in several areas. Improving self-reflection can help kids with self-regulation, knowing what coping strategies to pull out of their toolbox, how to act with impulse control, how to better pay attention, how to improve executive functioning skills, and how to function more easily. It’s the ability to stop and think before acting or responding, based on internal knowledge and experiences.

    Additionally, self-reflection pays a part in mindfulness. If we are practicing attentiveness in the moment and attending to internal and external experiences, we can self-reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, and how to make things work better next time.

    Self-reflection can be so helpful in social-emotional skills, academic learning, functional task completion, organization, and well-being! An awareness of self and the impact one’s own actions has on others is part of the stages of empathy development, too.

    According to Dean Graziosi, New York Times best selling author, “Self-awareness is the ability to understand your thoughts, emotions and core values, as well as realize how these elements impact your behavior. It requires emotional intelligence, and it’s about objectively evaluating yourself and aligning your actions with your internal standards.  To be self-aware is to be able to realistically assess your strengths and weaknesses while maintaining a positive mindset. It’s the ability to judge where you are in life, determine where you would like to be and set goals to achieve your vision.”

    To become self-aware, you must be able to:

    • See yourself honestly, flaws and all
    • Identify and control your emotions
    • Realize your strengths and weaknesses
    • Take strides toward growth – having a growth mindset helps

    One tool for supporting awareness of emotions in general is by doing an emotions check in where the student (or any one, this can be done at any age), identifies how they feel and what their emotions are based on the situation, setting, and triggers. Another tool which is similar but different, is the feelings check in.

    Self-Reflection Activities for Kids

    One of the first steps in raising self-reflection to to help kids be more self-aware. They can use tools to improve mindfulness to notice how they feel, how the react, or how they behave. Most kids will struggle with this ability in the moment (It’s tough for adults, too!) but they can identify what worked and what didn’t work in a particular situation through conversation.

    Using self-control strategies like the Zones of Regulation can be helpful in talking about feelings and self-awareness.

    Explore along with the child. When a child is playing or exploring their environment, it can be helpful to play right along with them. Use play experiences to communicate through play.

    Use play experiences to mirror actions. When a child is playing, play right along with them! Mimic their actions and words to be more aware as a caregiver of the details of a child’s interactions and to bring awareness for the child. Use this tactic only when the child is in a positive mood. Mirrored actions should not be completed when a child is behaving poorly or to bring attention to behaviors.

    Reflect on the day as a family. Plan a family meeting and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the day. It’s a good way to talk about ways to work on areas of need.

    Create a Choice Collection. Come up with options that include coping strategies or tools to use in different environments. These could be part of a sensory diet or self-regulation strategies.

    Work on impulse control. The impulse control journal can help.

    Use a journal to self-reflect through words or drawings.

    Act out situations and how the situation played out. Consider adding dolls or toys for characters in the situations.

    Model appropriate behaviors and self-reflection through conversation.

    The sensory-based strategies outlined in The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook can be a beneficial tool for addressing self-reflection in kids.

    Executive Functioning Skills

    Positive Self-Talk for Kids

    Impulse Control Strategies

    Finally, try some of these self awareness games to build skills through game-playing.

    reflection about personal development

    Children, teens, and adults of all ages develop in different ways. It’s said that we never stop learning, and this is true at every age and stage. Through learning experiences, there is either success or failure, with some level in the middle. This development occurs whether learning a new skill, trying something new, or trying a new way of doing something. 

    When there is learning, there is personal development. 

    As participants in an activity, we can utilize self-awareness skills to monitor successes or challenges that lead to goal achievement. 

    We can use that information to identify areas of need, or specific areas that we need to try again in a different way. 

    This allows us to create a feedback analysis of sorts that supports further growth in an area. 

    Some ways to reflect on personal development include tactics that are used for self-awareness and goal achievement. These strategies are types of reflection exercises and include:

    • Self-talk
    • Monitoring progress
    • Goal mind maps
    • Goal ladders
    • Identifying next steps
    • Talking with others for constructive feedback
    • Addressing negative feedback

    POSITIVE SELF REFLECTION ACTIVITIES

    Self-reflection activities are not just focused on the negative perspective.

    There is a certain stigma to self reflection activities that they are just focusing on the negative things that need to change.  There is positive self reflection also.  What did you do well that you need to encourage yourself to keep doing?  What did you learn that will be a great asset to your skillset?

    Positive self reflection takes as much practice as reflection for growth.

    Theoretically is your glass half full or empty?  Do your learners search for problems, look for drama, or doubt themselves?  By answering these questions we can come up with tools to support habits that our learners might be challenged with. Self-awareness activities are strategies to support self-reflection.

    Encourage positive self reflection by trying some of the following activities: 

    • Write three positive things about yourself each day
    • Journal about positive experiences
    • Practice acts of kindness
    • Don’t compare yourself to others, solely reflect on your own abilities
    • Start a gratitude journal along with various gratitude activities
    • Ask yourself self reflection questions
    • Positive self talk activities for kids
    • I am….- learners write positive statements starting with “I am”
    • Post positive affirmations around the room, class, social media, or wherever it helps to self reflect on positive thoughts and actions
    • Teach learners to flip a negative into a positive – I am bad at math, could be turned into I am a great reader, or I can count to 1000
    • Use a mirror for positive self talk – practice affirming while looking at yourself
    • Create a positive self talk morning ritual – The Miracle Morning is a powerful resource

    SELF REFLECTION ACTIVITIES FOR GROWTH

    Everyone has room for growth. Some have the personality type that limits self-reflection and personal awareness, while others have a stream of consciousness that easily enables self-reflection. We are all unique individuals, and these different types of traits are totally ok!

    I bet the number one athletes in the Olympics believe there is room for growth.  Practice does not make perfect, it makes it better.  When I am evaluating students, I often start by asking them why they think I am seeing them.  Most of them have some idea, even if they have no idea what Occupational Therapy is.  That is my jumping off point.  I find out what they believe to be their weaknesses and strengths, and go from there.  They may not be accurate, but it is their belief, so it can be shaped.  

    • The key to shaping beliefs and setting goals is to set measurable ones.  The acronym SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound.  
    • Use metrics and data to gather correct information about skills and deficits
    • Learners who have an unrealistic view of themselves, may need counseling to work through this.  Body dysmorphia is one such example.  People suffering from BD see flaws that no one else sees.  They set unrealistic expectations and goals for themselves trying to reach an imaginary goal
    • Teach The Power of Yet – I may not be the best chess player YET.  I could be with more practice and instruction
    • Ask useful questions – create writing prompts starting with key questions:
      • What am I afraid of?
      • I struggle when . . .
      • One of the most important things I learned was . . .
      • Being myself is hard because . . .
      • I wish I were more . . .
    • Letter to future self – what would your learners tell their future self?
    • Create a realistic self view – while some learners feel they are all bad, others feel they are amazing.  It seems counterintuitive, but the second group will need some help to realize everyone has growth potential.  Gently shape these learners to also see their weaknesses as well as their strengths without squelching their self confidence
    • Take a step back – electronics spoon feed information, making it readily available.   The answers are just a click away.  While this is great in some ways, it is not teaching self control, reflection, and the power of doing nothing
    • Utilize the individual’s passions as a vehicle for addressing self-awareness. If they have a hobby or skill where they are successful, how did they learn the ability to complete aspects of that skill? How did they accomplish goals? How would they support another learner who is at the beginning of this skill learning? Sometimes when shifting the perspective to a teaching role, we can all use creativity in supporting self-reflection skills. 
    • Focus on emotional vocabulary as a tool to support students’ reflections of themselves, whether they are looking at personal achievements in a positive light or a negative light. This is an important skill to encourage, as we all have moments of doubt and moments of high confidence and assurance. Emotional learning is one tool in the toolbelt for supporting self-reflection in daily functional tasks.

    A FINAL THOUGHT on self-reflection activities

    Mindfulness is not new, but it has resurfaced as people have forgotten how to slow down.  Monks have been using this technique for centuries.  They can sit for an entire day doing and thinking nothing.  They are able to clear their mind for hours.  I have tried this and can make it about 30 seconds before my mind is racing.  It even races while I sleep.  Self reflection takes the same discipline and focus to make it meaningful.  

    As with anything new and different, change takes time and practice.  The act of self reflection itself, can be your first goal!

    Use these self-reflection activities for kids to help kids reflect on behaviors and identify coping skills or self-regulation strategies that work in the home or classroom.
     

     
    Impulse Control Journal the OT Toolbox

    The Impulse Control Journal…a printable resource for helping kids strategize executive functioning skill development. When saying “calm down” just isn’t enough…

    When a child is easily “triggered” and seems to melt down at any sign of loud noises or excitement…

    When you need help or a starting point to teach kids self-regulation strategies…

    When you are struggling to motivate or redirect a child without causing a meltdown…

    When you’re struggling to help kids explore their emotions, develop self-regulation and coping skills, manage and reflect on their emotions, identify their emotions, and more as they grow…

    Grab the Impulse Control Journal to build organizational strategies, planning, prioritization, habits, and mindset in kids.

    Functional Play

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    Functional play

    Play is the primary role of the child and so in In this blog post, we are covering functional play to support development using toys you might find in most households. Occupational therapy supports the development of individuals across the lifespan and when working with children, the main tool for supporting development of skills is functional play. Not only for young children, but throughout the lifespan there is functional play. We cover more on OT play interventions in our occupational therapy play post.

    Functional play

    Today we are talking about using everyday toy items in developing skills in therapy sessions or at home, all to promote child development.

    What is functional play?

    Functional play refers to using toys, objects, and items designed for play in their intended function to participate in play as an occupation. There are many types of play and the various functional play skills promote development in young children. Play age and stage makes a difference in the development of functional play. 

    For example, functional play is:

    • Building blocks into a tower or other imaginative construction
    • Coloring with crayons
    • Driving matchbox cars along the floor
    • Swinging a bat to hit a ball
    • Kicking, throwing, or rolling a ball
    • Pushing a doll in a play stroller
    • Using a volleyball to play a volleyball game

    Many toys can be used in ways different than their intended nature. We see this a lot in occupational therapy sessions where we think outside the box with the toys we have on hand. Toys are used in ways not exactly inline with their function, or the reason why they were created.

    • We use blocks or jump ropes to make an obstacle course path.
    • We make playdough using crayons.
    • We stack kitchen containers.
    • We climb up the slide.

    Each of these examples stretches the object’s typical use into other ways to play.

    Functional play is neither right, or wrong.

    It’s good and natural to think outside the box. Functional play offers tools for healthy development in children. The opposite of functional play, or using those very same toys in ways that they were not intended is healthy for the development of children, as well!

    Like many homes, ours has lots of children’s toys in random locations. Books under the coffee table. Light up balls in the hallway. Sports equipment by the door.

    But.  Then I remember the function that all of these toys brings to my children.  These plastic pieces, wooden blocks, and little figures are tools for learning and development.  They are the tools of functional play!

    We all use toys, tools, equipment, and materials in functional play.

    Types of Functional Play

    The types of play change over the course of development. Broken down, play includes these various stage of play as a developmental progression:

    We can break down each form of play into play activities that utilize the levels of play as a powerful tool to support development. In each level listed above, you’ll see components:

    • Creative play
    • Communication play
    • Movement-based play
    • Socio-dramatic play
    • Dramatic play
    • Imaginative play
    • Explorative play
    • Fantasy play
    • Mastery play
    • Role play
    • Historical play

    How do kids use basic toys in imagination, language development, social skills, fine motor strength, sensory integration, gross motor development, and problem solving?  

    Toys are tools of function and help to develop a child’s skills in so many areas.  Grab a cup of coffee, move the ninja turtles from their couch battle scene, and read on!

     

     

     

    Developmental play ideas for function in kids with everyday play items.

     

     

     

    The Function of Play in Kids

    In Occupational Therapy, probably one of the most asked questions is, “What is Occupational Therapy?” Since hanging up my graduation cap over 15 years ago, I’ve probably answered this question a few zillion times.  
     
    Occupational Therapy is rehabilitation and treatment of activities of a person’s daily living skills and occupations in order to improve function.  A child’s occupations are learning to get themselves dressed, feeding themselves, and play, (among other things and depending on their age)!  
     
    Whatever is important to a person, whether it be interests or to function throughout a day, is what an Occupational Therapist can work on in therapy services. 
     
    “Play is a child’s work.”  It’s a phrase coined by Maria Montesorri, and a concept developed by  Jean Piaget.  Through play, children learn, develop, and integrate their systems and functional abilities.  
     
    Today, I’m going to share how children can use those random toys scattered all over the house in development and learning.


    But first, here are a few easy play ideas we’ve shared on the blog using toys you probably have around the house:

     

    Build a Tinker Toys Pulley system and explore STEM concepts in learning with kids.Toys that will help improve pencil graspUse this gift guide to help kids who need tools and toys to help with attention and focus in the classroom, school, or at home.Hand strengthening activity for kids to play and create buildings with a asimple, no-prep activity. This is perfect for a busy bag activity for kids to do while waiting at restaurants or other places. Also tips and ideas to work on intrinsic hand strengthening in kids, from an Occupational Therapist.

     

     

    The Role of Play for Children

    From infancy, play is a way of learning and developing skills.  A baby reaches for a rattle and discovers that their arm can move intentionally.  
     
    The sound, weight, and texture of a rattle integrates into the child’s central nervous system and establishes neural pathways.  
     
    This early sensory integration and every interaction with the environment helps to work on sensory processing in a child.  As a child ages, they bounce, run, jump, and LOVE to play; their body seeks play.  
     
    From 0-2, play is solitary.  They are experiencing tastes, touch, sights, sounds, and smells.
     
     
    A one year old repeats the same play actions over and over again in play routines.  Peek-a-boo and putting blocks into a basket over and over again helps the child to master physical and sensory skills.  
     
    They develop problem solving, cause and effect, direction following, and a sense of self.
     

    Functional Play for a Baby is:

    • Peek a boo games
    • Board books with an adult
    • Cloth toys
    • Teething toys
    • Texture toys
    • High contrast toys
    • Play mats
    • Floor play
    • Balls and sorting toys
     
    Developmental play ideas for function in kids with everyday play items.
     
     
     

    Functional Play for Toddlers

    Toddlers begin to imitate, pretend, and play with others.  Pretend play encourages language, emotional exploration, and “job” scenes.  Through pretend play, children build social skills.  
     
    They can lead scenes, take turns, follow directions, explore empathy, gain more of a sense of self, build self-confidence, while working on tool use, clothing fasteners, and building and developing fine and gross motor skills.
     
    Toddlers explore their environment by walking an finding things, putting things into containers, rolling things, throwing things, turning pages, and examining the inside and outside of things.  
     
    From 2 to 2.5, children observe others but do not play with them. Kids aged 2.5-3 play alongside other children, but not with them in social situations. Starting at 3, children often times begin to interact with others in their play.  
    • Bath toys
    • Scribbling with crayons
    • Putting toys into a sorter
    • Rolling a ball
    • Carrying a bag full of toys
    • Pushing a toy shopping cart
    • Cause-effect toys
    • Board books
     
    Developmental play ideas for function in kids with everyday play items.
     

    Functional Play for Preschool

     
    In Preschool aged children, kids play together with shared roles. They are curious and love to explore stories about animals and people.  
     
    Crayons, paints, scissors, clay, sand, dirt, and other things are fun!  
     
    Running, jumping, tumbling, rolling, and spinning provide movement and heavy work fun.  
     
    Functional play in the preschool years includes:
    • Pretend play with baby dolls, figures, cars
    • Building with blocks
    • Coloring with crayons
    • Painting 
    • Cutting with scissors and snipping paper
     
    Preschoolers love to mix and feel how things are as they explore.  Around three and four years old, imaginations begin to become awesome as they tell stories! 
     
    Developmental play ideas for function in kids with everyday play items.
     

    Functional Play for School Aged Children

     
    School-aged children build cognitive skills in games as they problem solve, establish executive functions, share, build relationships, take part in winning/losing situations, and establish complex roles with other children.  
     
    They are constructive with tools, projects, and toys. 
     
    Functional play for school aged children includes:
    • Board games
    • Crafts
    • Drawing activities and supplies
    • Sports games and sporting events
    • Video games
    • Books

    Functional Play for Teenagers

    Teenagers are involved in play, too! Even during the teens, children are developing skills in executive functioning skills, and refining motor skills, motor planning, and skill use. 

    This is good information for occupational therapy for teenagers in middle school or in high school. We cover specifics in this post on middle school occupational therapy.

    Functional play in the teenage years includes:

    • Board games
    • Books
    • Video games
    • Social activities
    • Crafts
    • Cooking activities

     

    What do we learn from Functional Play?

    Play happens naturally.  A child is led to perform instinctive physical milestones through play.  
     
    A baby rolls over to reach that brightly colored shaky toy.  
     
    A toddler pushes a car around the house while crawling on all fours, providing himself with vestibular and proprioceptive input and strengthening to the arms and neck. Read here about crawling as a functional play tool and mobility as independent activity for young children.
     

    There are so many benefits to play! Just some of those naturally occurring skills include:

    • Problem-solving skills
    • Functional task practice
    • Fine motor skills
    • Gross motor skills
    • Practicing communication skills and vocabulary
    • Working through behaviors in a low-stress environment
    • Reinforcement of skill development
    • Understanding the world around the young child and getting a sense of the world as it occurs through practice
    • Repetition of skill performance through repetitive actions
    • Exploring one’s surroundings
    • Executive functioning
    • Visual motor skills
    • Hand-eye coordination
     
    These play situations happen naturally and purposefully (even if the kiddo doesn’t realize that his body is seeking out certain sensory situations!)  Play should happen naturally, but there are ways to work on skill areas through play. 
     
    How can you build on natural play instincts with toys you already have in your house to work on developmental areas or Occupational Therapy goals?  
    • Use a child’s interests to create pretend play situations. 
    • Model appropriate language or problem solving. 
    • Encourage imitation of actions using cars or action figures.  
    • Work on arm strength and shoulder girdle strength by pushing cars up a ramp.  
    • Provide proprioceptive situations by playing and building couch cushion forts for dolls.  
    • Respond to attempt to communicate in pretend play with animal figures.  
    • Encourage turn-taking.
    • Allow your child to “lead” a play situation.
    • Encourage grasp development with toy manipulatives.
    • Discus social interactions with small figures in small worlds, like this outdoors small world scene. 
    • Work on multi-step direction following in a pretend play situation where the bug needs to hop on the block, then go around the sticks, and get food from under the rock.

    Functional Play Toys

    The benefits of functional play occur in the natural environment for the child: the home, playground, outside, in the school classroom, etc. Play happens everywhere! So what are some functional play toys that can support this aspect of development?

    Try these toy ideas:

    • Legos
    • blocks
    • play dough
    • An empty cardboard box (great for creative play)
    • art supplies and a piece of paper
    • Playground equipment such as a swing and slide

    The benefits of play does not need much! You can foster higher-level skills with simple materials.

    What are your child’s favorite play figures or imaginative toys?  
     
    This post is part of my 31 Days of Occupational Therapy series where I’m sharing ways to work on common Occupational Therapy treatment areas using every day, free, or almost free materials. 
     
    Developmental play ideas for function in kids with everyday play items.
     
    You will love some of these play and developmental ideas!
     
     

    Baby Play Ideas for babies and toddlers
    Toddler Play Ideas for kids aged 2-4
    School-Aged play ideas for educational learning

    Occupational Therapy at Home

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    occupational therapy at home

    Occupational therapy at home is an important topic to address. Occupational therapy practitioners tackle supporting daily activities in clients of all ages, and so integrating OT interventions into the home setting is essential. In this blog post, we’re covering how to set up occupational therapy home programs, how to support carryover of OT goals in the home, and home-based OT activities that support goal achievement. Let’s get started! 

    Occupational therapy at home

    Occupational therapy at home doesn’t need to be difficult. Explore our list of Occupational Therapy Amazon deals for toys and tools to support various needs.

    Occupational Therapy at Home

    Pediatric occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants work with children of all ages and developmental abilities. In therapy sessions, OTs address the whole lifespan and target goals designed to support the individual and the family so the individual can prosper. Whether in schools, outpatient settings, hospitals, the community, or other environment, there are functional tasks to be done. All aspects of living is a task that occupies one’s time and these are skills that an OT can support. 

    Occupational therapy at home is a continuum of care, and this is because the home is a natural setting for living. It’s the place for self-care, dressing, bathing, toileting, eating, and other activities of daily living (ADLs).

    The home is also a natural setting for other aspects of daily life: instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). The term IADLs refers to tasks such as meal preparation, home management, shopping, paying bills, managing medications, laundry, and other tasks. These daily living activities are part of one’s life but not always a task that is completed each day. These are also covered in occupational therapy interventions, however, because they impact one’s ability to function.

    The occupational therapist working with children, or pediatric occupational therapy professionals support children in the daily tasks that are important to them, and may include aspects such as: 

    • emotional development
    • physical development (fine and gross motor skills)
    • social development
    • cognitive development

    Therapy providers support children and the families they are a part of through interventions based in play, as play is the primary occupation of the child. It’s through play that development of underlying skills are refined and developed so that they can support functional tasks. 

    Likewise, daily activities done in the natural environment require these underlying skill areas. Professionals can work with the child in the therapy setting, but a main role of the OT practitioner is to empower the child and family unit to thrive on their own in their home environment, or the natural setting.

    No matter what the diagnosis, OTs support various goals. Some diagnoses that can be supported in occupational therapy at home include: 

    • Autism
    • Sensory processing disorders and sensory processing challenges
    • Developmental delay
    • Down syndrome and other genetic disorders
    • Cerebral palsy and other physical mobilitydiagnoses
    • Coordination challenges
    • Motor skill delays or developmental disorders

    Occupational therapy services are not limited to these diagnoses. OT at home can support any individual struggling in the home or community to complete daily activities.

    Therapy providers do this through caregiver education, OT home programs, and consultancy including coaching of skills, support services, and checking in on struggles.

    Occupational Therapy at Home and Carryover of Skills

    If there’s one thing that is for certain, it’s that occupational therapists love to see carryover. We love to encourage functioning and independence with personal goals across environments. It’s through occupational therapy home programs that we encourage families, parents, and teachers to get involved with a child’s goals so they can accomplish skills at home, in the classroom, and community.

    I wanted to put together some activities that OTs can add to home programs that build skills. Use these as part of OT recommendations in occupational therapy teletherapy sessions, or in home programming as a result of changes in our current public health situations. Whatever your situation is, here are some activity recommendations that promote movement, learning through play, and help to keep the kids off screens.

    Use these occupational therapy home programs for setting up OT programs at home, for kids on homeschool, teletherapy activities, and occupational therapy recommendations for home. Perfect for carryover of OT activities.

    Occupational therapy home programs for movement

    So…many of us are dealing with the uncertainties of coronavirus and the possibility to be sent home from wor. School based OTs who are contracted into a school district may even be out of work if and when school students are sent home to learn from home. They may see the need to send home activity plans with children who will be stuck indoors. Other therapists are working within the available technology systems that are in place and can work with children remotely or via teletherapy. In each of these cases, there is a need for therapist-recommended activities that require items that are probably in the homes of most parents.

    Use these activities to encourage play and movement. Encourage playing together as families. These activities have therapeutic benefits, but they are also great for family time, too.

    Home Occupational therapy suggestions

    These monthly movement activities use a lot of items found around the home.

    Here are fine motor and coordination activities using a simple deck of playing cards.

    Here are movement, dexterity, and strengthening activities using craft pom poms (or cotton balls work really well, too.)

    Here are activities with paper clips to encourage coordination, visual motor skills, perception, and dexterity.

    Here are sensory diet activities for the backyard.

    Here are 31 ways to learn through movement and play. These strategies are perfect for learning at home or homeschooling.

    Playdough is a powerful tool that can be added to home therapy programs! Here is a giant list of activities using play dough.

    To encourage gross motor movement, core strengthening, and heavy work for sensory needs, try these indoor recess activities. They work at home, too!

    Looking for home programming and OT home activities? These resources are full of ideas:

    Fine Motor Activities

    Visual Motor Activities

    Indoor Play Ideas

    Cooking with Kids

    Sensory Play

    Executive Functioning Activities

    Handwriting Activities

    Calming Heavy Work Activities

    “Push In” Therapy at Home– Combine OT interventions with learning at home using these movement-based, goal oriented activities that can be incorporated into learning, math, reading, etc.

    https://www.theottoolbox.com/games-that-improve-pencil-grasp/
    https://www.theottoolbox.com/visual-tracking-games/
    https://www.theottoolbox.com/motivating-handwriting-activities-for/
    https://www.theottoolbox.com/games-to-help-kids-improve-executive/
    https://www.theottoolbox.com/learn-with-board-games-you-already-own/
    Games for occupational therapy goals in helping with wrist stability
    https://www.theottoolbox.com/toys-for-extended-wrist-stability-activities/

    OT at Home…Play Games!

    A lot of times, families have board games in the home that they haven’t played with in a while. Family time games like the ones in the posts below can build essential skills that might be addressed in therapy, too. Use time spent at home to play games and work on therapy goals at the same time. Here are some game suggestions:

    These Games to Improve strategy and planning are fun to play and better for the brain!

    Here are more games to improve executive functioning skills.

    Games that improve pencil grasp build fine motor skills, but don’t seem like “work”. Do you have any of these fine motor games in your game closet?

    Visual Tracking Games are fun ways to work on an essential visual processing skill…visual tracking! This skill is needed for visual attention, reading, writing, and so much more.

    Raid the game closet and use some items you have around the house to Build Math Skills with Games.

    In fact, there is a lot of learning that happens with board games. Here is how you can learn with games you already own.

    These are games and toys that build skills in reluctant writers.

    Build wrist stability for improved precision and strength in the hands with these games and toys to improve wrist stability.

    Looking for more ways to keep the kids busy at home while working on developing skills? Run a search through the search bar above!

    How can I help my child with occupational therapy at home

    How can I help my child with occupational therapy at home?

    If working on developmental areas is needed, you can do activities to support specific areas, using everyday play. Many times, OT practitioners will work with families to design an individualized home OT program that supports specific needs for each child. 

    Having a specialized OT home program is important because occupational therapists and OTAs can come up with activities that target several areas of development at once, including self-regulation, social emotional development, for example. Or, they may offer ideas to integrate visual motor skills while targeting specific aspects of visual perception. Another example is OT activities that offer calming heavy work input while supporting movement needs (a combination of proprioceptive input and vestibular input) while providing therapy activities that do not over-stimulate the vision and vestibular system. 

    If you want to add activities to the home that do offer motor skill and precision input for strengthening fine motor skills, some play activities can do this. 

    These materials are often found in many homes, and occupational therapy providers use these items because they are so prevalent in homes, making the activities easily carried over at home. Try using these materials in occupational therapy at home interventions:

    • Chalk
    • Beads
    • Swinging on swings or playing at playgrounds
    • Jumping on a trampoline
    • Playing in a sand box
    • Turning coins on a table or dropping coins in a piggy bank
    • Playing with tweezers to pick up beads or crumbled paper or small objects
    • Making a sensory tray with shaving cream
    • Playing with various textures
    • Rolling dice
    • Offering sensory input by jumping on couch cushions or hopping on pillows
    • Making a noodle necklace
    • Coloring
    • Playing with play dough
    • Tearing a piece of paper
    • Talking about emotions
    • Sorting buttons
    • Picking up beans one at a time

    These simple activities can be incorporated into the daily routine to support development through play.

    Occupational Therapy Home Programs

    Occupational therapy home programs are a vital part of the therapeutic process and crucial to a child’s success in therapy. As we know, most children attend therapy sessions once or twice a week, and following through outside of the therapeutic setting is important to both the child and the family. It is essential that you do your best to blend therapy home programs into the already busy schedules and routines of families to ensure compliance and habituate follow-through at home. 

    Most therapists love providing families with targeted activities or exercises to work on at home to continue a child’s progress toward their goals. Providing these in a fun way can be both a unique art and science in creation by a therapist and the family. Yep, it’s true, including the family in the design is both encouraging and allows for unique ownership by both the child and the family, therefore, making it more successful overall. Keep in mind that home programs can vary greatly depending on a child’s specific needs, family design, and the skill development needed. 

    Sometimes families need a sensory diet for home or community use, an exercise program to advance skills in strength and endurance, a chore and/or self-care checklist for skill advancement and attainment, an activity program to facilitate targeted skill development and keep motivation with therapy, or a handwriting home program to give further practice in letter formation and handwriting legibility practice. 

    Let’s take a deeper look at each home program mentioned. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t put in a lot of different choices or activities as this will oftentimes decrease compliance and increase the lack of follow-through in the home setting. Always consider doing fewer activities and/or exercises and change them out more frequently as compliance and success are achieved.

    Don’t load a family or child up with activities and exercises to keep it all front-end packed as this will become overwhelming and not successful in the back end. Provide a limited number with a specific focus coupled with full, open communication as the program is followed at home. 

    Occupational Therapy Home Programs for Sensory Needs

    Sensory diets by design provide a child-specific activity program that is scheduled into a child’s day to provide sensory activities or approaches that kids perform throughout the day to ensure they are getting the input their bodies need to assist with attention, arousal, soothing, and adaptive responses. The activities are generally chosen to target a child’s needs based on sensory integration theory. 

    The best approach to a sensory diet is to provide a visual schedule for parents and children to follow as well as a worded description of ideas to further facilitate understanding and follow-through. Look at following

    • time-based activities
    • routines
    • interaction recommendations
    • environment suggestions, and
    • targeted sensory needs that include oral sensory, heavy work, and vestibular. 

    Always provide contact information on each sensory diet to ensure families have what they need to consult with you about strategies and activities as well as any questions that may arise during diet implementation.

    Home exercise programs provide guidelines for the overall program and each exercise should have a picture or diagram, the number of safe sets/reps, specific precautions, and a checklist for either daily, weekly, or monthly implementation with the understanding to share this checklist at end of a cycle to ensure compliance by family. 

    As therapists, we often use tools for home exercises that may include therapy putty, theraband, dumbbells, hand and finger exercisers, exercise bikes, or even table-top pedal bikes. Make sure these tools are either provided to the families as part of their programming or that they can afford to purchase them outside of therapy.  A loan program can be established to provide the child with what they need for a limited time.

    Sometimes, we as therapists, need to get creative in how we get the exercises into a home that are needed, so look outside the typical places for items such as in thrift stores, ask families who no longer need items and are willing to donate them to you, utilize a “donate and need” board at your clinic or schools, look on Facebook groups such as OT Trader for items, etc. 

    Chore or self-care checklists are just as they sound, a list of chores or self-care actions for each day or week. Create a simplified checklist or find one online that has everything you need to copy and share. Take a look at Your Therapy Source as they have convenient and time-saving Life Skills activities, checklists and graphs for data collection in the home, school, and community making it easier to target each step and to score and record progress over time.

    A daily to-do list for kids or visual schedule can support this.

    Occupational Therapy at Home Activity Programs

    Activity programs are intended to motivate the child (and the family) while developing essential skills that the child needs as they perform them in the home setting. This program can be completed with siblings to increase the fun and compliance as needed. The child can learn each activity during therapy and then follow through occurs at home after the therapist reviews the program with the parent(s). 

    A fun way to do this is to have the child demonstrate each activity during therapy with a parent present as this builds confidence and full engagement by the child. 

    Other than a written activity program with pictures, you can also create a fine motor toolbox with different activities inside that can be used at home for a few weeks.

    On our blog posts on occupational therapy kits, you’ll find specific ideas and images for how to set up an OT kit at home.

    Here is a picture of some kits, which I share with families and use during therapy sessions:

    Occupational therapy kits for home OT.

    I try to keep them small with 5-6 activities in each box and each box is designed to address a child’s specific needs. This means that I often switch activities around in the boxes so I must maintain a checklist of what each child has already worked on so that I can keep the boxes new and fresh.

    Frankly, I found this design to be more successful than the larger Magic 20 Box that I worked with colleagues to create several years back.

    The 20 items in the box tended to become overwhelming to children and families and more often than not, they ended up wanting to do a select few that they found fun and engaging.  My personal experience has been finding families and children are more compliant with smaller boxes and fewer activities. 

    I also enjoy using my monthly game boards for fine and gross motor activities at home as it triggers high interest and enjoyment for both my clients and their families.

    Occupational Therapy at Home: Handwriting

    Handwriting home programs are designed to have children practice the important skills they have learned during therapy as a carryover into a different setting.  Handwriting is a complex skill and practice in meaningful and natural ways is most useful in developing skills.

    You can also use it as an educational tool for families too.  My handwriting home programs are written in a way that sets the scene for successful handwriting practice in the home easing tension and anxiety for increased follow-through and overall compliance. 

    Some ways to support handwriting interventions for occupational therapy at home include:

    With so many options around for creating and designing a child-specific home program, any child and family can benefit from your skilled OT home program. We all know that without regular practice and intervention, a child can regress in their skills and it can take a very long time to regain the skills they once had. So, go get some quick inspiration here in this blog post and then go and help those kiddos on your caseload build the important skills they need to be successful in their daily lives. Oh, and don’t forget, you’re empowering those families to proceed on and power through to progress for their child, that’s what you do! 

    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.

    The OT Toolbox Fine Motor Kits are a great resource for occupational therapy at home!

    Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

    Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:

    Letters Fine Motor Kit
    Kit de motricidad fina de verano
    Summer Fine Motor Kit
    Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
    Space Fine Motor Kit
    Spring fine motor kit
    Valentines Day fine motor kit
    winter fine motor kit
    Winter Fine Motor Kit

    Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:

    Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!