Handwriting, Letter Formation, Sensory

Cursive Slime

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. 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:

by Colleen Beck OTR/L
October 29, 2017

Adding movement and sensory input to teaching letters and handwriting is key for learning the motor plan, identifying letters, and carryover of learned skills.

This cursive slime activity is a fun way to encourage letter formation, letter identification, and letter matching using slime as a fine motor and sensory medium to make the activity fun and memorable.

This cursive slime activity adds a proprioceptive, tactile, and movement component to learning the parts of cursive letters. Kids can focus on the starting pencil lines that make up groups of letters known as cursive letter families.

Use cursive beads to work on cursive letter identification using cursive slime as a sensory tool and tactile sensory play.

Cursive Slime Activity

There is a lot more information on cursive letter families as well as more cursive writing strategies and tools here and in the How to Teach Cursive Writing series that we have on The OT Toolbox this month.

Grab more cursive writing tips and strategies for teaching cursive handwriting under the cursive writing tab up above.

For this cursive slime activity, you will first need a batch of slime. We love to make non-borax slime for safety reasons.

Our favorite recipe (and my YouTube loving kids are HUGE fans of trying all.the.recipes) is this contact solution and baking soda slime recipe. It’s a quick slime recipe that pulls together easily and one that older kids can make on their own.

Then, add cursive letter beads.