Decorate a Gingerbread House

Today, I have a fun occupational therapy teletherapy activity for kids to do this time of year. It’s an interactive therapy slide deck where kids can decorate a gingerbread house! With this digital gingerbread house activity, kids can move the gingerbread decorations onto the house to decorate in any way they wish! This interactive Google slide deck is a fun way to incorporate therapy goals with a fun holiday activity. Pair this Christmas activity with our gingerbread man slide deck for more therapy fun.

Decorate a gingerbread house virtual activity for occupational therapy interventions and fun therapy ideas.

Gingerbread activities are fun this time of year, and this one is a fun twist on holiday activities. Add this to your Christmas Occupational Therapy Activities.

Decorate a Gingerbread House

Many kids make a real gingerbread house this time of year. Some lucky kids make a cardboard gingerbread house! But, for virtual therapy sessions, I thought it would be fun to make a FUN activity for therapy in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I know this year has been difficult with virtual learning and learning all that teletherapy requires. It’s been a difficult year for all of us! So, maybe a fun therapy activity is just what the doctor ordered!

Use this virtual gingerbread house activity in several different ways to incorporate occupational therapy goals in a way that kids won’t even realize they are working on specific goal areas.

Gingerbread House Therapy Activity

When kids move the interactive Google slide pieces, they can develop skills such as:

  • Eye-hand coordination
  • Visual scanning
  • Motor planning
  • Visual discrimination
  • Figure ground
  • Form constancy
  • Visual convergence
  • Visual attention
  • Laterality
  • Visualization
  • Finger isolation
  • Computer use/mouse use
  • Direction-following
  • Planning, prioritization, working memory, impulse control and other executive functions
  • Self-confidence

As you can see, a “fun” therapy activity like decorating a gingerbread house can work on so many areas even if it seems like an extra activity or a reward activity!

Use this decorate a gingerbread activity in occupational therapy teletherapy sessions.

Decorate a Gingerbread House Teletherapy Activity

This slide deck includes two different activities: One is a slide where students can move the candy decorations onto the slide deck.

The second slide is a gingerbread house writing prompt. Kids can either type into the text box, or they can write their responses on paper and work on handwriting, letter formation, and other areas they might be addressing in therapy or distance learning.

Tip: to revert the slide to it’s original state, use the history option. This is located on the top dashboard in the link, “last edit was”. When you click on that, you will see a list of edits made on the right side of your screen. Click on the edit titled, “Blank Gingerbread House”. This should move all of the movable candy pieces and decorations back to their original location on the slide deck. Note that you can delete edits from that list, so if several students are using the slides, you can keep the organization simple and delete edit versions that you no longer need.

Another Google Slide ninja tip: Be sure to make a copy of this slide deck and not change the url to indicate “edit” at the end. When you make a copy of the slide deck onto your Google drive, you will end up with your own version that you are free to adjust in order to meet your student’s needs. By changing the url to “edit”, you can potentially mess up the original version that many other therapists and The OT Toolbox users are given.

Gingerbread house writing prompts are in this decorate a  gingerbread house activity.

Free Decorate a Gingerbread House Slide Deck

Does this looks like a fun way to spend a therapy session while working on skills?

You can grab a copy of this Google slide deck and use it to work on specific skills.

Enter your email address below and you will receive a PDF containing a link to copy the slide deck onto your Google drive. Save that PDF file, because you can come back to it again and again and send it to the kids on your caseload (or classroom) so they can make their own copy on their Google drive.

Please use the copy of the slide deck and do not change the url.

Decorate a Digital Interactive Gingerbread House!

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    MORE VIRTUAL LEARNING SLIDE DECKS?

    Would you like more therapy slide decks? Grab the others to add to your therapy toolbox!

    Try this Gingerbread Man Slide Deck.

    Use this Holiday Cookies Activities to address working memory, visual perception, and direction following.

    Here is a Community Helpers Theme Slide Deck.

    Here is a Football Theme Slide Deck.

    Here is a slide deck for a Social Story for Wearing a Mask.

    Here is a Space Theme Therapy Slide Deck.

    Here is a Therapy Planning Interactive Slide Deck.

    Here is a Back to School Writing Activity Slide Deck.

    Here is an Alphabet Exercises Slide Deck.

    Here is a Self-Awareness Activities Slide Deck.

    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.

    Decorate a gingerbread house activity for kids