Football Activities

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It’s Fall and time for football fun! Football is an American tradition. You can find football in middle school, high school, college, and professionally. It’s EVERYWHERE in the Fall, and if you are looking for an autumn activity that offers gross motor and proprioceptive sensory input, a game of football is it! If you’re not playing it, you’re watching it from the stands or sitting in front of the television set cheering on your favorite team.

Football activities for a football theme occupational therapy interventions.

Football Activities

Football is also a fun time theme for therapy sessions. If you want to score a touchdown during your therapy sessions take a look at these football themed activities that help to build fine motor, gross motor, bilateral coordination, and visual motor skills. These fun and engaging football activities can provide you hours of therapy exercise and skill building fun.

Add these football theme ideas to your therapy line-up or use them as part of therapy games to get kids interested in working on specific skills in themed therapy sessions. Using a fun theme like football can keep kids motivated and working in therapy!

So, scroll through these football crafts, football games, and football ideas and let’s get kids moving and building therapy skills!

Football theme

Football theme slide deck– Grab this free interactive football themed slide deck. Use it to guide therapy sessions through a football theme with fine motor, gross motor, mindfulness, handwriting, visual perceptual activities, and self-regulation.

Fine Motor Activity– Make paper footballs and use them in learning like we did with this Paper Football Sight Words activity. You not only work on creating the paper football and field, you can write sight words on the field lines and then have the child read the words, and after reading the words, have them write a sentence with that word. While you’re having them write, you can address letter size, letter placement, spacing, and letter formation.

Fine Motor Craft- This Football Craft for Preschool is a fun way to get younger kiddos involved in the Fall football season by having them lace their own football. A great way to work on bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, and fine motor precision skills.

Motor Planning and Eye-Hand Coordination Activity- Make this Turkey Football Craft. It’s a festive way for kiddos to work on cutting and drawing skills not to mention those much needed sequencing and pasting skills too by combining a turkey for Thanksgiving and footballs for the Fall season.  Be sure to use bottle glue as that makes for an automatic incorporation of grading of force or pressure so kiddos don’t create puddles of glue, but dots or simple outlines.

Football Brain Breaks- Use these Football Brain Break Cards in therapy or in the classroom or at home. These gross motor, heavy work activities provide a fun opportunity to work on gross motor and motor planning skills with kiddos throughout therapy sessions or even during transitions while at home.

Bilateral Coordination Football Craft- This Woven Football Craft  works on cutting skills, visual motor integration, sequencing, bilateral hand use and the repetitive movement of weaving that can also be calming and engaging for some children.

Visual Convergence and Eye-Hand Coordination Activity- Take throwing a football to a different level with this Paper Football. It’s a flying cylinder that you simply grasp and throw like a football. How do you make it? You only need a manila file folder, some tape, scissors, and paperclips.

Self-Care Activity- Work on buttoning skills with this Felt Football Button Activity – an easy and fun way to work on fastener manipulation skills whether it be to address buttoning or unbuttoning or both! 


Football Game –
makes for a great way to work on a variety of skills. YOU DECIDE the skill you want the child to work on and write it on the football when you play the game. It can be gross motor, handwriting, fine motor strengthening, core strengthening, or crossing midline. It’s a great way to work on turn taking and coping skills with a peer as they take turns choosing a card and performing the activity as well as coping with winning or not winning.

Now, “Hut, hut, hike!” Go grab a few materials or print a few sheets so you can easily prepare your football-themed therapy sessions or activities.

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!

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Football activities for OT interventions

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