-
Hand Strengthening Activities
Hand strengthening and finger strengthening are a part of occupational therapy interventions, in every day tasks. There is more to developing strong and efficient hands than just using a hand grip exerciser or therapy putty to strengthen fingers. Here, you will find a collection of fine motor resources and hand strengthening activities that can be used to improve tone…
-
School Based OT and Getting Organized Tips
The school based-Occupational Therapist is getting ready to head back into the school year this Fall. Getting organized can be one of the hardest parts of school-based OT. These tips and tricks are some that I’ve used during my years as an Occupational Therapist working in the schools. Getting Organized for Back-to-School as a…
-
Grasp Patterns
Today we are looking at Grasp Patterns, or the aspect of fine motor skills that involves the physical placement of the fingers on items we use to complete daily tasks. We will explore the types of grasp patterns (lateral key, hook, cylindrical, pincer, etc.) and offer activities to support development of each grasp pattern. These various…
-
Food Texture Issues
A child with food texture issues can have a lot going on beneath the surface. What looks like extremely picky eating can be texture aversions that impact nutritional intake and participation in meals. Let’s explore specifically food texture sensitivity and what to do about this aspect of “picky eating”. This may be a complicated topic,…
-
How to Support Sensory Issues with Hair Brushing
For many children, hair brushing is a challenging ADL task due to difficulties with sensory regulation. Using tools such as a sensory brush or a sensory diet can help support sensory issues that impact hair brushing. Individuals with sensory challenges related to their scalp can be further exacerbated by knots, pulling of hair, shampooing, or…
-
Body Awareness Activities Using Proprioception
Let’s talk body awareness activities using proprioception, or heavy work to bring awareness to where the body is, how the body moves, and awareness of self. Proprioception is one of the senses that is involved with everything we do. This sensory system plays a major role in body awareness. Below you’ll find body awareness occupational…
-
Calm Down Corner
For young (and old) children, a great calming classroom tool that supports learning, social participation, and school tasks is the calm down corner. A calming corner in the classroom can be a great sensory strategy to support emotional regulation needs in students. It’s a place to calm or re-organize in a personal bubble, meeting regulation needs…
-
Visual Impairment and OCcupational Therapy
In this blog post we are covering all things vision impairment and occupational therapy. Visual Impairments such as convergence insufficiency, impaired visual saccades, or other visual problems like blurred vision can present as a problem in the classroom. Students with visual impairments will flourish with effective classroom accommodations for visual problems. Below, you will find…
-
Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist
We’ve created a sensory processing disorder checklist as a tool for sensory processing needs. Having resources like this sensory processing and self-regulation checklist will support sensory needs in individuals of all ages. Sensory processing disorder is a condition where the brain misinterprets sensory information so that the body responds in atypical ways. Sensory processing disorder can be…
-
150 Things to do This Summer
Having a summer bucket list of Summer activities for kids that keeps kids from the inevitable summer boredom is good. And using an occupational therapy perspective on your Summer fun is better! We wanted to put together a Summer bucket list that actually helps kids develop skills and gain stronger bodies is powerful! This list…
