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Sensory Room Equipment (OT Recommendations)
Today’s post on sensory room equipment is part of a series focusing on sensory rooms. We are going to explore things to include when designing a sensory room in schools, especially for when grant money limits equipment selection. Other posts highlight the benefits of a sensory room, things to consider, sensory room rules, and building…
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Baking Soda Paints
Many years ago (July 28, 2015 to be exact…this post has been updated!) we made this set of baking soda paints. It was a fun outdoor, creative painting activity and we painted on the driveway. I wanted to come back to this sensory painting idea again, because it’s such a fun way to be creative…
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Rainbow Activities for Child Development
Here, you will find rainbow activities that are powerful and effective activities to help with child development. I’ve strived to pull together rainbow sensory activities, crafts, fine motor activities, visual motor activities, and movement ideas. Scroll through the various rainbow theme ideas to promote skills for all ages. These are great additions to your Spring…
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Margins in Handwriting
Occupational therapists work on many aspects of handwriting to ensure that legible writing is a functional means of communication for children and students. One aspect of that is addressing the margins in handwriting. When margins are omitted or neglected, handwriting moves from functional to difficult to read. Poor use of margins when copying written material…
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Common Handwriting Problems
If you are looking for answers to common handwriting problems in kids, then this is the place to start for handwriting help, activities to help kids improve the skills they need for legible written work, and success when writing with a pencil. Handwriting problems are common for kids of all ages. There are many reasons…
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Sensory Rooms in Schools
Today’s post on sensory rooms in schools is part of a series focusing on sensory rooms. We are going to explore the benefits of sensory rooms, including why having a sensory space in schools supports student needs. We’re also covering things to consider, cleaning materials, supervision, and recommended use by teachers and aides. The thing is…
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Sensory Room on a Budget
Today’s post on creating a sensory room on a budget is part of a series focusing on sensory rooms in schools. A sensory room is a controlled and intentionally created space that provides multi-sensory resources to support a student’s sensory needs, to enable them to engage in learning. The sensory room is a calming strategy…
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Creative Cursive Handwriting Practice
This blog post on creative cursive practice was originally written August 27, 2015. It was updated with more creative cursive writing solutions as of February 27, 2024. One thing I wanted to share as a school-based occupational therapist is the use of creative cursive strategies to support cursive writing. So often, OT practitioners hear from…
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Creative Writing Practice
This blog post on creative writing practice was originally written December 16, 2016 and was updated February 26, 2024. Today, we’ve got creative writing practice activities for supporting handwriting needs, both as fun ways to teach handwriting components, but also a multisensory learning tool for establishing a motor plan for handwriting. The automaticity that comes…
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Messy Handwriting? A Quick Guide to fix Sloppy written work
This blog post was originally written in February 2023. We’ve updated the post February 2024 to target messy handwriting with a specific guide to move from sloppy handwriting to neat and legible written work. School-based occupational therapy practitioners often hear about students with bad handwriting. Similarly, pediatric OTs and OTAs in outpatient may hear that…
