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Hand Strengthening Activity with an Egg Carton
This hand strengthening activity with an egg carton is an easy way to use a recycled egg carton to work on fine motor skills, hand strength, pincer grasp, tripod grasp development, intrinsic hand strength, eye-hand coordination, and other fine motor hand strength skills. Fine Motor Activity with an Egg Carton Recently, I shared…
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Fine Motor Weather Writing Prompts
This fine motor weather craft is a fun way to work on a few fine motor skills while encouraging creative writing and handwriting, too! We’ve talked about pinch grip strength and clothes pins before and this craft is a fun way to extend those strengthening skills. I love to add a bit of strengthening and proprioceptive…
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Easy Bite Sized Chocolate Dipped Pretzels
My kids love to cook. They come running when I say it’s time to help me cook. When melted chocolate is involved, they come running just a little faster. Who am I kidding? They come running at full speed when chocolate is involved. We made these easy chocolate dipped mini pretzels one day when…
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Musical Bell Color Matching Dominoes
These DIY dominoes are a great tool for addressing auditory processing needs! When I saw the theme for this week’s Learning with Manipulatives series was dominoes, I was excited. My kids love playing with dominoes! They love dominoes of all kinds, from craft stick dominoes to our math sensory bottle that had slowly sinking dominoes.…
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The Ultimate Guide to Play
Play is work of the child. Through play, a child learns about the world around him. He learns communication skills, problem solving, builds fine and gross motor development, enhances social interactions, and develops the skills needed for independence in all aspects of growth. This month in the Functional Skills for Kids series, myself and…
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Kindergarten Math with Farm Themed Fingerprint Art
Making math concepts fun with hands-on learning is one of my favorite things to do with my kids. This Farm themed math activity is one way I worked on a few math concepts with my Kindergarten kiddo. He’s just started bringing home worksheets about counting items, adding a few more, and counting total number. We…
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Spring Flower Kindergarten Math Craft
I am a second round Kindergarten mom. My daughter went through Kindergarten and is now rocking second grade and my son is now plowing through his first school experience that involves desks and erasers. (Oh to go back to those preschool rooms that lack desks and erasers!) Related, check out our blog post on name writing in…
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AM PM Time Telling with Shopkins
Here we used a small manipulative to teach the difference between am and pm. Am and pm activities are great for helping kids to understand time and management of time. Much like this rock clock activity, the use of small manipulatives helps to build skills such as eye-hand coordination through play. It’s another activity to…
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Intrinsic Muscle Strengthening Play Dough Mat
I wanted to share a resource we’ve had on the website for many years. It’s a simple intrinsic hand strengthening play dough mat. We use this printable play dough mat to build strong pinch and grip strength by targeting the intrinsic muscles of the hands. Intrinsic muscle strength is needed for endurance and dexterity in…
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Paprika Natural Play Dough Recipe
This month’s sensory dough is all about the natural ingredients. We made this paprika spice play dough one rainy afternoon and can’t get enough of the rich scent while playing. We used a basic stove-top recipe that uses all natural ingredients (except for the processed white flour) and was a fun experiment in natural sensory…
