I love using coffee filter butterfly crafts in occupational therapy to work on several skill areas. The fine motor benefits are huge with this one. This coffee filter butterfly craft is a great fine motor and bilateral coordination activity for kids. If you are looking for butterfly life cycle crafts, this one is a great addition. Or, if you are seeking Spring OT activities, be sure to add this colorful fine motor butterfly craft to your list.
Why make a Coffee Filter Butterfly Craft?
One craft that hits on several skill areas is a benefit in pediatric occupational therapy sessions. This coffee filter craft is a nice one to develop skills because it works on so many areas that are covered in therapy sessions:
This was an easy set-up and fun craft we did one afternoon recently. You’ll need the following materials:
Coffee filters
Water color paints/water
A straw
Clothes pin
Pipe cleaner
String (to make a banner)
Directions to make a tie dye coffee filter butterfly
Use a paint brush to add a bit of water to the wells of a water color paint pallet. To really work on fine motor skills, use your thumb to drop water droplets into the paint tubs.
Use the straw to drip colored water from the water color paints. Then drop them onto the coffee filter. Allow the colors to blend into one another. If you add more water to the paint wells, you can transfer that water with the straw.
This version of painting a coffee filter can be a challenging fine motor task but one that really develops separation of the sides of the hands, thumb IP joint flexion, and motor planning skills.
To make this painting process easier, try using a eye dropper where the child can squeeze the end of a small dropper to draw up water from the water color wells. Another option is using a small plastic syringe to draw up watercolor paint and dropping it onto the coffee filter.
Little Guy and Big Sister both loved dropping the water into the color wells. Big Sister felt pretty good about showing her little brother how to drop the water into the color wells using her straw.
This is a great activity to work on thumb isolation and control of the thumb during fine motor activities.
Next, dip the edges of the coffee filters into the colors so the water creeps onto the edges of the coffee filter.
Other ways to add the color can use the straw end or the paint brush. This craft is nice because it can be adjusted for many different kids.
When kids drip the color on with a paintbrush, or drop color with the straw, it’s fun to try different ways to color the filters and see the colors blend together.
Next, use clothes pins to pinch the middle of the coffee filter together in the middle. This is a great hand strengthening and eye-hand coordination task.
Finally, add a pipe cleaner to the end of the clothes pin for the antenna of the coffee filter butterfly. Bend the pipe cleaner around the clothes pin and twist it up to make antenna.
If you like to create several butterflies in a variety of colors, you can clip them onto the string for an other bilateral coordination task.
They look pretty! Big Sister wanted to hang them on the ceiling of her room. We strung the butterflies on yarn and taped them to her ceiling. This would be a great way to display a whole client caseload of coffee filter butterflies and really show off those fine motor skills!
Add this butterfly craft to a butterfly theme in therapy or home programing.
These heavy work cards include a page of butterfly life cycle activities that incorporate calming heavy work activities for motor planning and proprioceptive benefits.
Or, in the Spring Fine Motor Kit, you’ll find butterfly and caterpillar activities that are designed to build a variety of fine motor manipulation, dexterity, and strengthening tasks.
Spring Fine Motor Kit
Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!
Developing hand strength, dexterity, dexterity, precision skills, and eye-hand coordination skills that kids need for holding and writing with a pencil, coloring, and manipulating small objects in every day task doesn’t need to be difficult. The Spring Fine Motor Kit includes 100 pages of fine motor activities, worksheets, crafts, and more:
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.
If you are an occupational therapist like me, then you know the power of using play tunnels in an occupational therapy obstacle course. The heavy work input provided by crawling through a tunnel is unmatched, especially when we use it as a warm up to fine motor tasks or functional activities.
Let me explain…
How Play Tunnels Help Kids
Play tunnels are one of the best tools for therapy as you can work on so many skills if you just put a little creativity into it. Tunnel activities simply invite kiddo fun and engagement while working on very important skill development across a spectrum of areas. You can use fabric tunnels or nylon, pop-up tunnels depending on the skills you want to address with tunnel play. With a little imagination you can build your own DIY tunnels too!
Tunnel for Occupational Therapy
There is a reason why OTs love using tunnels in occupational therapy sessions!
Keep reading to get some play tunnel ideas using different materials. For home-based therapists, DIY tunnels are a great tool for families to use in the home environment providing an opportunity for a fun and easy to implement home-based program. Some of these tunnel activities for babies and tunnel activities for toddlers can be used to address specific needs through play.
They also like to use tunnels for sensory needs such as vestibular and proprioceptive input. In the simplest of terms, the vestibular sense is known as the movement sense telling us where our body is in space, while the proprioceptive sense is known as the deep pressure sense telling us the direction, speed, and extent of our body movement in space.
These senses are important to help a child develop balance, body awareness, understand the position of their body in space as well as knowing how much speed and pressure their bodies are exerting when completing an activity or moving within their environment.
Adding a play tunnel into sensory diet activities to meet a variety of needs. It’s an easy way to encourage sensory input in the school environment, home, or clinic.
So, you may be asking, how can
children gather vestibular input from tunnel time activities? You can have
children roll within the tunnel, perform various body movements such as forward
and backward crawling, balancing on all fours while simply crawling through the
tunnel, slither on their backs, or have them crawl in the tunnel placed on top
of cushions and pillows.
These activities are great for supporting the development of crawling in babies and toddlers, especially because we end up seeing challenges down the road for kids that skip crawling. Here’s what an OT has to say about types of crawling.
Proprioceptive input can be obtained while the child is bearing weight on the upper and lower extremities during crawling providing input to the joints and muscles. They can push objects through the tunnel such as large therapy balls or large pillows, army crawl through the tunnel, and shaking the tunnel while child is inside can provide valuable proprioceptive input.
By using a play tunnel to address proprioception to improve body awareness, the proprioceptive sense allows us to position our bodies just so in order to enable our hands, eyes, ears, and other parts to perform actions or jobs at any given moment. Proprioception activities help with body awareness. Using a fabric tunnel that is snug against the body can provide good input which can also have a calming effect for some children.
Play tunnel activities
When using a tunnel, you can work on
other skills that address multiple areas for children. Try some of these fun
tunnel time activities:
Play Connect Four with pieces on one end and the game played on the other end.
Assemble puzzles with pieces on one end and then transported through the tunnel to the other end.
Clothespins attached on end to transport and place on the other end. You can use clothespins with letters to spell words.
Push a large ball or pillow through the tunnel.
Crawl backwards from one end to the other.
Slither through the tunnel (rocking body left and right) to get from one end to the other.
Scoot through the tunnel using hands and feet or even crab walk through the tunnel.
Recall letters, shapes, or words from one end and highlight on paper at the other end.
Recall a series of steps to complete a task at the other end.
Blow a cotton ball or pom-pom ball through the tunnel. Kids love this to see how many they can blow in a timed fashion.
With pennies on one end, have child transport them to the other end to insert into a bank. You can even give them the pennies at end of the session if you want.
Push a car through the tunnel to drive it and park it at the other end.
Build a Lego structure by obtaining blocks at one end of the tunnel and transporting to the other end to build.
Intermittently crawl through the tunnel and lie within one end to work on a drawing or handwriting activity. This is just a different and motivating way to encourage handwriting practice.
Crawl over pillows or cushions placed inside or outside of the tunnel.
Use a flashlight and crawl through the tunnel gathering specific beads that have been placed inside to string at the other end of the tunnel. You could work on spelling words with letter beads or simply just string regular beads.
Place Mat Man body pieces at one end and have child obtain pieces per verbal directive and then crawl through the tunnel to build at the other end.
tunnel activities for preschoolers
Ok, so for the preschool age range, let’s come up with tunnel activities for preschoolers that support development at this stage.
Crawl through a tunnel while holding a puzzle piece like a letter from an alphabet puzzle. Then they can place the puzzle piece in the puzzle when they get through the tunnel.
Set up an obstacle course with tunnels to crawl through
Crawl through a tunnel to match objects or sort colors. I like using blocks to sort into baskets.
Pretend the tunnel is a cave or secret hideout during imaginative play.
tunnel activity for toddlers
Next up are some of my favorite tunnel activities for toddlers. These also help to support development at the toddler stage.
Crawl through a fabric or pop-up tunnel
Push a toy car or ball through a tunnel
Play peek-a-boo at each end of the tunnel
Roll a ball back and forth through the tunnel
Crawl to retrieve objects placed inside the tunnel. I like to pair this idea with our ball in a muffin tin activity.
Next, I want to share some DIY play tunnel ideas because as occupational therapists, we are always coming up with fun play ideas using everyday materials!
DIY Play TUnnel Ideas
So, as mentioned previously, what if
you don’t have a tunnel or you want to create one within a home for developing
a home-based program? Well, make one! How can you do this? Read on for a few
fun ideas.
Create a tunnel by crawling under tables or chairs.
Create a tunnel in the hallway with use of pool noodles. Bend them over in an arch to fit or simply cut them down to size to slide directly between the walls.
Use large foam connecting mats and assemble a tunnel.
Use tape or yarn and string to alternating walls down a hallway to crawl under.
Use sturdy pieces of foam board positioned or connected together to make a tunnel.
Use an elongated cardboard box. Sometimes you can get large boxes at an appliance, hardware, or retail store.
Stretch a sheet or blanket over furniture and crawl.
Simply place a sheet or blanket on the floor and have child crawl under it (a heavier blanket works well).
Place a therapy mat inside a series of hula hoops.
Use PVC pipe to build a tunnel. Add sensory items to the PVC frame to create a fun sensory element to the crawling experience. One such tunnel was built by my wonderful fieldwork student, Huldah Queen, COTA/L in 2016. See the picture below.
Sew a fabric tunnel (if you have that skill).
Use pop up clothes hampers connected together after cutting out the bottoms.
Simulate tunnel crawling with simple animal walks or moves.
Tunnel activities can facilitate
child engagement while providing an optimal skill development setting. Tunnel time can address gross motor and
sensory needs while also incorporating other activities making tunnel time a
skill building powerhouse tool. Incorporate fun fine motor and visual motor
activities to make tunnel time a “want to do” activity every time!
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!
Here we are covering all things bilateral coordination toys. When it comes to bilateral integration, coordinating both sides of the body in play can be a challenge for some children. These bilateral skills impact functional use of the body, motor planning, and bilateral integration as a whole. It’s through play with occupational therapy toys targeting bilateral skills that children can strengthen and develop this essential motor skill. Let’s dissect a few select toys that promote this skill.
Amazon affiliate links are included in this blog post. As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Bilateral Coordination Toys
We’ve previously covered both fine motor toy ideas and gross motor toys. Today’s topic closely mirrors those areas. Today is all about the bilateral integration that goes into motor play.
First, let’s talk Bilateral Coordination Toys!
Bilateral coordination toys are an occupational therapy intervention that helps children develop essential skills in bilateral integration. Toys that use both hands in a coordinated manner help children with bilateral coordination, crossing midline, and using both hands in tasks. These are essential skills that allow for an integration of both sides of the body, but more than that, bilateral coordination tells us that the brain is communicating effectively and sharing information between sides of the brain.
Today, I’m excited to share bilateral coordination toys and games to help support this essential skill.
Bilateral integration
Bilateral coordination in functional tasks makes up much of our day! Think of all of the other areas where you are using both hands or both sides of the body at the same time: getting dressed, tying shoes, cooking, typing, holding a book while reading, pouring a glass of water…the list could go on and on!
Read about bilateral integration in the cross crawl exercise resource.
This integrated use of both sides of the body can be developed through play.
Using both sides of the body together is a skill needed for many tasks: writing with a pencil with one hand while stabilizing paper with the other hand is one such activity.
Another bilateral coordination task is cutting with scissors with one hand while holding and manipulating paper with the other hand.
For children with difficulty in crossing midline, or using integrated bilateral skills, using toys in play is an effective way to work on and nurture this skill.
Looking for a toy to work on bilateral coordination to add to your gift giving this holiday season? Today we are covering ways to build bilateral coordination skills using toys and everyday items. We also have another giveaway to share today. This time it’s a fine motor toy that promotes a variety of sills, bilateral integration being one of them. I wanted to highlight this as a toy for building bilateral coordination because as we know, promoting this skill is a valuable building block to other tasks such as handwriting, cutting with scissors, self-care tasks, and more.
Working on bilateral coordination in play is a means and a strategy for building this essential skill. So, why is bilateral coordination so important? And what exactly does bilateral coordination mean?
DIY Bilateral Coordination Toys
We’ve shared quite a few bilateral coordination toys and DIY activities here on this site in the past.
A bilateral coordination lacing plate is a DIY toy and activity that can be used to work on coordinated use of both hands with a variety of themes.
Using puzzles and games that you already have with an extra special addition can be a great way to work on bilateral coordination with puzzles.
Play dough and sensory doughs are fun ways to play while working on skills like bilateral coordination and other motor skills.
Pegboards (both DIY and store-bought versions), are a fantastic way to work on bilateral coordination in play and in developing visual motor skills and coordination.
DIY pick-up sticks are a fun way to address bilateral integration and coordinated use of both hands together.
Making DIY lacing cards are a fun way to work on bilateral coordination. Making the lacing cards is part of the fun.
Miniature rhythm sticks can be a musical and creative way to encourage bilateral coordination.
Lock and keys games like with this DIY lock and key activity makes fine motor development an out of the box way to work on skills kids need for independence and instrumental activities of daily living.
Bilateral Coordination Toys
There are many bilateral coordination toys on the market as well. Let’s take a look at some toys and games that you can add to your therapy toolbox.
Amazon affiliate links are included below.
Pop Tubes Toy for Bilateral Coordination– (affiliate link) Pop tubes can be used in many ways to work on bilateral skills. Use them for a fine motor bilateral coordination task, or use them to work on a large scale or small scale. Wrap one around a wrist and build off of that tube. Or create a chain of tubes. Hold one and drop objects through the tube and into a container. How will you use this bilateral coordination toy?
TruBalance Bilateral Coordination Toy– (affiliate link) This toy requires both hands as well as the eyes to challenge balance, coordination, and bimanual skills. Kids can work with this toy while sitting, standing, or in more challenging positions. Try incorporating couch cushions for a balance activity. Use this toy in a bilateral coordination obstacle course. Kids can use the pieces in a scavenger hunt type of activity where the parts are scattered at various levels and positioning, allowing the child to crawl, climb, walk, or squat while balancing the toy. The options go on and on!
Nuts and Bolts Bilateral Coordination Toy– (affiliate link) This nuts and bolts activity is great for developing fine motor skills as well as bilateral coordination by requiring the child to use one hand to manipulate the parts while the other hand acts as a stabilizer. This is a nice way to develop skills needed for tasks like handwriting, pouring, stabilizing, cooking, etc.
Another great option is a tube building toy. This has a lot of open-ended creative building that can be done.
Zoom Ball– (affiliate link) This classic toy is such a great way to work on many skills: bilateral coordination, core strength, shoulder stability, visual convergence, motor planning, and coordination. Just like the TruBalance toy, a zoom ball can be used in different positions to challenge balance and vestibular input: Try using the zoom ball in sitting, standing, kneeling, standing on couch cushions, a slant…again, the options are limitless! Use our favorite zoom ball games to get started.
Thumbs Up Game– (affiliate link) This bilateral coordination game requires players to place rings on their thumb in a “thumbs up” position while they race to scoop and find the correct combination of colored rings to add to their thumb. It’s a fun racing game that builds visual perceptual skills too: figure ground, visual discrimination, visual memory, as well as the visual processing skill of scanning.
Lacing Buttons– (affiliate link) There is no doubt about the power of lacing cards when it comes to developing bilateral coordination skills. However, this lacing buttons activity takes it up a notch with the eye-hand coordination and visual processing skills. Kids can lace buttons onto wooden shirt pieces while building bilateral skills, fine motor skills, and eye-hand coordination. However, the set also includes puzzle cards that ask the child to lace on colored buttons in specific order so it matches the cards. What a workout in visual processing skills, too!
Animal Lacing Beads– (affiliate link) These lacing beads are chunky wooden animals that help kids develop bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, and visual perceptual skills. As an occupational therapist, I am drawn to this toy because of the different animals that could be used in sequencing activities, sensory bins, pretend play, stacking activities, and so much more.
Wooden Lacing Apple– (affiliate link) This lacing puzzle challenges bilateral coordination skills and can be used to work on eye-hand coordination, tripod grasp, and motor planning. Use this activity to help with stabilization as well.
Press and Stay Blocks– (affiliate link) These building blocks require bilateral coordination with a press so they stay, helping kids to develop bilateral coordination and get proprioceptive input to push them together and then take them apart. Building blocks are a great way to build fine motor skills and visual perceptual skills, and these are a great addition to your therapy toolbox collection.
Labyrinth Game– (affiliate link) This maze game is a favorite in our house, and a tool for building bilateral coordination and visual perceptual skills too. Kids need to manipulate two knobs at the same time and coordinate visual information with one hand or the other…or both. It’s a brain building challenge that involves both sides of the body. Challenge kids to do this activity in a kneel or while standing on their knees at a low table to challenge balance and offer proprioceptive input as well.
Octi Buckle Plush Toy with Hook and Loop Straps– (affiliate link) This play toy is a strategy to encourage development of fine motor skills, problem solving, color matching, coordination, and more. This stuffed play buddy is a toy that promotes development of many skills, bilateral coordination being one of them.
Using toys that double as quiet time activities, busy bags, or travel toys…all while working on skills is what makes toys like the buckle plush toy a therapist-approved toy. A buckle toy, with bright colors, shapes, straps, and zipper pouch will provide countless hours of recognition activities, brain building games and development puzzles. Your little one will stay busy counting the number of straps, connecting them together, pulling them apart, and starting over again. Kids can hide small items and treasures in the zip pouch, then unzip it later and get excited over their discovery!
Want a printable copy of our therapist-recommended toys to support bilateral coordination?
As therapy professionals, we LOVE to recommend therapy toys that build skills! This toy list is done for you so you don’t need to recreate the wheel.
Your therapy caseload will love these BILATERAL COORDINATION toy recommendations. (There’s space on this handout for you to write in your own toy suggestions, to meet the client’s individual needs, too!)
Enter your email address into the form below. The OT Toolbox Member’s Club Members can access this handout inside the dashboard, under Handouts. Just be sure to log into your account, first!
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.
If you are looking for the best gross motor toys to challenge coordination, balance, motor planning through whole-body movement and heavy work play, then you are in luck with these occupational therapy toys. Each one is designed to develop gross motor skills: strength, coordination, balance, posture, and more.
PLUS, head to the bottom of this blog post for Day 2 of our therapy toy giveaway. We’re giving away a gross motor kit with agility cones, tossing loops, bean bags, and hula hoops, perfect for gross motor, balance, coordination, and even heavy sensory play through whole body movements.
We started off the fun with yesterday’s fine motor toy ideas. Today is all about the gross motor play.
First, let’s talk Gross Motor Toys!
You’ll also want to check out our blog post on Gross Motor Activities for Preschoolers because many of the gross motor toy ideas listed in this post would be great for the preschool years (and beyond!).
Amazon affiliate links are included in this blog post. As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Gross Motor Toys
Kids need gross motor movement for so many skills. Today, I have gross motor toys to share! Here, you’ll find the best whole body toys and ideas to help kids with balance, core strength, stability, coordination, and endurance.
These gross motor games and toys support a variety of skill areas and functional tasks. Gross motor toys can be used to strengthen balance, coordination, motor planning, position changes, and other areas.
Scroll on to check out some therapist-approved toys that help gross motor skill development!
Gross Motor Toy Ideas
This list of toys for gross motor skills pairs well with our recent list of Fine Motor Toys. Today however, you’ll find toys that develop a few areas that are essential to areas of child development:
Bilateral Coordination– Kids need bilateral coordination in whole body movements to move their body in a coordinated way. These whole body movements can include coordination of the upper and lower body, or both arms, or both feet, and all of the above! Here are bilateral coordination toys to address this specific area.
Motor Planning– Motor planning with the whole body allows children to move in a room without crashing into objects or other people. Gross motor motor planning allows children to climb steps, navigate obstacles, or any movement-based task. Here is more information on motor planning and motor planning toys to address this specific sub-area.
Gross motor coordination– Coordination of gross motor skills is needed for tasks such as kicking or catching a ball, riding a bike, getting dressed, or any task that uses the entire body. Here are hand eye coordination toys to address this particular sub-area.
Proprioception– Integration of proprioceptive input allows children to know where their body is in space. It tells the body how much effort is needed to pick up and move objects. Proprioception allows us to understand the body’s position as it moves in a coordinated manner.
Vestibular input- Integration of vestibular input allows children to navigate the world around them as they move. Going up or down steps or bleachers is an example of this. Moving into different positions during tasks is another example of vestibular integration. Movement through different planes requires integration of vestibular input.
All of these areas work together in functional tasks and all are rooted in gross motor skills.
So often, therapists and teachers purchase items to use in their work using their own money. This giveaway offers a chance for you to win an item that will be useful in helping kids thrive.
And, given that kids are on screens more than ever before with all of the virtual learning and hybrid learning models being incorporated all over the world, therapists are seeing more need for active, physical play.
These are gross motor toys that you will find in therapy clinics. There is a reason why…because they are gross motor powerhouses! So, if you are looking for toy recommendations that build whole body motor skills, this is it!
Amazon affiliate links are included below. You can read more about these items by checking out the links.
Zoom Ball– This classic toy is such a great way to work on many skills. A zoom ball can be used in different positions to challenge balance and vestibular input. Try using the zoom ball games in sitting, standing, kneeling, standing on couch cushions, a slant…again, the options are limitless! Address skills such as:
Bilateral coordination
Core strength
Shoulder stability
Visual convergence
Motor planning
Coordination
Pop and Catch-Use this coordination toy indoors or outdoors to get kids moving. This toy can be played with while the child is standing, sitting, kneeling, or in a half-sit to challenge the core and eye-hand coordination in a variety of planes. Try playing on all fours on the floor for a shoulder girdle stability activity. Another use for this toy is by playing by standing at a table while the child shoots the ball across the table surface as they play like a ping-pong type of game. There are many uses for this pop and catch activity:
Eye-hand coordination
Motor planning
Vestibular input
Core strength
Stability of core
Stability of shoulder girdle
Bucket Stilts– These bucket stilts are perfect for helping kids develop gross motor skills. I love this set because there are 6 colored buckets that make a great gross motor obstacle course tool, too. You could use them as stepping stones to challenge balance and coordination, too. Here are gross motor skills that you can work on using these bucket stilts toys:
Core strength
Vestibular input
Motor planning
Coordination
Balance
Endurance
Stabilizing
Agility Cones– Sports cones are such an open-ended gross motor toy that can be used to develop so many skills: hopping, jumping, skipping, running, climbing, crawling…the options are endless. Use these agility cones in therapy obstacle courses, challenges, drills, and more. I chose these particular cones because they can go very nicely with a Zones of Regulation activity! Use cones to support these areas:
Motor planning
Vestibular input
Coordination
Core strength
Endurance
Carpet Markers– These carpet markers are an occupational therapist’s dream toy! Use the colored marker spots to help kids work on so many movement skills in obstacle courses, visual perceptual skill activities, direction following, sensory movement breaks, positioning guides, and so much more. The arrows are perfect for addressing directionality. Use them to work on crawling, hopping, jumping, stopping on a point. Just some of the areas that these carpet spots support:
Core strength
Shoulder stability
Motor planning
Coordination
Endurance
Proprioception
Parachute– A parachute is another open-ended gross motor toy that the kids just LOVE. This one is small enough for small groups, but builds motor skills in a big way. Use the parachute to help kids develop:
Core stability
Arm strength
Motor planning
Endurance
Bilateral coordination
Proprioceptive input
Toys for Core Strength
Toys that develop core strength get kids moving in a variety of positions. These toys support and challenge the vestibular and proprioceptive systems so they can be calming activities as well. Strength and stability in the core is needed for almost all functional tasks. Challenge kids with these core strengthening toys by getting them moving, on the floor in floor play or strengthening the core muscles through movement and balance coordination. Some ideas for developing and strengthening core strength include:
Toys that challenge movement changes, stepping from high to low and low to high, and movement with vestibular input offer opportunities to challenge and develop balance and coordination skills.
Encourage movement, whole body play, and gross motor coordination with throwing, tossing, and hand-eye coordination or foot-eye coordination skills with these gross motor coordination ideas:
All of the gross motor toys listed above could be used in obstacle courses…and what a great way to encourage so many skills! These are perfect additions to your obstacle course ideas, and challenge balance, coordination, motor planning, and add sensory input. Use these obstacle course toys to vary movement and encourage the specific skills kids need:
Want to add these toys to your home, classroom, or therapy practice? I am SO happy to fill your toolbox so you can help kids thrive and build and develop the skills they need!
More therapy Toys
Check out the other therapy toy recommendations in the list below:
Want a printable copy of our therapist-recommended toys to support gross motor development?
As therapy professionals, we LOVE to recommend therapy toys that build skills! This toy list is done for you so you don’t need to recreate the wheel.
Your therapy caseload will love these GROSS MOTOR toy recommendations. (There’s space on this handout for you to write in your own toy suggestions, to meet the client’s individual needs, too!)
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.
Check out the blog comments below to see tips and ideas from readers telling us which gross motor toys they would love to use with the kids they work with and love. Have other gross motor favorites that aren’t listed here? Tell us about them!
Young children often ask to learn to skip. Here, you’ll discover skipping activities for kids, as well as specific strategies to teach children how to skip. Skipping is an important gross motor target. For some children, learning to skip is a real challenge!
I wanted to update this resource on teaching kids to skip with additional skipping activities I’ve personally used in therapy sessions. You can find that information at the bottom of this page.
Learn to Skip with Skipping Activities
If you have ever spent time in an elementary school, you may have noticed that the youngest members of the school community, specifically kindergarteners, hardly ever walk from place to place… they skip (and hop, jump, twirl, and gallop, too)!
Skipping is a developmental milestone or marker that generally emerges around age 5, with a range of age 4-6 years. For many kids, skipping emerges without intervention, just the way reaching, crawling, or walking develops.
For kids who struggle with gross motor skills and bilateral coordination, direct teaching may be necessary to develop this critical skill. Once the basics are learned, skipping activities are a great way to practice.
learning to skip requires motor planning and sensory integration
Skipping is such a perfect example of motor planning and sensory integration. It requires ideation (having the idea about how to move), planning (sequencing the movement), and execution (carrying out the movement).
For a person to execute the motor plan of skipping, the coordinated effort of sensory systems and the brain is required.
Skipping also provides excellent sensory input. No wonder kindergarteners like to skip from place to place… the vestibular and proprioceptive input they receive is a natural reward for all their hard work in mastering the skill!
what about bilateral coordination?
The ability to coordinate the two sides of the body involved in learning how to skip requires balance, strength, motor planning, and bilateral coordination. Bilateral coordination refers to the ability of the brain and body to process and integrate information from both sides of the brain to respond with movements in a coordinated manner.
Many functional tasks and daily activities, such as feeding, dressing, and writing rely on bilateral coordination.
Being able to coordinate both sides of the body is also a foundation skill for gross motor coordination activities such as walking, running, galloping and skipping.
How to Teach Skipping
When you have a goal for a child to learn to skip, it is important to make sure that you address all of the components of skipping. Teaching kids to skip starts with seeing what skills the individual is able to do. There are skills that are required to skip. Can the child balance on one foot and hop? Does the child have a dominant leg? Can they gallop or perform a different version of skipping? These are all good questions to ask when teaching skipping skills.
First, evaluate and observe the following gross motor skills needed for skipping:
Balance – check to make sure they can balance on either foot
Hopping – are they able to hop in place on each foot? Are they able to hop forward on one foot? Have them try to take 5 hops forward on either foot
Leg dominance – it may be helpful to know if they have a preferred leg for activities like hopping or kicking
Galloping – are they able to gallop? Can they gallop on either side? This is more of a unilateral skill, which is often easier for kids who demonstrate difficulty with bilateral coordination skills.
If any of the above skills are weak, start with developing balance and hopping. Then progress to galloping, followed by skipping.
Then, use these strategies to teach skipping:
To teach skipping, start by breaking down the steps for the child. Provide a demonstration and simple verbal cues like “Step, hop, switch”. You may need to provide a visual cue as well, using colored dots or markers on the floor, such as these (Amazon affiliate link) Little Polly Markers.
2. Once the child is able to complete the “step, hop, switch” sequence. This can be a very slow process at first. Some kids will need to think through the motor plan of each step. That’s ok! Use visual and verbal cues to work on the step with one foot, the hop, and the switch to the other foot.
3. Work to improve their fluency and speed of the step, hop switch sequence. Use these steps in an obstacle course or a relay activity to work on speed and gross motor coordination to improve fluent motor skills.
3. As they master the skill of skipping, you can encourage them to incorporate their upper body into the movement as well. Show them how to swing their arms in coordination with the legs. This will become more fluent and integrated with practice.
Working on the coordination and motor planning to master learning to skip involves more than just a hop and a skip. Skipping is a complex task, but once you break it down and address underlying skill areas, it becomes easier.
Skipping Activities
Here are some gross motor coordination games and skipping activities that address bilateral coordination and motor skills:
Obstacle courses – set up a simple hopping and jumping obstacle course inside or outside. Use pool noodles to jump over with two feet, hop in and out of hula hoops, jump over cardboard bricks, etc. Here is a post about Outdoor Lawn Games with lots of ideas for using backyard toys and equipment to address gross motor coordination skills.
This Ultra Dash Game (affiliate link) is fun for kids of all ages! You can set up an obstacle course in various ways and then the kids have to race to match the colors from the wand to the colored base. You could incorporate skipping, jumping, and hopping into this game to work on those skills in a new way.
Use gross motor toys to work on balance, coordination, motor planning, and core strength.
Use a long jump rope to hop over on one foot.
Stand like a flamingo. Try freeze dance games with a flamingo theme. When the music stops, players have to hold one leg up like a flamingo!
Simon says- Incorporate the hop and jump tasks needed in the task of skipping. Use these Simon Says commands in therapy sessions.
Yoga is a great activity to build body awareness, gross motor skills, and bilateral coordination. Here are several different kids yoga resources:
Unicorn Yoga Slide Deck freebie from The OT Toolbox
Skip ball (affiliate link)- this toy is a fun tool to practice skipping skills
Chinese Jump Rope (affiliate link) – who remembers this classic toy? Relive your childhood while passing on this great game
Mini Trampoline (affiliate link)- these are great to work on jumping, hopping, coordination, following directions, all great skills to teach skipping
Musical Hippity Hop Stick – this rotating stick encourages children to jump over the stick as it rotates by. If the stick touches them, the game is over. Practice this with two feet first, then try hopping over the stick
Hopscotch! Don’t forget about this one! All you need is some chalk and a sunny day to get outside and practice hopping and jumping. This would be a great activity to set up on the playground for kids to work on skipping skills during recess. Not ready for outside play? Use painter’s tape down the hallway.
Teach Skipping in Occupational Therapy
One thing I love about occupational therapy is that we can help kids with the skills they want to do. I’ve had a few kids that request things like learning to pump a swing so they can play on the swings at recess, or how to do a cartwheel even when body awareness and crossing midline is a problem.
I’ve had a child or two that wanted to learn how to skip. They wanted to skip because their peers do this at recess and they found themselves missing out. The fact is that skipping is a childhood classic! One student in particular wanted to learn to skip so they could skip down their road after getting off the school bus at the end of the school day.
Isn’t occupational therapy cool?! We get to help our clients do the things that matter the most to them, and if that’s skipping, hey, that’s what we are going to work on in OT sessions!
Here’s how I taught one child to skip in our occupational therapy sessions…
Skipping Goals in OT
Some physical therapists might argue that skipping is PT’s domain. But when we are talking about the function and the actual skill that is involved and the child’s motivation to do this task as part of play or functional tasks, we’ve got a great OT goal.
For my kiddo that wanted to skip at recess, this is exactly what I’m talking about. This particular student wanted to participate in her school day with her peers, and the function was play.
Another area that’s not often considered when it comes to breaking down the task of skipping is Related, are the concepts of dominance and mixed dominance vs. ambidexterity. This is where occupational therapy can help because we do think of all of these components!
I helped this student to work on skipping by segmenting the movements into steps. We came up with a routine of sorts. This really helped this particular child because they were really interested in dance and movement. So putting the steps of skipping into a routine with step by step movements really helped her.
I had her step on a colored dot on the floor with one foot. Then I had her pick up her opposite knee by pulling it up to her trunk section. This step took a little practice because of balance and coordination of the movements. We added some animal poses into the therapy sessions to work on the core strength, balance, and coordination. It also was a great regulation activity for her.
Then, once she had that step down pat, I had her hop on one foot to another colored dot. We used different colors to add a visual cue to the steps.
Then, once she was able to do the hop we repeated the process with the other foot.
Then we put it all together into repeated movements.
She was able to move really slowly through the steps of skipping by using a pattern of colored dots on the floor. I started with big therapy dots and then we moved onto small round stickers.
It worked really well! She was very motivated to complete this task so that helped, but by using this process over and over again, she really got the steps and motor planning down to learn the steps of skipping. It became an automatic motion.
Then, we added in the component of peers and a busy environment by doing the activity outside in the actual space, the playground. Success!
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.
This Fine Motor Paper Clip Math idea is a fine motor math activity that makes for a great busy bag or calm down time activity. We actually have several paper clip activities here on The OT Toolbox because you can target so many fine motor skills with this simple item. It’s perfect for indoor playtime and hands-on learning. Not only that, but it is a great way to work on fine motor skills like finger and thumb opposition. Plus, manipulating paper clips helps with a neat pincer grasp, which is needed for the dexterity of manipulating small objects.
Fine Motor Paper Clip Math
I also love to use paperclips in math activities because you are targeting the fine motor skills needed for a functional pencil grasp and other tasks like stringing beads, zip/unzip, button/unbutton, and various in-hand manipulation skills.
An open thumb web space is a skill is needed for manipulating items like a pencil or crayon, shoe laces, zippers, buttons, and small objects with an open web space.
Often times, we see kids who have their thumb squashed up against their fingers and the side of their palm when they are writing or manipulating items. This opposition fine motor activity is a fun way to work on opening up the web space for improved dexterity.
I love how the two sets linked above (both affiliate links) are all colors of the rainbow. Even better for color matching and color recognition for preschoolers!
So, this activity is completely simple to do; Spread out the paper clips and ask your child to match them up to the craft sticks.
We worked on a few learning activities with this:
Add the number of paper clips.
Add the total number of paper clips on two craft sticks.
Subtract the difference of the number of paper clips on two craft sticks.
Using the Foam Craft Sticks makes this activity a real workout for the fingers. You could use wooden craft sticks that provide more support and are easier to manage.
But, to really challenge the fine motor skills, the foam craft sticks are the thing to use! They are a little wiggly and require stability of the thenar muscles (muscles of the thumb) to hold the thumb in place as the fingers and the tip of the thumb place the paper clip on the craft stick.
When opposing, the thumb’s thenar muscles work to oppose the pointer finger during functional tasks. This is needed for advancing and positioning a pencil when writing, managing a button with ease, and pulling a zipper. With a closed thumb web space and lateral pinch of the thumb versus true opposition, a child will fumble.
When doing this opposition activity with your child, be sure to verbally prompt them to attend to the bend thumb IP joint.
This is such an easy way to learn and play indoors. Looking for more indoor play ideas?
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
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.
In this blog post, we are covering all things crossing midline activities…but what is crossing midline?? We’ll get into that too, as well as some fun ways to develop midline crossing skills and specific exercises that kids (and all ages) can do to support development of this motor skills task that is huge in the way of gross motor coordination.
Crossing midline is one of those motor skills we do constantly throughout the day, but never really give a second thought. And that automaticity of motor movements is a good thing, too! Imagine processing the action to use one hand to pull a door open. Imagine the time it would take to shower, dress, put on and tie your shoes if you had to process through the action to move your hands fluidly across the middle line of your body.
As therapists, we hear “crossing the midline” all the time. Have you ever wondered what the big deal is? Why is crossing the midline so important? In this post we will delve into what crossing the midline is, what causes issues, and how it impacts daily function, especially schoolwork.
Before we get started, if you are doubting the validity of crossing the midline, tie one hand behind your back and go about your day. How much did you reach across your body to get something? You reached across, diagonal, up and down to interact with your environment. While a two-handed person does not do this much crossing the midline, there is still a fair amount.
What is Crossing Midline?
Crossing midline refers to moving the body (hand/arm/foot/leg across an imaginary line that runs vertically down the center of the body to the other side (and vise versa). Additionally, crossing midline also refers to twisting the body in rotation around this imaginary line, as well as leaning the upper or body across the middle of the body.
Let’s break it down further:
Midline of the body is an imaginary line that drops from the middle of the head, straight down over the nose, to the belly button and divides the body into left and right sides. Imagine a line that starts at the middle part of your hair and runs straight down your forehead and ends at the core of your abdomen. This imaginary line effectively divides your body into a symmetrical (mostly) left side and a right side.
“Crossing the midline” is a simplified way to indicate that part of the body moves over that imaginary line. This can look like 3 different aspects of movement:
Reaching an arm/hand or foot/leg across the middle of the body to the other side of the body (Example: Reaching the right arm across the body for an object placed on a table to the left side)
Rotating the body around the midline in a rotary motion in order to twist at the hips. This can look like putting your hands on your hips and rotating your upper body around at the abdomen (Example: reaching for a seatbelt involves reaching the hand and arm across the midline but it also involves twisting at the hips)
Leaning the upper body over the middle line as in doing a side crunch. The head and shoulders move over the middle of the body (Example: Bending sideways at the waist while getting dressed or reaching while sitting for an object that’s fallen to the floor)
Crossing the midline is a motor skill that requires using both hands together in a coordinated manner (bilateral hand coordination) allows kids to cross midline during tasks. This bilateral coordination ability is deeply connected to crossing midline.
Why is Crossing Midline Important?
Midline crossing is a developmental ability that is important for so many fine motor and gross motor tasks. This relates to functional skills in a major way. When a child has difficulty with crossing midline, they will demonstrate challenges in practically every functional task.
When a child does efficiently cross the midline, they can use their dominant hand in skilled tasks. They develop a dominant hand and the other extremity becomes the assisting hand. They can manipulate objects in the world around them through all planes. They can demonstrate sensory integration by motor skills with vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual input.
In particular, crossing the midline offers vestibular input. Moving the head from center plane shifts position of the inner ears. When bending, twisting, and moving from center, the vestibular system is at work.
When the child does not cross the midline, they tend to use both hands equally in tasks like handwriting, coloring, and cutting with scissors. They may demonstrate awkward movements by moving the body to position itself so they don’t need to cross the middle line.
Challenges with this motor skill impact learning, social skills, play, and self-care.
In particular, we might notice sensory motor challenges at different age levels. For example, for children aged 3-5, we might see specific midline red flags that impact learning and play. We cover this specific age group in our blog post on Crossing Midline Activities for Preschoolers.
Occupational therapy will assess midline crossing skills by observing play and functional tasks.
Crossing Midline Occupational Therapy Asessments
Occupational therapists perform individualized evaluations and assessments of underlying skills as they impact functional performance in every day tasks. Because of this, crossing midline is an essential skill that will be observed and looked for in every OT evaluation.
Occupational therapists can complete a standardized evaluation, but most often, their skilled abilities will enable them to identify when crossing midline is a problem through play and interaction during the evaluation process.
When you are watching for midline crossing, you should observe kids playing in normal situations. A child will demonstrate a tendency to avoid crossing midline in activities or tasks, but if “set up” to cross the midline (i.e. setting items to the left of the body and asking them to reach over the midline with their right hand), they will typically be able to complete the requested movement pattern, but not carry over the action in a normal situation.
If they have difficulty with crossing midline, a child will switch hands during handwriting because both hands get practice with pencil manipulation.
The child might rotate their whole body instead of twisting at the trunk or shift their weight in a task rather than leaning the upper body over the midline.
You can often times observe a tendency to avoid midline crossing in activities such as kicking a ball, throwing beanbags, switching hands in coloring, difficulty with putting on pants and shoes independently, and difficulty with visual tracking and reading.
Crossing Midline Activities
So, what do you do when crossing the midline is an issue? There are many ways to support the development of this skill.
The ideas listed below are fun ways to play and develop motor skills by crossing midline, however they have a sensory component too.
We mentioned above the aspect of vestibular input and proprioceptive input that occurs in crossing the midline. These midline activities have those sensory motor considerations through play.
Toss bean bags -Encourage upper body movement! Bend through the legs, turn sideways, reach back behind you, rotate side to side…encourage vestibular input by bending and rotating.
Slow motion cartwheels- Place both hands on the floor to the side, kick legs over. By doing the cartwheel in slow motion, the body is forced to move sequentially, adding midline crossing at the trunk.
Hit a ball with a bat.
Use pool noodles to hit a ball- think hockey and hitting the ball into a target on the floor
Play catch with rolled socks- Use a bucket or bin to catch the rolled socks. They will fly high, low, left, and right!
Play flashlight tag.
Catch lighting bugs or butterflies.
Show the child how to write their name in the air with large arm movements.
Bend over at the waist and swing the arm side to side, in large circles, and in figure 8 motions.
Play with scarves to music.
Move a ribbon wand to music.
You can use midline crossing activities in OT interventions.
Crossing Midline Treatment Ideas
You can use the ideas above in different ways like in games like Simon Says or the Hokey Pokey. You could add them to obstacle courses or brain breaks. Some other things to consider about crossing midline treatments…
One of the easiest ways to work on midline crossing is to make the opposite side unavailable.
The classic treatment for hemiplegia is to restrict movement of the functioning side, while making the affected side do all the work. You can do this activity yourself, or with your learners. Make the activity rewarding to encourage your learners to want to keep going. Food, stickers, or preferred activities are a great motivator.
Another way to address midline issues is to move objects to the side to encourage reaching. Put a preferred object in different places to encourage your child to stretch to get it.
Sometimes you need to restrict the movement of objects. People will turn and shift their paper or other objects to be able to utilize it without crossing the midline. Fix the paper to the table and encourage your students to sit forward without turning their body.
One of the classic tests, the Bruinicks Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, is a drawing test where learners have to draw inside a narrow path that crosses across the paper. You can quickly see who struggles with this as they quickly turn their paper to make the task easier. The design copy task in this test looks at midline crossing as well. Learners are asked to dot to dot a diamond. They are instructed not to pick up their pencil or shift the paper. This proves to be difficult for many students.
Crossing midline exercises can look like many different things.
Crossing the Midline Exercises
I love this crossing midline exercise below, because it has a ton of different movement options with one fun activity.
We had fun one winter day with a few crossing the midline exercises, including marching, crossing arms over, and stomping out some wiggles.
Our midline march activity was a marching parade with “Stop Stations”. We marched along to music and when I turned off the sound, the kids had to do a midline exercise.
The midline exercises included:
Place left hand on right knee
Place right hand on left knee
Stand and bend to touch the opposite foot
Standing and place right elbow on left knee
Standing and place left elbow on right knee
Crunches with touching right elbow to left knee
Crunches with touching left elbow to right knee
Cherry picker crunches- lay on the back slightly bent forward at the hips so the upper body is off the ground. Move a ball or small toy from the right side to the left side.
Because we were doing these midline exercises to music that quickly stopped and started, the thought process was quick. The kids had to quickly complete the exercise without much forethought.
This quick start and stop activity allowed them to practice crossing midline without over-thinking about the action.
A crossing midline exercise like the ones in the pictures are easy to incorporate into therapy sessions or occupational therapy at home. Make it fun!
Fine Motor Crossing Midline Exercises
Crossing the midline can be done on a small scale, too. This activity is similar to the midline marching activity described above, but it uses paper, pencil, and small colored dots such as stickers or a small circle drawn with markers.
Draw dots on the left margin of a paper using colored markers or colored stickers. There should be one of each color going down the left margin.
Draw dots using the same colors going down the right margin. Use each color only once.
Turn on music. The student can draw to music on the center of the page using their pencil or markers.
Turn off the music. When the music stops, call out a direction: “Left hand, yellow!” The student should put down their marker and touch the yellow dot on the right margin using their left hand.
Turn on the music to draw again and repeat.
This activity is similar to the gross motor midline exercise because it requires the child to think on the spot. They have to listen to several instructions, but also process the motor skills and cross the midline automatically.
You can adjust this activity by numbering the dots, using less colors, or less dots, and reducing the amount of instructions. This activity can be used with any level by grading the activity.
This post is part of the Gross Motor A-Z series hosted by Still Playing School. You can see all of the gross motor activities here.
Occupational Therapy and Crossing Midline
Now, let’s talk about what an occupational therapy practitioner will assess and why they look so closely at midline crossing during OT evaluations.
As a parent/caregiver you probably do not give “crossing midline” much thought, until you see your little one painting the left side of their picture with the left hand, and the right with the right hand. Difficulty crossing the midline can be caused by several different factors:
Neurological impact – caused by a stroke, brain bleed, or cerebral palsy
Visual deficit – sometimes after having a stroke the visual field is impacted. Persons can see only one side of their visual field, or each side is treated as a separate side, rather than a fluid spectrum. There are other vision disorders that impair the visual scanning field
Low tone and muscle weakness. People with low tone or core weakness may feel unbalanced when they reach across their midline. They might topple over, or feel like they are going to. There are various diagnoses that exhibit low tone, like Down Syndrome and others. It’s important to assess midline crossing skills that might be delayed because of tone or weakness.
Sensory processing – the sensory system is critical in determining position in space, feedback on the muscles and joints, and body awareness. Without this, a person may not notice where their body parts are, or that they are using inefficient movements to complete tasks.
Here is a good hint for new grad OTs or occupational therapy students working in a fieldwork position: Uncovering the “why” is important, in case there is a medical cause that can be corrected. We do want to know the why and that can solve some of the questions that we might have during the evaluation or interventions. However, try not to spend too much time worrying once you have determined the “why”. It is important to get started with treatment.
Pediatric occupational therapists will evaluate midline crossing skills in OT evals.
Evaluating Midline Crossing
Pediatric occupational therapists will note midline crossing in practically every evaluation they do. It might only be a one liner in the eval that you’ll see: “Child crosses midline independently during play.” Or, the description of the midline crossing skills might go more into depth, covering the dominant and the non-dominant hand, various self care skills, whether weighted items were used that triggered more tone during movement, etc. There can be many variances to crossing midline and a skilled eye is key.
Things to look for when assessing crossing midline:
Some symptoms of difficulty crossing the midline will be obvious. Seeing your child eat each side of their plate with a different hand will be hard to miss. In young babies using both hands interchangeably is typical. Movements are not coordinated in young children, neither is hand dominance.
Other signs of not crossing midline might not be as obvious. Watch someone paint a wall. You will probably notice they cross the midline of their body as they reach for different parts of the wall. Someone who does not cross midline will constantly move their body to reach the next part. This type of obvious non-use of the midline might be observed in the child that colors one side of the page with one hand and then complains that they are getting tired and they pick up another crayon with their other hand to color the opposite side of the page. Or, you might see a child struggling to put on a seatbelt in a car. They might pull the seatbelt with their hand closest to the belt, get it to the middle of their body, and then continue to pull the seatbelt with their other hand. They might struggle to engage the buckle of the seatbelt because they only use one hand. Or, they might turn in their seat so the buckle is in the center of their body and midline crossing is taken out of the equation.
Other things to look at when assessing midline crossing:
Hand dominance
Foot dominance
Vision dominance
Hand preference in tasks
Strength, bilaterally
Muscle tone
Motor planning skills
Proprioceptive input and tolerance
Cognition and direction following
How the individual moves when holding items
Different environments (when alone, when in front of peers, confidence in movements, etc.)
Something to consider that isn’t always thought about when you think about midline…vision skills!
Crossing Midline and Vision
Crossing the midline can involve vision also. This means that your eyes scan over the middle of the imaginary line running down the middle of your body. For example, you can move your eyes visually from the far left of your view to the far right. Both eyes should move steadily and together. If there is difficulty with visual midline skills, then you will see a lot of head movement as the individual compensates.
If you can not cross midline visually, you might have difficulty scanning a document, reading fluidly across a page, or doing visual perceptual tasks like word searches, and hidden pictures.
Crossing Midline and Fatigue- Something to Consider
There are times when I fail to cross the midline, even though I am perfectly able. When I am doing strenuous tasks like a large painting, cleaning, or carrying something heavy, I tend to switch hands to alleviate some of the stress on my joints. This does not make me ambidextrous, just tired. Sometimes it takes considerable effort to reach way across my body, when my right hand is already there.
If you have ever broken an arm, you can relate. If you can only use one arm, you have to become adept at reaching across the midline. You may get used to this new movement pattern quickly, while others get off balance, often moving their body to compensate.
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.
This apple activity is a fine motor activity for occupational therapy sessions with kids that builds many skill areas. I love this fine motor apple activity because you can make it work for the needs of each child. There is power to using hole punch activities with kids! Working on hand strength? Use the hole punch to build skills. Working on dexterity? Pick up the small red circles to place them on the felt apple tree. You can even incorporate it into a vertical plane activity or add apple brain breaks to the session. The sky is the limit!
I love this apple tree activity because you can use dice to work on hand mobility, small apple dots that are precision work, and you can incorporate other skills into the activity.
Pair this apple tree activity with our apple tweezer activity for even more apple themed fine motor fun.
Fine motor strengthening is a hot topic when it comes to back-to-school time. Kids go back into the classroom and need to get back up to speed on all of the fine motor requirements in the classroom. What better way to work on fine motor strength than with a Fall apple theme? This apple themed fine motor activity adds a bit of math, too and it’s super easy to create for hands-on play, learning, and fine motor work.
Fine Motor Strengthening Activity
This apple tree activity is a fun way to build the intrinsic muscle strength of the hands as well as gross grasp strength. It’s an easy activity to throw together, and the steps of the activity help to build strength of the hands, too.
Materials needed to make this apple tree activity:
Scissors (Here are my favorite scissors and why to use each type of scissors for different needs)
To create the apple tree, cut the green felt into a tree-ish shape. Cutting felt is a complex scissor task, so older kids can help with this part. If you are able to use stiff felt, cutting through the material is a strengthening exercise in itself.
Next, cut the brown felt into a trunk shape, by simply cutting strait lines. Consider allowing the child to cut the trunk shape as cutting strait lines on a material such as felt is easier, yet the flimsy material makes it difficult to cut. A stiffer material would work well for this part as well.
Next, cut the red cardstock into small, thin strips of paper. This is not necessary for the end result of the activity, however there is a fine motor benefit to the extra step. Kids can hold the thin strips of paper with a pincer grasp using their non-dominant, helper hand. Using the small strips of paper requires precision. Kids will then be required to slow down while using the hole punch so that they don’t cut the holes over the edge of the strip of the paper.
Need a hole punch that requires less effort for younger kids or those who need to build their gross muscle grip strength? Try this one.
Hole Punch Activity
Before we move on, I want to take a moment to talk about this portion of the activity.
Cutting paper strips and using a hole punch along the strip is an easy fine motor activity that you can set up with items you probably have on hand….Cut strips of paper. Use different grades and remember that cutting thicker paper means more resistance which is good for strengthening the hands.
Use the brown cardstock to make a small apple barrel shape. This can be used in the math part of this activity.
A slower cut with the hole punch allows for the muscles of the hands to exercise with prolonged tension and increases blood flow. Using the hole punch with slow repetitions builds gross grasp strength.
Once the apple tree and apples are created, kids can place them on the tree. The cardstock will not stick permanently to the felt, but they will stay in place for temporary play. Scatter the red cardstock circles, (those are your apples!) onto the table. Show your child or student how to pick up the apples and place them onto the apple tree. Picking up the small cardstock circles is a real workout for the intrinsic muscles of the hand.
To make this activity easier, place the cardstock circles on a piece of felt.
Apple Fine Motor Activity
Add a bit of math to this activity with a pair of dice. Show your child how to roll the dice and then count the number of dots on the dice. They can then add and count the number of apples and place them on the tree.
There are several ways to build on this activity:
Use the dice to add apples.
Subtract by taking away apples from the tree.
Create multiple step math problems by adding and them subtracting the numbers on the dice to put on and then remove apples.
The Apple Therapy Kit is full of fine motor, visual motor, and sensory motor tools to support fine motor skill development needed for handwriting and other functional tasks.
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.
I love this fine motor leaf craft and activity that we did back in September, 2015. It was a fun Fall occupational therapy activity that targets several areas of development: bilateral coordination, wrist stability, fine motor dexterity, and visual motor skills.
This plastic canvas leaf is a fine motor sewing craft for kids.
Fine Motor Leaf Craft
This week in our second grade learning activities, we’re sharing this Fall Fine Motor Leaf craft that is perfect for second graders. We love fine motor crafts and activities and this creative fall art was no exception. Kids of all ages will love crafting up these Fall leaves (my three year old and 8 year old both had a blast!) It’s great because these leaves can get creative and as unique as the crafty kids like!
Fall Fine Motor Leaves Craft
(This post contains affiliate links.)You’ll need just a few materials for this easy Fall craft:
Fold a small square of paper in half and show your child how to draw half of a leaf.
Now is a good time to discuss symmetry and that leaves are symmetrical. Second graders can discuss and learn about mirror symmetry by creating leaves on the halved paper.
Draw leaves on plastic canvas:
Next, trace the leaf shapes onto the Plastic Canvas. Tracing with a marker onto the bumpy textured surface of the canvas is great fine motor work as the child holds the paper in place with their assisting hand and maintains control of the marker while tracing.
You’ll want the child to manage the paper in place with bilateral coordination as they use both hands together in a coordinated manner.
Cut out the plastic canvas shapes.
After tracing the leaf shape onto the canvas, have your child cut out the shape with scissors. What a great scissor activity for older students like second graders!
The holes of the canvas really provides feedback to the child as they cut the curved lines of their leaves.
Lacing plastic canvas shapes
We’ve previously covered why I love lacing activities as an occupational therapist. There are just so many visual motor benefits to lacing tasks that support the areas that we are working on in OT sessions.
The plastic canvas craft is a great way to gain all of the benefits of lacing tasks!
After cutting out the leaves, start lacing! Discuss the colors of the plastic cording and identify warm colors (red, yellow, orange) that might be seen on Fall leaves.
Explore the look of cool colors too (blue, green, purple) through discussion.
Sewing Activity for Kids
This craft is a practical life skill activity, too. Besides the craft aspect, you can support the IADL of sewing with this activity.
Show the child how to thread the plastic cording though the holes of the canvas. Show the students a running stitch and use terms “pull, over, and under”.
Try a whipstitch where the cording goes down through the plastic canvas and around the edge with parallel stitches over the edge of the shape.
These are all great terms to introduce to kids as a pre-sewing skill.
Practice different sewing techniques using the plastic cord to make designs and trim around the plastic canvas leaves.
Allow the child to create as they like on their leaves. Some of our leaves had long stitches that resembled the veins of the leaves (More symmetry!) and others were very creative with their colors and zig zagging lines.
This Fall craft is sure to get the creativity and fine motor skills going!
More skill areas covered in this activity:
Science: Discuss leaf types, tree names, and shapes.
Math: Count out squares and patterns with the stitches.
Crafting: Create a decorative garland with the leaves by hanging all of the leaves together.
Creative Expression: Each leaf can be as unique as your child and the leaves of the trees this Fall.
Functional Skills/Homemaking: Practice types of stitches on the plastic canvas.
Sewing: Encourage more homemaking skills by introducing a plastic needle and thread.
Fine Motor: Many fine motor skills are addressed in this activity-tripod grasp, bilateral hand coordination, scissor skills,
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.