This cherry blossom craft is one of my favorites this time of year because it’s a fine motor power tool that supports so many areas of development with a single craft. We made the tissue paper cherry blossom tree many years ago, and it’s still a favorite when it comes to one craft that supports many areas! This is just one of the fun Cherry blossom crafts here on the site that promote fine motor skills, strengthening, and precision in big ways. Let’s explain…
Cherry Blossom Craft
We made these Cherry blossom trees one day as a Spring occupational therapy activity for kids. This was the perfect way to brighten up our dining room. We had a bunch of paper snowflakes hanging on our window and decided we needed to pull those down and make a few fun spring crafts! This Cherry Blossom Tree craft hit the mark!
Not only were our trees fun to make, they had a great fine motor component to them…and we love fine motor activities!
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Cherry Blossom Tree craft
We made this tissue paper cherry blossom craft using simple materials that we already had on hand:
Green construction paper
Pink tissue paper
Glue
Clothes pins
We also used scissors, a pencil, and a lid (to create the tree circle)
The craft is ideal because there are many skills that are addressed using these materials. We show them in the image at the top of this page, and they include:
Finger strength– needed to pinch the clothes pins as a trunk onto the tissue paper cherry blossom craft.
Arch development– crumbling the paper into small bits requires refinement of the arches of the hand
Pincer grasp– to pick up and manipulate the small crumbled tissue aper pieces and to place them onto glue spots on the tree
There are other skills that are used as well: tripod grasp, gross grasp, bilateral coordination, intrinsic hand strength, etc.
We started with green Construction Paper and a peanut butter jar lid. I traced a bunch of circles (and Baby Girl had to try her hand at tracing, too!)
Holding the lid and tracing around it is a great way to incorporate bilateral coordination and crossing midline. This is a nice precursor to the task of cutting out each circle.
To address scissor skills, consider using thicker paper or cardstock to make the cutting activity easier. Here are strategies for working on scissor skills and cutting accuracy.
These were cut out and we were ready to get started on our trees.
I put a bunch of dots of glue on the circles. Older kids could do this part. Squeezing the glue bottle is a great fine motor strengthening exercise for little hands.
For kids that need help working on graded resistance and grasp when managing a bottle of glue, practicing glue spots onto different sizes of circles like in a glue exercise is a good way to help with this functional task.
The Glue Spots worksheets in the Spring Fine Motor Kit is a good exercise for this activity.
Next, Big Sister pulled small bits of pink tissue paper from a big old sheet.
Tearing tissue paper is such a GREAT fine motor strengthening exercise for kiddos.
Crumbling those little bits works the intrinsic muscles of the hands (the small muscles that are in the hand and make up arches of the palm. Strength of these muscles is so important to endurance in handwriting and coloring, maintaining adequate pressure when coloring, holding the pencil accurately…the needs for defined arches of the hands could go on and on and on!
Crumbling tissue paper for crumbled paper art is a functional fine motor craft that kids can hang up and admire their hard work. You’ll find more Crumble Art crafts in the Spring Fine Motor Kit, including templates for 5 different crumble art crafts: flowers, mushroom, rainbow, and Easter egg crafts.
Pressing those little tissue paper crumbles into the glue required a tripod grasp. And, we had a ton of glue spots…so this was a good long activity!
Cover all of those glue spots!
Once our tissue paper/glue was dry, we clipped on clothes pin “trunks” onto our trees. Pinching those pins was another way to encourage hand strengthening. We had a whole forest of Cherry Blossom trees and got them involved on our train table, with the Little People stuff, with little dinosaurs. We played with these Cherry Blossom trees until they fell apart!
Be sure to check out this other cherry blossom fine motor math activity, where we used pink tissue paper to make cherry blossoms and worked on tripod grasp and eye hand coordination skills.
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.
These pipe cleaner bunny crafts are a fun Easter craft that supports fine motor skills. We LOVED making these and then using them over and over again!
With Easter being right around the corner, these pipe cleaner bunny crafts and pipe cleaner carrots are a great way to add fine motor skills to your Easter occupational therapy line up. These bunny cuties were easy to make and have been seen a lot in our play time recently. This isn’t the first time that we’ve made Easter Bunny fine motor activity.
Pipe Cleaner Bunny and Pipe Cleaner Carrots
So WHAT is a manipulative?? (Even spell check doesn’t know, so maybe we should explain…) These cute little bunny manipulatives can be used for so many fun activities: counting, patterning, sorting, arranging…so much learning can happen with little objects that kids can manipulate.
So we love making fun kids crafts that double as a therapy tool. When you bend and fold pipe cleaners into shapes, you’re actually working on several skills:
I’ve caught baby Girl playing with these bunnies and carrots as she made them talk to each other. What a great way to work on language and conversation! Throw these bunnies and carrots into a sensory bin and you’ve got a sensory activity where the kids can explore textures and senses.
There are SO many ways these manipulatives can be used in learning and play.
How to make a Bunny with Pipe Cleaners
Here’s what we did to make the pipe cleaner bunnies…
First, you’ll want to gather your materials:
White pipe cleaners
Pink pony bead
Check out the directions to make the pipe cleaner bunny craft under each picture. We wanted to add a step-by-step visual.
To start, I created a handful of Easter Bunnies using off-white pipe cleaners. It’s not hard to do…
1. Bend the pipe cleaner to make two bunny ears.
2. Twist the pipe cleaner around and through the first “ear”, then through the second “ear”. The second ear is not a complete loop, so the tail end of the pipe cleaner doesn’t really go through the ear.
You’ll pinch the pipe cleaner so it stays put. See the next picture.
3. Pinch the “ears” in place and pull the long end strait down.
4. Thread a pink bead onto the pipe cleaner for the bunny’s nose.
5. Wrap the long end of the pipe cleaner straight up and around your thumb.
6. Repeat twice, making one loop to the right of the bead and one loop to the left of the bead.
7. Pinch it so it stays in place. You can kind of squash the bunny down to make it stay put.
Pipe Cleaner Carrot
The pipe cleaner carrots are just a piece of an orange pipe cleaner bent into a carrot shape and a small piece of green pipe cleaner twisted around to make a stem. Super easy to make.
Make a handful of each and you’re ready for counting, patterns, sorting, adding, and subtracting…
How many ways can you think of to learn and play with these guys?
Our bunnies have been found all over the house this last week. The carrots made their way into the Little People house and eaten by the Lalaloopsy friends. The bunny manipulatives have even been caught hanging out with a few Ninja Turtles!
Let us know if you make these bunny and carrot manipulatives. We would love to see how you’re learning and playing!
For more Easter fine motor activities, check out the Spring Fine Motor Kit.
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.
Working on oral motor exercises as a sensory processing strategy for self-regulation, or as an oral motor tool to address physical needs? Ok, so we made a cute little cotton ball bunny to use in an Easter sensory activity as a small world play area to work on fine motor skills with an Easter theme. However, using them in imagination play, but, there are so many oral motor benefits to using these little cotton ball bunnies, too.
It was so much fun with that little cotton ball bunny family that we turned it into a big old collection of bunnies! That’s not all…we used them in an oral motor exercise, with major self-regulation benefits. Here is a how to for this Easter craft for kids as well as a run-down on oral motor skill work with everyday items.
One thing I love about this is that we were blowing cotton balls with straws as a calming and regulating activity, but it was a lot of fun, too!
You’ll also want to check out our other Bunny Activities:
Oral motor skills play a big part of feeding. In fact oral motor problems and feeding can impact food preferences as well as ability to eat certain food textures. There is a lot of information on oral motor skills on The OT Toolbox.
Adding sensory work through the mouth in the form of proprioception is a powerful way to help kids recenter and gain input that is calming and regulating. That input “wakes up” the muscles of the mouth.
There is a mindfulness portion to this oral motor strategy, too. Taking deep breaths is so important in relaxation it brings awareness to your body. In this Easter oral motor activity, kids can blow through a straw to move the cotton ball bunnies while focusing on a static viewpoint at the end of the straw.
Did you know that blowing cotton balls with straws can do all of this??
Talk about centering and regulating! You can even ask the child to breathe in while you count to 5 and then breath out as they move the bunny with the power of their breath.
Oral Motor Exercises for Heavy work
To do this self regulation activity, it’s actually pretty simple.
Line up a row of cotton ball bunnies on the table.
Give the child a straw and ask them to blow into the straw to push the bunny toward a target.
You can ask them to move a certain number of bunnies in a specific amount of time, or they can simply move all of the bunny family with their breath.
Oral Motor Exercise
I wanted to try a little Easter-themed game with Big Sister. (She didn’t know that it was actually an oral motor exercise that supports development!)
I put the cotton ball bunnies out on the table, along with the grass and some straws. She had to blow the bunnies into the grass using a straw.
Scroll below for instructions on how to make the DIY grass matt to use in sensory play activities.
To make the oral motor exercise easier or harder:
Try using different lengths of straws to change the breath power and amount of deep breathing they need to take.
You can also pinch the straw to require more effort in the oral motor therapy idea.
Try using different types of straws, too. Some ideas include using a large sports straw like we did in the pictures here, or a coffee stirrer straw.
The options are endless and can be means of grading this activity up or down to meet the specific needs of the child.
This is a fun exercise/game for kids with oral-motor problems including poor lip closure, stability of the jaw, or muscle development of the mouth, jaw, and tongue. Blowing through a straw can also help with sensorimotor integration.
Older kids who constantly put things into their mouth (pencils, clothing, fingers…) may be seeking oral input/sensorimotor input that their body needs.
This game is a fun way to work on any of these areas. Use fatter straws at first and work toward thinner straws for a graded exercise. If this activity to too difficult for your child with oral-motor or sensorimotor needs, try a smaller item such as a feather or a crafting fuzz ball.
You could also work on oral motor skills and the proprioceptive heavy work with this Egg Boat activity.
Oral motor exercises like these are beneficial to add heavy work input through the mouth and lips that is calming and regulating.
Fine Motor Skills Activity
These little Easter bunny crafts were perfect to in a fine motor skills activity, too. With a tray, a handful of river rocks, and a DIY crepe paper matt, we made an Easter-themed small world to work on fine motor skills with my littlest one.
My daughter, who was a toddler in these photos, loved to explore and play as she picked up and moved the cotton ball bunnies, the rocks, and small carrots.
To make the grass matt, we used a roll of green crepe paper. It was glued on one side to a sheet of construction paper. I asked my preschooler to snip into the edges of the top side of the crepe paper, so it made a fringed edge. This was a great scissor activity for her.
This Easter play activity turned out to be a fun fine motor activity for toddlers and a fine motor ideas for preschoolers, too! I think the quote from my preschooler was… “Wow, this is cool, Mom!”
Easter Play IDEA
Play idea for toddlers- Baby Girl especially loved playing with the little bunnies in an Easter small world play set-up. She would move the bunnies, stones, and carrots one at a time from the bowl to the grass…and then back again.
Play idea for preschoolers- Big Sister had fun using the bunnies for imagination play, making them go into their garden, lining up the rocks, and making the bunnies steal the carrots.
Little Guy wanted nothing to do with any of this. I guess there were not any superheroes or bad guys involved. Cute little bunnies are not his thing 🙂
We are having a lot of fun with our little bunnies!
TO make the Cotton Ball Bunny Craft
Making this Easter bunny craft is super easy.
We used a glue gun to make sure the pieces were securely attached for sensory play with my toddler. However, regular craft glue would work as well.
You’ll need a cotton ball, white foam sheet, and a pink felt sheet.
Cut out two large white ears and two smaller pieces for the inner ear.
Use the craft glue to hold these pieces in place.
Add gentle pressure to make sure all of the pieces are securely attached.
This bunny craft came together fairly quickly, so I was able to create a whole set of the bunnies.
Then, use them to play!
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.
It’s that time again! Easter is around the corner and so you may be searching for a few Easter activities. These spring activities are ones that have a movement and play component so that kids build skills they need while celebrating the season. Below, you’ll find Easter ideas, Easter crafts, egg activities, songs, and bunny games are all themed on Easters, eggs, and bunnies. Things like our Easter scissor skills activity are just part of the fun. So if you’re planning a few fun activities for the kids this Easter, look no further. We have got you covered on the bunny cuteness overload!
Easter Activities for Occupational Therapy
Sensory Input- Add sensory input for a functional sensory diet or self regulation needs using these sensory egg dying activities.
Visual Perception/Fine Motor– Work on visual discrimination, bilateral coordination, and hand strength with this color matching egg hunt.
Oral Motor Skills/Proprioception– Build oral motor skills and add calming proprioceptive input through the mouth with this bunny race activity.
Oral Motor Skills/Fine Motor– Use plastic eggs to make boats that really float and are powered by breath, a great calming self-regulation activity. It’s a fun fine motor STEM activity, too.
Intrinsic Hand Strength– After dying eggs, use the extra egg cartons to build in-hand manipulation and precision in dexterity with this fine motor activity.
This 5 Little Bunnies Finger Rhyme from Let’s Play Music is a great way to work on finger dexterity and coordination.
Easter Lacing Cards from Totschooling helps with bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, and more. Here is more information on the benefits of lacing cards for kids.
Plastic Egg craft- Use plastic Easter eggs to make boats with a sensory benefit. It’s a calming sensory activity that kids will love.
Grab a handful of Easter eggs and use them to work on color identification in a color scavenger hunt.
Use this Easter egg writing activity to help kids work on pre-writing lines and pencil control, as well as coordination and visual motor skills.
Try this Bunny Hop ABC Game from Fantastic, Fun, and Learning to add gross motor skills, motor planning, and coordination skills in outdoor play.
Try these Bunny Coloring Pages from Kids Activities Blog for visual perception, visual motor skills, pencil control, and more.
Grab a pair of Bunny Tongs from the dollar store for a fine motor Easter activity that builds scissor skills and eye-hand coordination.
Make Toilet Paper Roll Bunnies like this Easter craft from Toddling in the Fast Lane for a fine motor workout with cute results.
Easy Easter Activities
Busy occupational therapy practitioners know that time is limited. So coming up with a few therapy activities that work with the whole caseload is key.
Here are some of my favorites:
Egg Decorating: Using stickers to decorate plastic Easter eggs. This activity supports fine motor precision, bilateral coordination, and hand-eye coordination.
Egg Transferring: Use spoons to transfer small eggs from one basket to another. This activity works on visual motor skills and grasp precision. This is a nice activity if helping kids to hold a spoon and fork when eating.
Easter Egg Cutting: Draw a simple oval on paper and ask kids to cut out the shape. This activity focuses on scissor manipulation and hand-eye coordination.
Paper Easter Baskets: Children can cut out and assemble paper baskets by weaving strips of paper.
Egg Hunt Obstacle Course: This one is one of my favorites! Hide plastic Easter eggs in different places in an occupational therapy obstacle course. You can really focus on different gross motor skills as kids move through the course and collect eggs. Then, ask them to go back through the course and re-hide the eggs to work on memory skills.
Matching Games: Use the egg matching cards in the Easter Egg Therapy Kit and have your students connect two sides of plastic eggs to match the colors on the cards. The kit has pre-colored cards or you can use the blank template to have kids color their own color mix ups.
Easter Sensory Bins: Fill sensory bins with items like Easter grass, plastic eggs, and small toys, allowing children to explore different textures and sensations.
Egg Shakers: Fill plastic eggs with dry beans or beads and tape the eggs shut. Children can create their own egg shakers using plastic eggs filled with various materials like rice or beans, which provides auditory and tactile feedback.
Planning an Easter Craft: Encourage children to plan and execute an Easter craft, which can help develop their organization, sequencing, and problem-solving skills.
Easter Cooking Activities: Following a cooking with kids recipe to make Easter-themed snacks can enhance planning, sequencing, and task initiation.
Easter-Themed Yoga: Incorporate yoga poses inspired by Easter themes (like bunny hops or egg stretches) to help children practice self-regulation and body awareness. We have activities like this in The OT Toolbox Membership.
One resource we love is our $5 therapy kit…the Plastic Egg Therapy Kit! It has 27 printable pages of activities with an Easter egg theme. In the kit, you’ll find fine motor activities, handwriting prompts, letter formation pages, pencil control sheets, plastic egg activities, matching cards, graphing activities, STEM fine motor task cards, and more. There are several pages of differentiated lines to meet a variety of needs. This therapy kit has everything done for you.
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.
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 occupational therapy activities!
We’ve also added a free printable therapy activity sheet with rainbow activities that can be used in planning therapy sessions. Scroll to the bottom of the blog post to grab this resource.
Each rainbow therapy activity below is designed to promote multiple aspects of child development. These are powerful motor activities for developing areas that help kids with functional tasks, coordination, movement, and learning.
Some of our favorite rainbow activities include colorful sensory bins, rainbow markers and crayons, and making rainbow crafts. The nice thing about using a rainbow theme in therapy is that you can use what you have on hand.
Sort paperclips or craft pom poms by color.
Pick a colored pencil out of a box and use it to write the name of the color.
Ask the students to name their favorite color and then use it as a rainbow writing prompt to write about things that are typically that color.
Cut colorful paper into strips and glue it to a cloud shape cut from paper.
There are so many easy ways to come up with rainbow ideas that build on skills. Let’s take a look at a few more ideas…
Rainbow Fine Motor Activities
A rainbow therapy theme is great during the Spring months.
This time of year, rainbows are the way to go for building fine motor skills. Try some of these activities to work on fine motor strength, coordination, hand eye coordination, motor planning. You’ll see improvements in pencil control, dexterity, precision, in-hand manipulation, and fine motor skill work.
Rainbow pencil control activities– All you need is some colored pencils and paper to work on pencil control, visual motor skills, and hand strengthening.
Rainbow Color Mixing Handwriting Activity– Grab a pack of markers. Kids can work on color mixing and letter formation, letter size, spacing, and handwriting legibility.
Rainbow bead bracelets– Use beads and pipe cleaners to make a set of rainbow beads and develop pincer grip, in-hand manipulation skills, bilateral coordination, open thumb web space, arch development, and eye-hand coordination skills.
Pipe Cleaner Rainbow Craft– An alternative to the rainbow bead bracelet is our pipe cleaner rainbow that we made many years ago. This activity was fun because we built a 3 dimensional rainbow…and then used it in our leprechaun trap!
To make the rainbow pipe cleaner, use colorful pipe cleaners and colorful beads. Ask your students to sort the beads into colors of the rainbow, and then match the beads to the same colored pipe cleaner. Bend the pipe cleaners into a rainbow arch. Then, push the ends of the pipe cleaners into a foam block.
Rainbow PreWriting Lines Activity– This free therapy slide deck is a fine motor and gross motor activity to help kids with pre-writing skills. Kids can work on finger isolation, eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, and more.
Pot of Gold Coins– Cover cardboard circles or washers with foil to make gold coins. If you can grab some gold wrapping paper or tissue paper, use it to wrap the circles while kids develop bilateral coordination, precision, hand strength, and motor skills.
In this blog post, you’ll also see how to tie scraps of fabric to create a rainbow. This is a fun bilateral coordination activity that builds hand eye coordination skills as well.
Rainbow Bottle Activity– All you need is an empty water bottle and colorful craft pom poms to work on finger isolation, in-hand manipulation, bilateral coordination, hand eye coordination, and dexterity. This is a great rainbow activity for preschoolers or toddlers.
Rainbow Fine Motor Sort– All you need is an ice tray and colorful craft pom poms to work on in-hand manipulation skills, sorting, precision, dexterity, and finger isolation.
Rainbow Scoop and Sort– A simple rainbow sensory bin can include beads, yarn, or any colorful materials and a handful of cotton balls. Add a kitchen utensil or scoops, tongs, or other tools to scoop, manipulate, and work on coordination, and fine motor skill development.
Rainbow Fine Motor Work on the Window– Kids can cut foam sheets into strips to work on scissor skills. Then, stick these to a window or even a shower wall to work on precision, wrist extension, wrist stability, shoulder strength and stability, core strength, and the coordination skills needed for fine motor tasks like pencil control and dexterity.
Rainbow Cups– Make a set of these colorful cups and work on bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, core strength, motor planning, and more.
Rainbow Flip and Fill Fine Motor Activity– Kids can use these alphabet worksheets to fill the upper case or lowercase letters and develop fine motor skills like in-hand manipulation, eye-hand coordination, precision, open thumb web space, and more, with these color activities in the Colors Handwriting pack and bonus pages.
More ideas for supporting fine motor skills with a rainbow theme include:
Fruit Loop Rainbow Craft: One therapy tool that I love to use during the Spring months is Fruit Loop cereal rings. Why? It’s a great shape for little fingers to work on pincer grasp and eye hand coordination, but it’s also an inexpensive therapy tool, too.
All you need to do is create a rainbow template on paper or cardstock.
Ask your student to separate the cereal by color. This is a great color sorting activity.
Next, show your student how to glue the cereal pieces onto the rainbow.
Rainbow Writing: If you need an inexpensive therapy activity that uses items you already have, rainbow writing is it. Kids like to rainbow write, especially if you use motivating words or a different writing surface than they are used to.
First, gather your materials. You’ll need a surface and colorful writing utensils (dry erase board and markers, sidewalk and chalk, paper taped to a window and crayons, fabric and markers, or just use paper and crayons).
Show the students how to make a rainbow shape using one color. Ask them to draw a large arch.
Next, use each color of the rainbow to draw right over the first arch.
You’ll end up with a colorful mess…but it’s a great activity for building skills!
This activity supports visual motor skills, pencil control, and crossing midline. If you use a dry erase board or a window, ask your students to use a spray bottle with water to erase the colors and then watch those colorful rainbow drips!
Color Rice for Sensory Bin: One sensory motor activity that I love is a good old fashioned sensory bin. Kids love a sensory bin, and as the OT practitioner, you can add or pull out a couple of items to meet specific needs, and then use the sensory bin with your caseload.
Dye rice with different colors like we do in our rice sensory table blog post.
Fill a large container with the colorful rice.
Add tools and cups to scoop and pour. (Spoons, funnels, containers)
Of course, with any sensory bin, you would need to consider the safety of the child, and a color rice sensory bin would be no different. This activity works on motor planning, sensory touch, and motor skills.
Rainbow rice sensory bins can be used for other skill areas like handwriting by adding color words and asking kids to copy the word that they find in the sensory bin.
Rainbow Worksheets: The members in The OT Toolbox membership know that we have many rainbow worksheets that support a variety of skill areas. There are handwriting activities, coloring tasks, fine motor activities, scissor tasks, rainbow crafts, rainbow self regulation activities, rainbow sensory bin materials, and much more. Like all of the materials in The OT Toolbox membership, our rainbow worksheets support hands-on skill building through play.
Rainbow Visual Motor Activities
Rainbow Ladder– Use this rainbow visual motor activity to work on visual scanning, visual tracking, visual figure ground, form constancy, visual discrimination, and other visual motor skills needed for handwriting and reading. We used this in a cursive handwriting activity, but you could use the same concept in teaching upper and lowercase letter identification, number writing, sight words, or other multi-sensory learning strategies.
Rainbow Drawing Visual Motor Activities– Use this occupational therapy teletherapy slide deck to encourage kids to copy rainbow drawing forms and build pencil control, visual perceptual skills with simple and complex drawing skills.
Emotion Matching Game– Use this rainbow matching game to teach emotions and social emotional developmental milestones and skills. It’s a powerful way to work on visual perceptual skills too, including visual scanning, eye-hand coordination, visual discrimination, and other visual motor skills.
Rainbow Colors Pre-writing Lines Mazes– These mazes are great for developing pencil control, eye-hand coordination skills, fine motor dexterity, and visual motor skills.
Rainbow Sensory Play
When kids participate in sensory play experiences, they develop tactile sensory exposure and can explore tactile experiences. Use these activities to learn colors, and learn through play! Try these multisensory learning activities to teach colors, and develop sensory exploration through play.
Rainbow Deep Breathing Exercise– Use this rainbow deep breathing exercise as a calming self regulation activity to help with coping strategies and mindfulness.
Rainbow Sensory Bottle– In this rainbow sensory bottle, we used friendship thread to incorporate all the colors of the rainbow, but making a calming sensory bottle can use any materials you have on hand. Use the sensory bottle as a calming sensory tool.
Rainbow Playdough– When kids play with play dough, they gain proprioceptive input through their hands and fingers. This heavy work input is a powerful resistive activity that “wakes up” the hands but also can be calming.
Rainbow Sensory Bins– Making rainbow sensory bins are easy but there are big benefits. Kids can use sensory bins as a tactile sensory experience, but with fine motor benefits like tool use, scooping sorting, fine motor precision, dexterity, manipulation skills, coordination, and so much more. Add sight words and high-frequency words, or math manipulatives to use these rainbow sensory bins in multi-sensory learning opportunities.
Rainbow Xylophone– Kids can explore sound, STEAM concepts, and motor skills in this auditory processing activity.
Rainbow Crafts to develop skills
These rainbow crafts are powerful ways to work on fine motor skills, manipulation of tools, dexterity, strength, motor planning skills, handwriting, and more.
Rainbow binoculars craft– Kids can make this rainbow binoculars craft and work on scissor skills, bilateral coordination motor planning, and precision. Then, use this rainbow craft to encourage visual scanning, visual perceptual skills, and more. Can you use this in a color scavenger hunt?
Egg carton rainbows– Use a recycled egg carton and kids can paint in this process art activity that develops grasp, precision, eye-hand coordination, and sensory experiences.
Rainbow Snacks
When children are active in the kitchen, they develop so many fine motor skills, executive functioning skills. The kitchen is a prime location for developing working memory, attention, direction following, as well as offering learning opportunities, as well. Fine motor skills in the kitchen are just some of the benefits of cooking with kids!
Try these rainbow recipes that kids can make and are a perfect addition to a rainbow theme.
Rainbow Snacks– These rainbow snack cups are perfect snacks for preschool. When kids help to make them, they can work on cutting foods, sorting, visual scanning, and fine motor skills, too!
Color Snack– Pair kitchen activities with a popular children’s book to explore colors and developing skills in the kitchen with kids.
Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
Colors Roll & Write Page
Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.
For more rainbow crafts and ideas to support development of skills, check out the Spring themed activities in our Spring Crafts library. There are fun ways to use a paper plate to create a rainbow while working on scissor skills…and just so many other Spring tools for supporting the development of kids of all ages.
Free Printable List of Rainbow Activities
One tool we have in The OT Toolbox membership club is therapy themes. Rainbow themed activities is one of them! We’ve put together a list of rainbow activities that can be used in therapy sessions to build skills and created a printable therapy lesson plan.
This resource is a hit with therapy providers because they can pull out the sheet and plan their week of therapy sessions with just a handful of activities. This printable is inside The Membership Club but you can grab a copy here as well. Enter your email address into the form below and we’ll send it to you.
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.
Welcome to a winter wonderland on the farm! In today’s blog post, we’re diving into the magical world of sensory play with a snowy farm sensory bin. This delightful activity combines the charm of a farm theme with the sensory joys of winter, creating an engaging and therapeutic experience for children. This is one of our favorite winter sensory bins because you can focus on so many different underlying skills through play.
Whether you’re a parent looking for creative winter activities or a therapist seeking effective tools for skill development, this farm sensory bin is tailored to captivate young minds while addressing various therapeutic areas. Read all about sensory bins in general as a therapy tool to support skill development.
Farm Sensory Bin
We love a great occupational therapy sensory activity because cold winter temps and less daylight hours mean you might not have a chance to get little ones outside as often as you might like. Plus, a farm sensory bin goes great with a Farm theme in preschool or in occupational therapy sessions.
This farm sensory bin has a winter theme, but you could actually set up a farm sensory bin any time of year. In fact, we loved this play dough farm activity that goes along with a farm theme and supports fine motor skills as well as sensory input.
The base of shredded paper sets the stage for a snowy landscape, providing a tactile experience that stimulates sensory exploration and fine motor skills.
This winter-themed sensory bin features a collection of farm toys and mini figures, turning the snowy setting into a farm scene ready for imaginative play.
Farm Animal Sensory Bin
The farm animal sensory bin takes the excitement a step further, introducing miniature figures of beloved farm animals. As children dive into the bin, they engage in hands-on exploration, feeling the textures of the shredded paper, maneuvering the farm toys, and creating their own farm stories.
This sensory-rich experience enhances tactile input, encouraging self-confidence as children express themselves through play.
Farm Theme Sensory Bin Setup
Setting up the farm theme sensory bin is a breeze:
Begin with a large container filled with shredded paper to create a snowy base. You could also use other sensory bin base materials if you don’t have shredded paper on hand.
Add farm toys such as barns, tractors, and mini figures of animals to bring the farm to life.
Encourage creativity by incorporating small props like faux trees or fences. This simple yet effective setup provides a canvas for endless imaginative scenarios.
Before this weekend, we’ve had a super cool spring. With a handful of days where it snowed. We are ready for outside play in short sleeves, running in the yard, and grass stained knees.
But, we have been loving this fun play activity too 🙂
We had a boat load of shredded paper from doing taxes recently. It came in pretty handy for a small world snowy farm scene!
We put some farm animals, the Little People barn, and of course, Little Guy’s construction vehicles.
(how else can the farmer move allll that snow??)
Little Guy went to farm-town with imagination stories and pretend play.
Baby Girl loves to make the animal sounds and had a blast finding them in the shredded paper.
Why This Farm Sensory Bin Helps Development
Beyond simply playing in the sensory bin, this farm sensory bin serves as a therapeutic tool to foster development in various areas.
Mindfulness- playing in a sensory bin can be calming and regulating for kids. Read about Winter Mindfulness Activities for more information.
So much more
Fine motor skills are particularly important in early childhood development, as they lay the foundation for more complex tasks in the future.
Tactile discrimination, exploration, and sensory desensitization are effectively addressed with sensory bins as they are playful and present in a non-threatening way. The playful nature of sensory bins allows children to control their tactile experiences, fostering confidence in their interactions with materials and gradually increasing their comfort with different sensations.
The hands-on nature of the activity promotes fine motor skills as children manipulate the farm toys and engage with the sensory materials. Communication skills blossom as they create farm narratives, fostering language development.
In addition, occupational therapy providers love sensory bins because they can offer a unique and enjoyable way to engage reluctant children who may initially be hesitant about engaging in the sensory elements of tactile defensiveness challenges.
Tactile input and sensory exploration contribute to a holistic sensory experience, supporting overall sensory processing.
My fun-loving Baby Girl instigated this little incident…
she just couldn’t help herself 🙂
What are we learning through play?
Imagination Play
Pretend Play
Learning Animals
Animal Sounds
Visual Scanning
Sensory Play
Farm Sensory Bin Ideas
You can pair this farm sensory bin with other therapy ideas, too. Use some of these tools and resources to support skills like gross motor skills, coordination, brain breaks, and more:
These Farm Brain Breaks can add movement and gross motor input to a child’s day and fit in great with a farm animal theme. Print off the cards and use them in the classroom or home.
These heavy work cards includes a set of 8 farm themed heavy work activities that can be used as a brain break or added proprioceptive input.
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.
Brrrr it is COLD out there! This is the perfect time of year to add a few penguin activities to a penguin theme or set of winter activities. Here, you’ll find penguin themed ideas for movement, play, cooking, learning, and crafting. Browse these ideas and add them to an occupational therapy intervention therapy plan or learning at home.
The penguin activities for kids here will give you plenty of fun indoor play ideas. When we went through the links this week to pick our features, we had to go with a penguin theme. We’ve been doing a few penguin activities around here (and are so excited to share them with you!) after we got a handful of penguin books out from the library. The features this week show songs, games, crafts, sensory play, books, and even snacks…all about PENGUINS!
Penguin Activities
Penguin I Spy Worksheet– (FREE) This printable activity targets visual perception, fine motor, handwriting, and more.
Penguin Therapy Kit– A penguin-themed therapy kit designed to develop motor skills, self-regulation, handwriting, and scissor skills. Includes 99 pages of therapy activities to develop fine motor strength, dexterity, core strength, regulation, functional grasp, and endurance.
FREE Penguin Fine Motor Worksheet– This printable activity can be used to target pencil control, tracing skills, visual motor skills, and fine motor skills. Attach it to a wall to work on strength and stability, or even cut along the lines to target scissor skills.
FREE Penguin Gross Motor (Penguin Yoga)- Use these yoga positions to incorporate gross motor skills, coordination, motor planning, balance, heavy work input (proprioception), and changes in positioning (vestibular input). This is a free Google slide deck. Click here for the penguin yoga activities.
Penguin Executive Functioning Activity (Make a Penguin Treat)- Cooking in the kitchen is a powerful way to develop fine motor skills and executive functioning skills. Try making these penguin snacks for a family treat.
FREE Penguin Self-Regulation Activity– This penguin deep breathing activity can be a coping tool or a sensory strategy to help with self-regulation skills. Included is a free printable deep breathing worksheet.
Penguins Emotions Game- This free penguin emotions therapy slide deck challenges kids to identify emotions based on facial expressions. It’s a great way to work on visual perception, too.
Auditory Processing Activity- Use this 5 Little Penguins Counting Songs from Let’s Play Music to work on listening, sounds, and auditory memory.
Tacky the Penguin Activities
For Tacky the Penguin activity ideas, pair a book with any of the activities listed here. Or try this Fun With Tacky The Penguin idea from Learning is Messy
Penguin Fine Motor Activities
You can add fine motor skills with crafts and motor activities. This penguin craft only requires paper and glue. Use colored paper or use crayons to color your penguin. It’s a fine motor folding craft to work on hand strength and precision.
Or, try this Penguin Math Activity to work on Scissor Skills– This counting/adding/subtracting fish activity builds eye-hand coordination too. Make and cut out fish from paper and catch them to feed the penguins.
Another fine motor Penguin Craft is this Penguin Craft with Printable Pieces from ABC Creative Learning to add fine motor fun to a penguin theme.
Use the fine motor activities, lacing cards, toothpick art, and crafts in the Penguin Therapy Kit. It’s a 100 page packet with all winter themes, and you’ll find penguins there!
Want a printable sheet of therapy plans with a penguin theme? This printable sheet has activities designed to build skills. Enter your email address into the form below and we’ll send you the printable therapy activity sheet!
This printable is also available inside The OT Toolbox membership. members can Log In to their account and get this printable, along with many other penguin activities on our Penguin Therapy Theme page.
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.
Having a snowflake party? Or maybe just doing a few snowflake activities in your therapy sessions or classroom and want to hit on fine motor skills with a winter theme? You’re in luck! We’ve got a fun pipe cleaner and bead snowflake activity along with a few snowflake crafts, pipe cleaner snowflakes, craft stick snowflakes, and more!
pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes
We’ll start off the snowflake activities with our favorite…pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes. This is one of the best fine motor activities during the winter months for several reasons: it uses items you likely have on hand, and you can target a variety of skills and needs with a single craft.
Eye-hand coordination– You can coordinate visual motor skills by asking the child to create symmetrical designs or copy patterns.
Making pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes can also be a great Indoor Recess Ideas for the winter months, too.
Materials:
To make the pipe cleaner and bead snowflakes, simply place your materials on a table.
Blue or white pipe cleaners
Beads in wintery colors: blues, greys, greens, and white
Then, start making the pipe cleaner bead snowflakes:
Twist pipe cleaners together to create an 8 sided snowflake.
Add beads to each “stem” of the snowflake.
When the beads have been added, bend the end of the pipe cleaner so the beads don’t fall off.
One day last week, us Aunts got together for some much-needed sister hang-out time, play time for the cousins, and a little “blog meeting”.
We had a snowflake party planned with a bunch of fun little ideas to do with the kids.
I mean, we found these snowflake cups big-time discounted after Christmas, and had to use them somehow, right??
((The babies had fun putting crafting popsicle sticks into one cup, and then one-by-one, putting them back into the other cup…sounds fun to me!))
We set the table with some cotton batting and silver tinsel.
Blue Legos are optional.
A little helper thought it fit in with the blue theme pretty well 🙂
Snowflake Sensory Play
We already had a batch of fake snow made up. We added into the bag, foam snowflakes, glass gems, and glitter for fun Snowflake themed fine motor and sensory play!
We made snowflakes with pipe cleaners and beads. This is a great fine motor activity and SO much fun. My kids are always asking to make necklaces and bracelets with beads and pipe cleaners. So, they really loved this one.
Another snowflake craft…
Glue crafting sticks together in a star shape and dip strips of Scotch tape into glitter. Press the tape down onto the sticks. Instant glittery and mess-free snowflake!
We also showed the kids how to fold and cut paper to make snowflakes. They loved cutting triangles and snips into the paper. And especially LOVED opening them up to see the pretty snowflake. They helped us hang the snowflakes and all of the crafts on the window.
There was a little break from the snowflake theme and party mode to take a Super hero break with dish towels for capes.
FUN STUFF! And so cute 🙂
Snowflake Snacks
Snowflake snacks were marshmallows (they were snowballs of course 🙂
And bugles (Hats!)
Have you done any fun snowflake crafts or activities? We would love to hear about them 🙂
If you are hanging these pipe cleaner bead snowflakes on a window, you can use a suction cup hanger.
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.
What if you had themed, NO-PREP activities designed to collect data and can help kids build essential fine motor skills?
Take back your time and start the year off with a bang with these done-for-you fine motor plans to help kids form stronger hands with our Winter Fine Motor Kit. This print-and-go winter fine motor kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, winter-themed, fine motor activities so you can help children develop strong fine motor skills in a digital world.
The Winter Fine Motor Kit includes reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much more.
These winter bird crafts are fun winter crafts that support fine motor skills with all things winter birds. We love these as preschool bird crafts because they support skill development, are are great for the winter months when you see cardinals, blue jays, and even a robin or two as winter comes to an end. Kids love these bird ideas, and you will to!
Winter Bird Crafts
Occupational therapy practitioners love crafts for kids because of the skill development that happens with cutting, gluing, and creating. It’s easy to foster skill achievement by adapting or modifying a craft while supporting finger and hand strength, tactile sensory input, scissor skills, and more.
Some of the skills that you can target using our bird craft ideas support occupational therapy goal areas, including:
Here are more winter fine motor activities to build hand strength, dexterity, motor coordination skills, and more.
Bird Ideas for Therapy
Winter Birds of a feather craft together. These bird crafts and activities are sure to keep the kids having fun this winter. We loved this week’s round up of features and added a few extra bird ideas for winter bird fun and play.
Let’s get to the bird craft ideas!
Blue Jay Painting activity- One of our favorite bird crafts is our Blue Jay Craft. This is a great fine motor strength activity because we use a cotton swab to paint in details of the blue jay’s feathers. OT practitioners love to use cotton swab painting because it’s a powerful hand strengthening activity that supports arch development.
Robin craft- One great fine motor activity is our robin egg carton craft. You might see robins throughout the winter and as winter months come to an end. This robin activity is nice because it’s a fun pincer grasp activity for kids.
Owl Crafts for Kids- We have some great owl activities here on the website, and these winter birds offer crafts, activities, and games that kids love. Some activities include our free Owl Directed Drawing worksheet and owl brain breaks. These Owl Finger Puppet from Crafts On Sea are another great addition to an owl theme.
Fine Motor Angry Birds- Building coordination and hand strength is fun with an Angry Birds theme. WE love how Therapy Fun Zone made Catapult Birds using craft pom poms and bird flashcards. I LOVE this activity for fine motor play!
Felt Bird Craft- We love this Felt Bird Ornament craft from Red Ted Art. While the sewing craft is great for older kids, you can grade the activity down by cutting pieces of felt and gluing the pieces together.
Bird Puppets- Making puppets with kids is a nice fine motor craft for preschoolers. These Silly Bird Puppets from Housing a Forest hit the mark.
Cheerio Bird Feeder- This winter bird feeder craft is perfect for the winter months. Plus, when kids thread cereal loops onto a pipe cleaner, they are building skills in bilateral coordination, precision, and eye-hand coordination. These Cheerio Bird Feeders from Happy Hooligans are an easy bird craft for kids.
Cardinal Craft- Cardinals and red birds are often seen during the winter months. This Redbird Craft from Craftulate is an easy winter craft for children working on scissor skills.
Winter Bird Crafts and Activities
What other ways can you create crafts with winter birds? These ideas can hopefully get you started!
For more winter fun, check out:
What if you had themed, NO-PREP activities designed to collect data and can help kids build essential fine motor skills?
Take back your time and start the year off with a bang with these done-for-you fine motor plans to help kids form stronger hands with our Winter Fine Motor Kit. This print-and-go winter fine motor kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, winter-themed, fine motor activities so you can help children develop strong fine motor skills in a digital world.
The Winter Fine Motor Kit includes reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much 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.
and a peanut butter jar lid. I traced a bunch of circles (and Baby Girl had to try her hand at tracing, too!)
from a big old sheet. 
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