This is a fun activity we did many years ago, and I keep coming back to it. Using soap shavings as a fine motor tool can open the door to motor planning, bilateral coordination, and functional experiences for kids. At The OT Toolbox, we believe in hands-on activities that promote fine motor skills, sensory exploration, and creativity. As pediatric OTs, we know the power of using crafts to support development so this soap shavings craft is a great way to encourage these skills while making something functional and fun. Every parent, teacher, and therapist can benefit from having a collection of soap craft ideas to incorporate into play and learning.
The cool thing about using a vegetable peeler on a bar of soap is that you can use the soap shavings projects to make wax paper bookmarks to other creative soap crafts, and at the same time, you are supporting the development of functional life skills cooking tasks by using the vegetable peeler. If you’re looking for an easy bookmark craft, this simple yet effective activity is a great way to build skills while creating something useful.
Wax Paper Bookmarks
Today I wanted to share a fun kids craft that supports life skill development: using an iron and ironing board. To make the soap shavings, we also used a vegetable peeler, so this is a great way to incorporate fine motor skills into kitchen tasks needed for using kitchen items like the vegetable peeler. We also worked on a few different skills with this craft: cutting with scissors, fine motor skills, bilateral coordination, and executive functioning. Be sure to check out our music bookmark craft as well.
Soap Shavings Bookmark Craft
Today we are incredibly excited to share this Soap Shavings Bookmark craft with you!
Kids can get creative in their crafting using soap and a few materials from around the house. We made these soap shaving bookmarks and had a blast creating!
This soap craft is as beautiful as it is simple. Kids will love to use a vegetable peeler on bars of soap to create soap shavings.
Here are the steps to make this soap shaving bookmark craft:
To make the bookmarks, lay a sheet of wax paper out on a hard surface like a cookie sheet or cutting board.
Using a bar of soap to practice using a vegetable peeler is a great beginner step for kids learning to use kitchen tools, because the soap peels shavings much easier than an apple skin peels away from the apple.
2. Show your child how to grasp a bar of soap and using hand-over-hand guidance, help your child to slowly peel shavings from the bar of soap. Encourage them to peel away from their body for safety.
This is important when teaching kids how to peel a potato or an apple, as well, so it’s great practice!
3. Peel long strips of soap and small shavings, mixing the colors of the different bars of soap on the wax paper. Managing the vegetable peeler and the soap is a great way to encourage bilateral hand coordination (the use of two hands together in a coordinated manner).
Children need bilateral hand coordination for functional skills like cutting with scissors, handwriting, tying shoes, and managing clothing fasteners. An activity like using a vegetable peeler on a soft bar of soap is a great way to work on using tow hands together effectively with a non-dominant assisting hand and a dominant hand with fluid and controlled motions.
4. Arrange the soap peelings on the wax paper and place the second piece of wax paper on top.
5. Carefully move the wax paper to an ironing board.
6. Place a dishtowel over the wax paper and using an iron heated to medium, slowly press down. The soap will slightly melt and flatten under the heat.
7. Check often to see if the wax paper is adhering. You can remove the dish towel and carefully heat the edges of the wax paper.
8. Cut the wax paper into rectangular book marks.
9. Punch a hole near the top of the book marks using the hole puncher.
10. Tie a piece of ribbon in the hole. This bookmark will smell great and would make a lovely gift!
*Note: This craft should be done under close supervision of an adult. Be careful with the use of a vegetable peeler with small children. For younger children, provide hand-over-hand assistance with the vegetable peeler. Adults may want to complete the peeling portion of this soap craft. Adults or responsible older children should manage the iron. As always, use judgement when it comes to completing this and any activity with your kids.
Using the vegetable peeler and an iron to make our soap shaving bookmark makes working on IADLs fun and engaging. Life skills tasks like cooking is an essential Instrumental Activity of Daily Living that occupational therapy professionals address.
Alternate activities:
Vary the scents and colors of your bookmarks with various soaps.
Add a personal message or quote to the bookmarks.
Add flower petals or scraps of paper to the soap shavings before ironing.
Arrange the soap shavings in a mosaic or mandala pattern.
Using a vegetable peeler to proactive the bilateral coordination and motor planning needed for peeling vegetables is a good way to grade down the activity because of the soft texture of the soap.
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.
We made this racoon craft many moons ago, when my oldest was in second grade. She’s now a sophomore in high school, and I have to say that those years went by like a flash. This post was originally written in October, 2015 and I’m just updating it now with some tips about how to use the racoon craft to support fine motor development. One thing is for certain; this fine motor math craft still remains as cute as it did all those years ago!
This is a clothespin activity that supports development of many areas of motor skills AND learning regrouping in math!
Racoon Craft
I love that this racoon craft supports fine motor skills. Not only by making the craft, but by playing with the racoon clothes pin, there are some big fine motor benefits. Plus, it’s a fine motor STEM activity that kids seem to love.
There are so many benefits to using the clothes pin as a fine motor tool in math (and in kids crafts)!
For example, when manipulating clothes pins, fine motor contributions include:
We made a video that shows how manipulating and pinching clothes pins promotes grasp development. Check it out here:
In the video, we show how to use the clothes pins to work on pinch strength and grip strength. You can use your racoon clothespin craft to do these things!
Regrouping Math Activity
Second grade. They say it’s the old third grade in public schools. My second grader is our oldest, so I’ve no previous school years to compare the class work or curriculum to. We are plowing through the first few months of school though. We are well into a routine with schedules, homework, and have only missed the bus once. (This is our best year so far in that area!)
While my second grader might be doing the stuff that third graders used to do, she is a trooper. She works hard and she loves her teacher and her friends. I mean, she even comes home from a long day of school and PLAYS school with her siblings. While they have zero interest in regrouping addition problems, they are cooperative little students.
Raccoon Craft
This Raccoon craft made the perfect tool to practice a math skill with my second grader: Regrouping Double Digit Addition Problems. It was a fun craft to make alongside my daughter and turned out to be a pretty fun second grade craft, too!
What is Regrouping Double Digit Addition?
So, we actually did a regrouping activity last year when my little future teacher was in first grade. That activity was about regrouping single digits in addition. Now, a whole year later, we’re regrouping double digits and feel like big shots. Ok, not really. But it IS a whole other column of numbers that we are adding, here!
Now, I’ve said it before. I am not a teacher by trade. In fact, I’m an Occupational Therapist. So I don’t have a huge understanding of teaching techniques or educational standards and the like. But, I do have the motivation that only a mom has when it comes to making homework fun, and easy. I am so over pulling teeth to get homework done. Let’s do a creative and playful activity to build on school-found skills and I’m good. And really, when we pull in my OT-ness to the play and fun, it’s even better. Fine motor skills, here we come!
Ok, ok back to what is regrouping question.
Essentially, regrouping in math is borrowing or carrying a digit to aide in a math operation. In addition, digits from the ones column are added to the tens column to add single or double digits.
My second grader is adding double digit numbers. When the ones column of those double digits add up to more than 9, there is another tens to add to the tens column.
Regrouping in Math Activity
Now, to practice regrouping double digit addition problems, you could do page after page of worksheets. But if your kiddo is like mine (and any other kid out there), that will not go over well. We made this sneaky little raccoon clothes pin craft to practice regrouping in math practice.
It’s a pretty easy craft that your second grader will love to try. You’ll need just a few materials: (These are affiliate links.)
Start by cutting a strip of newspaper to fit on the front of the clothes pin.
You’ll also want to cut a small circle for the raccoon’s head, and a tail-ish shape.
Glue the newspaper strip to the front of the clothes pin.
From the black cardstock, cut small strips to make the raccoon’s eye mask, tow triangle ears, and stripes for the tail.
Glue all of these paper pieces into place.
Add the googly eyes and draw on a cute little smile. That raccoon is done and ready to help with regrouping.
Regrouping Raccoon and Double Digit Addition
We decided that since raccoons are pretty sneaky and sometimes steal garbage from trash cans, that our Regrouping Raccoon would be the perfect buddy for stealing numbers from the ones column and placing them over in the tens column. We practiced with a problem or two and added up the ones column. If the total had 10 or more, than that sneaky little raccoon helped us move the ten over to the tens column. Fun, right?
Now, grab a sheet of regrouping addition problems. We used a homework page, but you could just write out problems on a piece of paper.
As my daughter did the double digit math problems, I had her clip the raccoon onto the edge of the paper if it was a regrouping problem. For the problems that did not require regrouping, we just left the raccoon in place.
We ended up making a few more raccoon pinch clothes pins and had a family of raccoons!
We have a few other resources that might help as well. These are free tools you can find on The OT Toolbox and all three include free downloads. These would go great with our racoon craft activity!
Use the forest sensory path with our racoon craft to support self regulation needs.
And, use our forest animal puzzles to work on scissor skills and visual motor skills.
I hope the racoon craft and all of the tips in this activity supports development! Have fun!
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 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!
This post contains affiliate links.
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.
and a peanut butter jar lid. I traced a bunch of circles (and Baby Girl had to try her hand at tracing, too!)
on the circles. Older kids could do this part. Squeezing the glue bottle is a great fine motor strengthening exercise for little hands.
from a big old sheet. 
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