Ready to get your little athletes moving in therapy with some Olympics activities for therapy goals? Here, you’ll find fun Olympic crafts, games, and ideas to support development through play. Start my making an Olympic Rings craft to develop fine motor skills, and then move onto gross motor ideas, medal activities, and more!
Olympic Activities for Therapy
I’ve tried to sort the Olympics activities below into skill area, so if you are looking for ideas to promote fine motor skills, check out the craft ideas. If you need gross motor activities, check out the Olympic games ideas. All of these ideas can be great for ceremony in your own therapy clinic! These are great to add to lesson plans this time of year.
Fine Motor Olympic Crafts for Kids
Are you looking for a few fun ideas for the kids to celebrate the Olympic Games?
Try making gold, silver, and bronze play dough with crayons for a bold color and smooth, glittery texture to the metallic play dough that will last for the length of the Olympic games. Be sure to store the play dough in a plastic bag and you will be able to create play dough medals for weeks.
You could make an Olympic torch, olive leaf crown, and read a few Olympic books like Teach Beside Me did: Greek Olympics Lesson.
Cut foil to make medals. Use a craft stick to write names or numbers right onto the foil to work on pencil pressure.
Use foil to wrap around a plastic lid or cardboard circle.
Draw a soccer field on a large piece of paper. Use clothes pins to move a cotton ball or craft pom pom to different points on the field. Or, use a straw to blow the craft pom pom across the field to work on oral motor skills.
Or, you could make an Olympic Flag Craft using construction paper and a paper tube.
Olympic Art for Kids
If Olympic Art is more your style, use paints, stamps, or craft materials to make rings.
Use a tissue box to make ice skates.
Use a toilet paper tube or paper towel tube to make an Olympic torch (just add tissue paper for the flame). This is a great tool to use in an obstacle course too!
Make a discus using a paper plate. Staple two plates together around the edges.
Create Olympic rings by tracing a cup, cookie cutter, paper bowl and creating the rings.
Stamp rings using a paper towel tube.
We love this Olympic Rings Art. made from a re-purposed canvas from Happy Hooligans.
Gross Motor Olympic Games for therapy
The Olympics are a great theme to use in therapy sessions. Try these movement activities for gross motor skills, coordination, balance, endurance, and sensory input:
Ask your therapy attendees to write a list of Olympic sports. Work on handwriting skills such as letter formation, margin use, line awareness, and legibility.
You can also follow the highlights reel online and keep track of the number of medals accumulated by each country, or write down the top countries according to medal count.
To work on number formation, use graph paper as a medal tracker. This is a motivating activity for learners!
Another fun therapy activity to use during the Olympics is to create a large venn diagram on paper, a wall chalkboard, or dry erase board. The learners can write out the similarities and differences between the Winter Games and the Summer Games. This handwriting task focuses on organizational skills, spatial awareness, and margin use.
Write a list of winter sports being played during the Winter Olympic Games:
Bobsled
Skiing
Figure skating
Speed skating
Snowboarding
Ice hockey
Curling
Luge
Skeleton
Olympic Visual Motor Activities
Support visual motor skills by asking kids to copy the Olympic rings. Include colors to engage visual perceptual skills.
Olympic Food for Kids
Getting the kids involved in a cooking activity is a great executive functioning activity. Try these Olympic themed foods: Make these rainbow snacks using colors of the Olympic rings. These Olympic foods for Kids has some great ideas.
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.
Today we have a fun fine motor paper snowman craft. It’s a “build a snowman printable” that you can print out and use to work on so many therapy skills. There is just something about making a snowman during the winter months, right? Today’s free fine motor snowman activity that kids will LOVE. So, do you want to build a snowman?
Build a Snowman Printable
Heck yes! Wait, not if I have to go outside. With this great fine motor snowman printable activity, you can build a paper snowman from the comfort of your own house, in your pajamas, with a cup of cocoa if you like…and work on fine motor skills, scissor skills, sequencing, bilateral coordination, and more!
It’s no secret I love crafts. You could pretend for half a second to like the cold and wet winter outside your door, or make this adorable snowman inside where it is warm. Build this into a lesson plan about winter by talking about what winter is like in different parts of the world, For learners who have never experienced snow, provide pictures or videos for reference. Talk about what they think snow feels like.
Snow comes in many different varieties. While it is all cold (except the plastic snow variety), some snow is wet and soggy, while other is dry and fluffy. There is also icy snow that creates this lovely sheen across it, and is very fun to smash and crash through! Each type of snow has its uses and benefits. Wet snow is better for building and packing. Dry and fluffy is better to keep you from getting soaked. Icy snow is just pretty to admire. For those with tactile defensiveness that impact touching wet, mushy snow this can be a good discussion.
Use this snowman printable as a jumping off point to the rest of your treatment sessions.
As always I love the versatility of this printable paper snowman craft. With one snowman printable, you can address skills like fine motor, visual motor, turn taking, finger strengthening, and following instructions all wrapped up into one cute snowman.
It would be a great interactive snowman activity for kindergarten, preschool, and all ages, depending on how you adjust the activity.
How to Use this Build a Snowman Printable
What you will need for this task:
Snowman printable
Ruler or laminated strip of cardstock
Clothespins
Glue (drippy glue is best)
Dice
Instructions: Color the snowman or print out the pre-colored sheet. Have students cut out snowballs and glue to the clothespins. Roll the dice and clip the corresponding number of clothespins to your ruler or strip of cardstock.
Explore all of the ways to use adapt and modify this free snowman printable:
Laminate the snowballs to make them more durable
Laminate the snowman head to make it reusable and durable
Change the ruler for a stiff piece of cardstock or cardboard
Print the snowman in color, or black and white so your learners can personalize theirs
Add large pom poms or scrunched up paper on the top of the snowballs for a 3d effect
Add glitter and sparkles to the snowballs for added sparkle and sensory experience
Paint the clothespins or dip in glitter to make them fancier
Drippy wet glue is preferred as it will stick better. The added benefit is the sensory input from white glue, as well as the fine motor strengthening from squeezing the bottle
Pre-cut and glue all of the pieces ahead of time if the emphasis is on playing the game
Split this into two sessions, the first being the craft, the second working on the game
Incorporate gross motor work: Scatter the snowball clips around the room and ask the user to gather the snowballs to build their snowman. Add hops, kicks, jumps, and animal walks to gather the snowballs.
What is your focus? What goals do you want to focus on while using this activity? You can use on or all of them:
Fine motor strengthening, hand development, and grasping pattern
Following directions, attention to detail, turn taking, waiting, social skills, compliance, behavior, and work tolerance
Cutting on the line ( if you choose to add this step), within half inch of lines, in the direction of lines
Pasting using glue stick or drippy glue with accuracy
Bilateral coordination – remembering to use their “helper hand” to hold the paper while cutting. Using one hand for a dominant hand instead of switching back and forth is encouraged once a child is in grade school or demonstrates a significant strength in one or the other.
Strength – core strength, shoulder and wrist stability, head control, balance, and hand strength are all needed for upright sitting posture and fine motor tasks.
If you have not totally burned out on the movie Frozen and all of the theme work that goes with it…like this Frozen sensory dough, this will be a great addition. This build a snowman activity can be creating Olaf from the movie. If you are super creative, you could switch out the head of the snowman for an Olaf printable.
What else can I add to this paper snowman craft?
Have learners write the stages to building a snowman
Higher level learners can write down the directions to the game
More advanced learners can work on social skills by teaching beginners to play
Learners can explore other games they could make using this snowman (perhaps hiding the snowballs around the room and having learners run around collecting them)
Write a report about snowmen, types of snow, the history of snowmen, different snow celebrations or activities
Turn it into a gross motor task, sensory activity, following directions, or combination of all of these
Add glitter! Glitter makes everything wonderful
More snowman activities
Incorporate more snowman themed activities along with this build a snowman printable for a full snowman theme.
Snowman crafts (tons of great snowman crafts and activities listed here)
And you can always head outdoors! Use this how to paint snow activity for more skill-building.
What creative ways have you made snowmen? I believe there was a little spray paint used instead of coal last winter, and I think the dog snatched the carrot before we had time to use it. We have had snowmen families, lady snowmen, and grass covered snowmen when there really wasn’t enough snow to make one.
If there is a dusting of snow in Charleston this winter, you better believe we will be out there rolling whatever snow falls down, creating our snowman. Until then, I will just have to enjoy the sand instead.
Free Build a Snowman Printable
Want to add this paper snowman printable to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below. This resource is also available in The OT Toolbox Member’s Club. Members can head to the dashboard and download the resources right there.
Keep those snowballs rolling!
Victoria Wood, OTR/L
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
The Snowman Therapy Kit is a winter-themed therapy kit designed to develop motor skills, self-regulation, handwriting, and scissor skills. Over 75 pages of therapy activities to develop fine motor strength, dexterity, core strength, regulation, functional grasp, and endurance.
Los imprimibles de Acción de Gracias estaban en nuestra mente cuando revisamos los enlaces de Share It Saturday esta semana. Estas hojas de trabajo imprimibles son herramientas increíbles para fomentar la gratitud y el aprendizaje… ¡y con el tema de Acción de Gracias! ¿Qué mejor manera de iniciar la temporada de dar y contar las bendiciones que empezar en casa? Enciende las impresoras, porque este resumen te cubre para la Gratitud y el Aprendizaje todos los días hasta el Día de Acción de Gracias.
Pero primero, ¿estás en Instagram? ¡Lo estamos haciendo y nos encanta! Pase por aquí y siga sugaraunts para toda la diversión entre bastidores. Tenemos un proyecto de agradecimiento en marcha en el que compartimos una foto al día de algo/alguien por lo que estamos muy agradecidos. Puedes ponerte al día con todas las fotos consultando #sugarauntsgratitude.
Compruébalos…
Imprimibles de Acción de Gracias para aprender y agradecer
Today, we are covering friendship activities. These are friendship crafts and lessons that support the social emotional skill development of interacting with others by creating close relationships. Friendship activities are great for therapy interventions and as a supplement to social emotional skills. Friendship activities involve learning and using empathy, and activities to support friendship skills are a great way to develop these learned skills.
I am excited to share a collection of friendship activities designed to help children establish and build friendships. How do you teach friendship? This can be an abstract concept for kids, but by using friendship skills activities like games to teach social skills, friendship crafts, friendship recipes, and printables about friendship, we can teach children skills like empathy, perseverance, sharing, cooperation, and other essential components of friendship.
Be sure grab these friendship activities for teletherapy:
Writing about Friendship Slide Deck – writing prompts, writing letters to friends, and handwriting activities to develop friendship skills, all on a free interactive Google slide deck.
Personal Space Friendship Skills Slide Deck– Friendship involves allowing personal space, and body awareness and all of this is part of the social skill development that some kids struggle with. Use this free Google slide deck to work on body awareness and personal space.
Friendship Activities
Are you a good friend? Do you make a good friend? Do you have good friends? All of these are such important questions for children who are learning each day the necessary social skills that build lasting friendships. Strong social skills are an important piece of everyday life and the earlier this is recognized, the better social growth and development a child will experience.
Strong social skills are an important piece of everyday life and the earlier this is recognized, the better social growth and development a child will experience.
Demonstrating and recognizing the friendship qualities that makes a good friend and keeps friendships strong is an important skill to have early on in childhood. Children will develop friendships with others from different backgrounds, cultures, lifestyles, and abilities.
Adults have a responsibility to teach children about kindness and friendship to all. Learning this along with how a good friend acts and behaves and what is the right and wrong way to treat a friend is essential for strong social skill development.
Friendship activities can help children begin to explore the friendship qualities and behaviors that are important to learn how to be a good friend, if they make a good friend, and recognize do they have a good friend.
Read on for some creative ways to engage children in learning friendship skills.
Teaching Friendship Skills to Kids
There are many wonderful activities that can be used to help children develop friendship skills. What are some of the specific skills that are needed for building and maintaining friendships?
Empathy
Acceptance
Sharing
Listening
Asking questions/being interested
Helping others
Responding to social situations
Communicating
Turn-taking
Cooperating
Solving problems
Perseverance
Being supportive
Trustworthiness
Some of these concepts are very abstract.
Using concrete examples, modeling, social stories, and activities that provide examples of these social skills can be powerful.
One way that I’ve loved to help children with social skill development in hands-on, and memorable ways is through play. To bring real-life visual examples that provide an opportunity for conversation and discussion is to use children’s books to inspire exploration of friendship skill development. Here are children’s books and activities that develop friendship skills.
Use the books to inspire discussion and play-based exploration of concepts such as empathy, acceptance, and differences.
These other friendship activities will give children the time to play and read to help them build a better understanding of good friendship behaviors and how to demonstrate them. Let’s take a look…
Food is always a fun way for children to learn! Using food is a great way to explore different friendship characteristics while making a tasty friendship treat to eat!
These recipes include food items like cereal, fruit, chocolate, and nuts. Be sure to always check for food allergies and especially peanut or nut allergies, if you include these in your treats.
Freight Train Activity – This mesmerizing book teaches basic concepts of shapes and colors, but can be expanded to discuss differences, awareness of others.
Games are another fun way for children to learn important skills like sharing, empathy, making friends, kindness, differences, and more. What child doesn’t like games?
Engage children in these fun games that include a version of I Spy with monsters, bean bag activities played in a group while in a line or a circle, tossing of a yarn ball to say why someone makes a good friend, and activity ideas in a cooperation blog post that includes elements of friendship.
Friendship activities such as those that support the development of social emotional skills through crafts are always a hit. In occupational therapy, crafts are a creative way for children develop motor skills, executive functioning, and emotional regulation, but they are also a fantastic way for kids to express themselves, share and create with others, and develop their skills.
These friendship crafts incorporate all of these elements while focusing on friendship to include spreading kindness, sharing, turn taking, and giving.
Empathy Activity– Use beads and a children’s book to explore empathy.
In the classroom, therapy room, and hallway are great places to display friendship posters that show the importance of friendship and help create a positive classroom and school community. They show how to be a good friend and how not to be a good friend as well as help children to gain an understanding of good friendship qualities.
Social stories, or printable, hand-held stories that describe situations can give kids a concrete plan for everyday tasks. Using social stories to explain social situations is a great way to help kids with abstract concepts.
There are many nice templates out there that cover aspects of friendship, but for the most part, a social story should be individualized for each child.
This article on Autism and Friendship Skills includes important research on this topic to explore, but when it comes to using online social stories, they may not always be appropriate. Writing a social story for your child will be far more effective when you use the images, vocabulary, and terms that make sense to YOUR child or client, and the specific situations that are appropriate to your individual child or client.
Friendship Activities with Books
Mentioned briefly above, using books to help kids explore friendship is an incredibly rewarding way to pair friendship activities with the world of books.
Parents can cozy up with a child under a cozy blanket, for a calming and regulating experience of reading books togeter. Then, there is the oppourtunity to communicate about the characters, their friendships, and their conflicts, and their social situations that they had to navigate.
Through books, families can look at the pictures and come back to specific concepts again and again. And, adding hands-on, multi-sensory play experiences brings those concepts home.
This digital, E-BOOK is an amazing resource for anyone helping kids learn about acceptance, empathy, compassion, and friendship. In Exploring Books through Play, you’ll find therapist-approved resources, activities, crafts, projects, and play ideas based on 10 popular children’s books. Each book covered contains activities designed to develop fine motor skills, gross motor skills, sensory exploration, handwriting, and more. Help kids understand complex topics of social/emotional skills, empathy, compassion, and friendship through books and hands-on play.
Regina Parsons-Allen is a school-based certified occupational therapy assistant. She has a pediatrics practice area of emphasis from the NBCOT. She graduated from the OTA program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute in Hudson, North Carolina with an A.A.S degree in occupational therapy assistant. She has been practicing occupational therapy in the same school district for 20 years. She loves her children, husband, OT, working with children and teaching Sunday school. She is passionate about engaging, empowering, and enabling children to reach their maximum potential in ALL of their occupations as well assuring them that God loves them!
Recently, I was looking into new ways to challenge fine motor skills for my clients – especially ones that did not require purchasing new materials. I wanted something that could challenge scissors use, problem solving, sequencing, attention, and could be used in prep for ADL skills, like buttoning. Then, it came to me: weaving!
Weaving Projects for Kids
Weaving projects and craft are so simple, yet so effective – even the clients that I thought would be frustrated by this old-school craft were super proud of their work. Weaving is something you can do in many different ways, typically dependent on skill level and desired outcomes.
Since we are talking about buttoning skills, I am offering two different options: an advanced one for the kiddos that are almost ready to button independently, and a beginner version for those who are not quite ready to button yet. I hope you adapt these crafts as needed to meet the “just-right” challenge!
Related: Feathers and Burlap Weaving activity that builds bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, pinch, grip, and dexterity.
Complex Weaving Instructions
With two pieces of paper of different colors, cut strips of any thickness or length you’d like – just make sure you have an even number. The thinner and longer you cut them, the bigger the challenge. I like to use two different colors to make the task easier to understand and add visual interest.
Cut holes for threading. Half of your strips (or all of one color) need holes for threading. Have your kiddos figure out how big the cuts need to be in order to fit the other strips of paper through.
Fold the paper in order to cut two holes, side by side, throughout the strip of paper. This will be where you weave the other strips of paper through.
Begin Weaving.
Weave the remaining strips of paper (the ones without the holes) into the paper with the holes, making a basket-weave pattern.
Here is where those buttoning skills come into play! The practice of moving the strip of paper through one hole and up and over through the next hole mimics the actions of buttoning and unbuttoning.
If you are creating a specific craft, here is where you can make the weaved pattern into your kids’ desired shape! If you are unsure what you could offer, see the examples below.
Draw the desired object on top of the weaved pattern OR use simple print out to guide the scissors.
Cut the object out.
Add extra paper or decorative objects with glue to seal the edges if you’d like!
Does this sound a bit too challenging for one of your kids? You can lower the difficulty in a few different ways, but below is one idea that is particularly useful if your child demonstrates difficulty with visual motor or perception skills that are required for buttoning.
Simple Weaving Instructions
With two pieces of paper of different colors: a. Cut multiple, 1-inch thick straight lines to the edge of one piece of paper, leaving about an inch uncut on one edge to “hold” all the strips together. b. Cut 1-inch strips of the other piece of paper.
Simply overlap the loose strips of paper onto the other cut paper, every other to make a checkerboard pattern.
Maybe add a gluing or stapling component to challenge them in a different way!
Weaving Projects for kids
I know that it’s so much easier to motivate kids to complete a craft or activity if it is related to a season, holiday, or something that they are personally interested in. That’s one reason why I love weaving crafts – they are so simple at their base, that they can truly be used for anything!
Fall Weaving Crafts- Plaid shirts, apple baskets, spider webs, or hay bales. Winter Weaving Crafts- Sweaters, holiday gifts, Christmas Stockings, or candy canes Spring Weaving Crafts- Easter baskets, Spring dresses, umbrellas, or raincoats Summer Weaving Crafts- Picnic blankets, picnic baskets, or beach towels.
Or for the sporty kiddos in your life, make basketball hoops, soccer goals, tennis rackets, or hockey goalie helmets! The possibilities with weaving projects really are endless.
Here are some additional weaving and buttoning crafts to get the ball rolling!
Sydney Thorson, OTR/L, is a new occupational therapist working in school-based therapy. Her background is in Human Development and Family Studies, and she is passionate about providing individualized and meaningful treatment for each child and their family. Sydney is also a children’s author and illustrator and is always working on new and exciting projects.
These owl activities are not just owl themed activities for kids, they are therapy tools to use in occupational therapy sessions! I love introducing the children that I work with to owls. There is something both appealing and mysterious about their big, thoughtful eyes and it’s fascinating to learn about their nocturnal nature. There are so many fun, creative ways that owls can be incorporated into therapy sessions to help you achieve your therapy goals.
Owl Activities
Pick some of the owl activities below, using owl crafts, owl visual motor activities, and owl movement activities for helping kids develop skills.
Owl Toilet Paper Roll Craft
This super simple activity produces a gorgeous little decorative owl. All you need is a toilet paper roll and some markers. Googly eyes are a bonus but not essential. Use markers to color in or decorate the paper toilet roll.
Younger children can color as they would like to and older children can be encouraged to draw patterns around the roll. Holding the paper roll and drawing on it requires co-ordination between the left and the right hand. This introduces a good way to promote bilateral integration.
Coloring in the toilet roll requires some bilateral integration while turning the roll while drawing patterns around the roll increases the demands on coordination between the left and right hands. For more bilateral coordination strategies, try these activities for bilateral integration.
To add another element to the task you could ask your child to copy the patterns or designs that you have drawn on your owl. This could be fun in sessions if you have two children attending together or in class where children could work in pairs.
Copying the patterns on the owl requires good spatial organization and the ability to transfer visual information accurately onto paper.
Once the paper roll is decorated draw or stick eyes onto the top and fold the top ends inwards to create the owl’s ears.
Feed The Owl Fine Motor Activity
On the paper towel owl crat, draw the outline of an owls head and use scissors to cut out the beak so that it flaps open. You can stick a container underneath the beak to catch the food. Provide a clothes pin and a handful of small pom poms.
Use the clothes pin to pick up a pom pom and drop it into the owl’s beak. This is good for fine motor strengthening. Using a clothes pin also isolates the thumb, index and middle fingers which will help to establish a tripod grip. This is a great activity that uses a clothes pin activities to develop a child’s grasp.
Owl crafts, owl art, and owl drawing activities are fun ways to build skills.
How-to-draw activities are an excellent way to develop planning skills, copying abilities, pencil control and confidence in drawing. Children are often amazed at what they are able to draw after following a few simple steps. That’s where this how to draw an owl easy directed drawing worksheet comes into play.
The owl is a great animal to start with as it is made up of circles and simple shapes. Circles are one of the earliest developmental shapes a child is able draw.
The circle is also one of my best friends when we start working on letter formation in the foundation phase.
Mastering a good circle in an anti-clockwise direction puts you on the path to being able to form many of your letters correctly. Here are other prewriting lines activities that form this foundation of letter formation.
To draw an owl in building therapy skills needed for handwriting, use the simple steps from one to four to complete this cute owl. Copying simple shapes owl form helps children to develop their visual discrimination skills and to improve their copying abilities.
Once the drawing is completed spend some time discussing the final outcome. This part of self-assessment is effective in self-analysis and carryover of skills.
Is it the same as the picture provided?
Is anything different?
Copying, or visual motor integration is vital for successful learning in the classroom and learning.
The draw an owl activity can be extended to address other areas as well, including visual memory.
Challenge the children to have a look at the owl they have drawn for a minute and then cover up their picture. See if they are able to reproduce the owl from memory. This is a good way to work on visual memory and copying, especially when copying written material from a distant point, where visual memory is helpful to recall materials so the child doesn’t need to shift their vision up and down for each letter or word.
Owl Bookmark Craft
Another great owl activity is this owl bookmark craft from Red Ted Art. When I tackle reading difficulties I find that creating an owl bookmark is a good way to motivate reluctant readers. Using the owl gives me an opportunity to talk to children about the importance of the visual system and how essential it is for our eyes to move well and see well so that we can read.
The owl bookmark craft helps them to understand many of the tasks that we do in therapy to develop eye tracking and visual perception. Most of all I think the children enjoy creating something of their own that they can keep and that they can use when they read their books at home.
When children follow the directions to make the owl bookmark, they are incorporating many fine motor skills and visual motor skills:
Bilateral coordintaion
Finger isolation
Separation of the sides of the hand
Arch development
Hand strength
Visual motor skills
Spatial organization
Paper folding develops spatial organization, bilateral co-ordination, fine motor strength and selective finger movements. For other ideas on paper folding activities have a look and the Beautiful Oops Book Activity
Owl Worksheets
There are also some lovely owl worksheet resources when you need to focus on pencil control and pre-writing skills:
I know that you will have a hoot including owls into your activities with your children.
Contributor to The OT Toolbox: Janet Potterton is an occupational therapist working predominantly in school-based settings and I love, love, love my job. I have two children (if you don’t count my husband!), two dogs, one cat, two guinea pigs and one fish. When I am not with my family or at work I try to spend time in nature. The beach is my happy place.
Looking for Summer activities that kids can do in therapy or at home while building fine motor skills? These suncatcher crafts are designed to do just that. I’ve put together a few sun catcher activities that kids can do this summer to work on dexterity and precision…and brighten up any room! Use these DIY suncatcher activities in occupational therapy interventions or therapy at home and let’s get those fine motor skills working!
These are just one of the many occupational therapy crafts for kids that we have here on the site. Use these suncatcher crafts to build essential skills needed for writing, pencil grasp, functioning, and play!
Suncatcher Crafts Kids will Love
This time of year (and all year long, really) suncatchers make a fun craft for kids to make. They brighten up a room by bringing light and color in. We had to look around the webs for more gorgeous suncatcher crafts and found some beautiful crafts for Summer fun. These suncatchers are not only pretty, they use some different materials to catch the sun’s rays and fill your room with color.
Sun catcher Crafts for Kids
This Faux Stained Glass Suncatcher from Buggy and Buddy is a great way to incorporate ruler skills, bilateral coordination, visual tracking, and other visual perceptual skills into a DIY suncatcher craft. Children can then color in the faux stained glass to work on line awareness and pencil control skills. What a great suncatcher activity for therapy!
This gratitude craft doubles as a Flower Suncatcher. Kids can work on scissor skills, bilateral coordination, motor planning, and even social emotional development. Involve the practice of empathy and mindfulness in kids as they focus on things and people they are thankful for when making this creative suncatcher craft.
This Rainbow Suncatcher from Fireflies and Mudpies is a great fine motor workout. Kids can thread beads onto pipe cleaners and build arch development, pincer grasp, tripod grasp, bilateral coordination, and eye-hand coordination skills. Then melt this DIY rainbow sun catcher into the most colorful window decoration.
This Button and Glue Suncatcher can be a fine motor workout as kids improve pinch, precision, eye-hand coordination, in-hand manipulation, separation of the sides of the hand. It’s a fun craft to use the materials you have in your home but also build fine motor skills!
This Crayon Shaving Suncatchers from Red Ted Art is a powerful fine motor activity. It works on separation of the sides of the hand, tripod grasp, and eye-hand coordination skills. Throw in cutting with scissors and you’ve got a scissor skills craft, too! Then, use those left-over crayon shavings to work on finger isolation like we did in this crayon shaving sensory bag.
These Oil Suncatchers from Meaningful Mama addresses a variety of skills: bilateral coordination, scissor skills, pencil control (using multisensory processes with a cotton swab and oil as the writing medium). What a fun way to work on fine motor skills that results in a beautiful sun catcher craft!
This Christmas Tree Suncatcher craft can be used for any theme or holiday. Use the same premise of picking up small sequins for a neat pincer grasp activity that builds arch strength, precision, and opposition of the fingers.
These Tissue Paper Heart Suncatchers from Fireflies and Mudpies can be a creative way to work on scissor skills. Cutting tissue paper is a challenge for kids because of the thin nature of the paper. But, it’s a great way to work on refinement of fine motor skills. Then add the bilateral coordination, motor planning, and visual figure-ground skill work and you’ve got a therapy craft that will be a hit! Here are more fine motor activities with tissue paper that can be used in OT interventions.
This Nature Collage Suncatchers from Hands on as We Grow can be a fun way to work on eye-hand coordination, grasp development, and visual figure ground skills with kids.
These Salt Dough Suncatchers from Homegrown Friends are a gorgeous sun catcher craft that can add heavy work through the hands, followed by pinch and dexterity grasp work.
Need more ways to build fine motor skills through play?
Grab the Summer Fine Motor Kit to work on precision, dexterity, grasp development, and 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.
These cute frog crafts are fun ways to use a frog theme to build skills. From paper plat frogs, to cut and paste frog crafts, these are great occupational therapy crafts to use in fine motor skill work, scissor skills activities, and a frog and toad theme. These frog crafts will keep you hopping!
Frog Crafts
Frog crafts like the ones shown here are fun ways to build motor skills within a frog theme. Learning about the frog life cycle is a common theme in preschool or early elementary lessons. Use the frog crafts here as a developmental tool.
I love using crafts like the ones listed below in planning in person or OT teletherapy services. Other crafts can be sent home as an OT home program idea. Children can create while working on skills like fine motor dexterity and strength, line awareness, scissor skills, language, self-confidence, problem solving, tool use, and more.
These frog crafts can be added to a frog theme, with resources like:
As a pediatric occupational therapist, I love using crafts of any kind in therapy sessions because they offer a fun and engaging way to target important underlying skill areas. A fun frog craft is no different!
When children create the frog crafts we share below, they get to practice their fine motor skills by cutting, coloring, and assembling materials, all while strengthening hand muscles and improving coordination.
I especially enjoy seeing their faces light up when we hang the crafts we’ve created up on the therapy door or a bulletin board in the school hallway. This task of hanging the craft up is another way to incorporate functional movement to bend and reach, targeting balance and core strength. They can then use a stapler, tape, or sticky tack to hang their creation. But the real benefit is seeing their creation hanging on the wall for all to see.
We wanted to pull together some great frog crafts that support various skills. Following the step-by-step instructions for the craft also helps enhance their sequencing skills and attention to task, which are crucial for success in school and daily activities.
Plus, crafting allows children to express themselves creatively and provides a sensory-rich experience that supports emotional regulation and well-being. Seeing the joy and pride in their eyes as they complete their frog crafts is truly rewarding and reminds me why I love what I do as an occupational therapist.
Handprint frog Craft
Work on tactile sensory tolerance with this frog handprint craft. This is a great functional craft for kids because you can include a hand-washing activity after making the handprint art.
Washing off the green paint is an excellent visual in ensuring kids are thoroughly washing their hands.
Paper Plate Frog Craft
Work on scissor skills, bilateral coordination, hand strength, sequencing, and motor planning with this frog paper plate craft. Folding and cutting paper plates are great for building hand strength and working on finger isolation.
This craft includes different grades of cutting tasks and can be a great incentive for cutting simple to complex shapes.
Cutting paper plates is a strengthening activity that provides more resistance and can slow down the scissors, allowing for more accuracy along cutting lines. Use this paper plate frog craft to build these skills.
Frog and Lily Pad Craft
For more complex scissor skill crafts, try this frog on a lily pad craft. It can be a challenge for some kids, but cutting the frogs and lily pad shapes can be a just right level for others that are building scissor skills with complex lines.
Paper Frog Craft
For a fine motor workout, make this shredded paper frog craft. Kids can pick up and manipulate the shredded paper pieces while working on precision, tip to tip grasp, open-thumb web space, and more refined precision skills.
This easy shapes frog craft is great for preschoolers or those cutting simple shapes. Use this craft for beginners and to address scissor skills cutting along circles and simple shapes. (Then work up to the more difficult frog crafts.)
Toilet Paper Roll Frog
Try this toilet roll frog to work on refined grasp, precision, scissor skills, and more motor skill development.
You could also use paper towel rolls to make this paper roll frog.
These printable activities extend to work on a variety of other functional areas, too: handwriting skills, numbers, math, adding, subtracting, one-to-one correspondence, scissor skills, coloring, and more.
Done for you motor skills activities and FUN frog and toad themes combine in the Frogs and Toads Motor Skills Mini-Pack. Work on grasp, hand strength, eye-hand coordination, handwriting, scissor skills, heavy work, gross motor skills, coordination, and all things fine and gross motor skills in this 43 page printable packet.
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 ant crafts are completely adorable but more than that, each ant craft you find here is a powerful fine motor activity that builds hand strength, scissor skills, motor planning, direction following, sequencing, and precision. Check out each ant craft below for fine motor crafts to use in OT sessions or to develop specific skills.
You can add these ant craft ideas to a picnic theme in therapy. Be sure to grab these picnic activities for your ant crafts to join:
Virtual Picnic Activities– use this free slide deck to work on gross motor skills, coordination, motor planning, and handwriting in therapy or home programming.
When we saw Reading Book By Book’s ant hill reading activity, we had to share it. Then of course, we had to look for more cute ants on the web!
Try these other ant craft ideas as well:
This ant spoon craft from Paging Fun Mums is a fine motor activity for working on bilateral coordination and hand strength.
This ant egg carton craft from Teaching Mama builds precision, dexterity, in-hand manipulation, sequencing, and motor planning skills.
This ant puppet from Toddler Approved challenges scissor skills, bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, and other fine motor skills.
This ant theme from Chestnut Grove Academy includes an ant craft stamp activity that can build eye-hand coordination and add 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.
.jpg)
.png)
.png)
