Kids struggle with fine motor skills. You may have seen it in a pencil grasp that needs work. You may see it in a child struggling to open a food container in the lunchroom. You may have seen it with weak or low endurance when coloring. All of those struggling areas are challenged by fine motor weakness and distal mobility problems that result in real struggles in the classroom or home.
Here are fine motor activities using chalk, an everyday item that you will find in many therapy rooms or classrooms. It’s all part of our fine motor activities with items like craft pom poms, playing cards,paper clips, and play dough.
Fine Motor ACTIVITIES using Chalk
We’ve shared ways to use sidewalk chalk to build fine motor skills. This selection of activities are ideas for using small pieces of chalk that you might find in the classroom. Sidewalk chalk may only be on the shelves during summer months. Grab a pack of chalk from the dollar store and get ready to build precision and dexterity!
For information on what are fine motor skills and how these small motor skill areas impact function, check out the search bar on this website.
Add these activities to the therapy lineup this week:
Draw chalk on cardboard.
Draw chalk on carpet squares.
Copy pre-writing lines on construction paper.
Wet chalk in water. Draw lines on a toilet paper tube.
Draw big lines. Cover lines with rocks.
Break chalk. Color small shapes.
Use small pieces to color rocks.
Draw with crayons and color on top with chalk.
Drop chalk in water. Mix to create chalk paint.
Break chalk with hammer.
Draw on floor on sheets of paper.
Carve into edges of sidewalk chalk with toothpick.
Scoop up chalk dust and add drops of water.
Break chalk into small pieces and draw or copy shapes.
Draw a line on paper and make a finger obstacle course.
Write letters and shapes on paper and paint over them with water on a paintbrush.
Tape paper to a wall or easel and write or copy forms with chalk.
Break chalk into dust and add water. Use it to paint letters, shapes, and forms.
Draw a chalk Twister board on cardboard. Use fingertips to play the game.
Break chalk into dust. Add water and mix. Use the chalk paint to fingerpaint letters or numbers.
Use the side of chalk to swipe a large line. Writing on a chalkboard, form extra large letters or numbers
Use a toothpick to carve letters into the sides of chalk.
Crush chalk into dust. Add a small bit of water and press the chalk into a mold (a chocolate mold or ice cube tray works well. Pop the mold into the freezer and use the molds to draw.
Use chalk to color a coloring book page.
Write letters or mystery words on construction paper with chalk. Use an eraser to swipe away the word. See if the word can be discovered by the left over letters or dust.
Make a tic tac toe board with chalk. Use fingers to “hop” through the board.
Crush chalk into dust. Sprinkle it onto paper. Use a spray bottle to spray water onto the dust.
Use a scrap of material as a writing surface. Staple it to cardboard if it’s too hard to hold in place.
Write mystery words n a piece of paper towel. Crumble up the paper towel and see if someone else can read the mystery word.
More fine motor activities with chalk
What would you add to this list? Leave your chalk ideas in the comments below!
It’s that time of year! Halloween is just around the corner and so in your therapy clinic or school-based OT sessions, or even OT teletherapy, you may be thinking up Halloween occupational therapy activities that work on specific functional goals. Here, you’ll find a collection of Halloween fine motor activities, pumpkin occupational therapy activities, Halloween sensory play, and more. Use all of these ideas to help kids work on a variety of OT goals using a Halloween craft or ghost activity. This pumpkin deep breathing exercise is just one idea!
Here are occupational therapy themes that we’ve covered so far. Use them to make therapy planning a breeze…and make your life easier!
Halloween Occupational Therapy Activities
We LOVE to create and come up with fun crafts and activities that double as a tool for addressing specific skills!
Here you will find a variety of Fall and Halloween activities that can address skills such as fine motor, visual motor, visual perception, scissor skills, hand strength, dexterity, core stability and strength, executive functioning, and so much more.
Check out the variety of ghost crafts, pumpkin art, Halloween games, and other ideas. It just might be the perfect addition to your therapy plans this month!
One of our favorite activities for this time of year is our pumpkin deep breathing exercise. I love using this in every therapy session as a self regulation tool and warm up activity!
Ghost Occupational Therapy Activities
We’ve come up with some fun ghost activities here on The OT Toolbox! Try some of these ideas in your therapy clinic or as a home program recommendation this Fall. I love that these ideas can be done on an individual basis or as a small group. Use them in a classroom Halloween party planning or as a fun Fall fest activity.
This ghost craft is an easy way to work on scissor skills. Kids can also address skills such as bilateral coordination, hand strength with a simple halloween craft that uses just paper, crayon, scissors, and a hole punch. Use these ghosts to decorate for Halloween and monitor scissor skills.
This ghost craft for sensory play is a fun one for kids to make but also use in sensory bins or fine motor activities.
This ghost craft uses recycled materials and can be a tool for working on dexterity, precision of grasp, in-hand manipulation, bilateral coordination, hand strength, and more! These ghosts would make a fun addition to the therapy clinic, OT doorway, or even a bulletin board decoration.
This gross motor ghost game can be played over and over again while working on eye-hand coordination, visual tracking, visual convergence, core stability, reach, and other skills. Kids will participate in vestibular and proprioceptive input with a ghost theme!
Bat Occupational Therapy Activities
These bat activities will be an easy way to work on specific skills while making Halloween fun and not spooky for kids.
This bat Halloween craft is a fun on skills like scissor skills, bilateral coordination, fine motor skills, sensory input, and letter formation.
Looking to pair a Halloween book and activity for a party or small group? This Stellaluna activity can help kids with specific and purposeful skills such as sight word recognition or math skills while working on visual scanning, visual tracking, visual discrimination, figure-ground, bilateral coordination, crossing midline, and more.
Pumpkin Occupational Therapy Activities
Be sure to check out the many pumpkin activities are to be found here on The OT Toolbox! Use these fall ideas all season long from Halloween through Thanksgiving!
The Pumpkin Activity Kit covers tons of fine motor skills, visual motor skills, coordination, and more.
Kids can make pumpkin stamp art using a paper tube while working on bilateral coordination, crossing midline, eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, visual perception, and fine motor grasp. You can also make pumpkin stamps with a foam curler or other stamp.
Pushing into the classroom? Work on English Language Arts, math, or other classroom lessons by using small pumpkin stickers right in the classroom. This pumpkin activity can be a big boost to fine motor skills, visual scanning, eye-hand coordination, precision, distal mobility, and more.
We know how awesome carving a pumpkin is for fine motor, gross motor, and sensory needs. Once you carve that pumpkin, use the pumpkin seed in sensory play by dying the pumpkin seeds. It’s a great addition to Halloween sensory bins, fall fine motor activities, and other seasonal activities.
Love Halloween sensory bins? Make a set of pumpkins from an egg carton to work on fine motor skills. We’ve used these pumpkins in so many ways over the years.
Spider Occupational Therapy Activities
Spiders don’t need to be spooky! These spider activities and games can be a powerful way to work in some much-needed skills!
Work on bilateral coordination, motor planning, fine motor work, heavy work, vestibular input, and gross motor strengthening with this giant spider web activity.
Make a spider craft using recycled materials to work on fine motor skills such as hand strength, in-hand manipulation, separation of the sides of the hand, pincer grasp, and scissor skills.
Helping out with math or other classroom lessons? This math spider craft that we did addresses doubles and near doubles but you could use it to work on any math facts or ELA lessons. Sneak in bilateral coordination, scissor skills and more with this fun spider activity.
Make a noodle spider craft and help kids with fine motor skills such as in-hand manipulation, separation of the sides of the hand, and more.
Halloween Sensory ACTIVITIES
Recommending a sensory task for kids at home as part of a home program? This Frankenstein smoothie recipe is an awesome way to encourage calming proprioceptive input through oral motor work. Kids can get in on the recipe creation action to sneak in a few executive functioning skills, too.
Halloween Fine Motor Activities
So many of the activities we shared above work on and strengthen fine motor skills. Here are more Fall fine motor activities that use items such as fall leaves, scarecrows, or other Harvest items.
We’ve included many Halloween fine motor activities in this blog post. They are great for building hand strength.
Support finger strength by using bat mini erasers in theraputty exercises. Include some Halloween dexterity activities like the fingerer yoga activities we show in the video below. The Halloween dexterity exercises are fun as a handwriting warm up or as a fun way to get those fingers moving. Check out our video below…or you can catch it over on YouTube.
These Halloween fine motor exercises would be a great warm up to a writing task or gross motor activity.
Fall Sensory Activities
We’ve shared a lot of Fall sensory activities here on The OT Toolbox! You can find all of the posts here:
Remember that the craft or activity is the means to working on specific underlying areas, but also, so often kids really struggle with completing aspects of play or crafts. Addressing certain skills right in the craft can make it meaningful and purposeful. When we talk about “Choosing Wisely“, we are occupation-based activities. AOTA has guided us in Choosing Wisely recommendations that we can consider when coming up with OT activities and ideas. Using scissors to work on a Halloween craft with kids is something they need help to become more independence (scissor use) via a fun activity that they are proud to complete and show off (a ghost craft for example). Consider the occupational performance components in crafts and activities that meet the specific needs of the child or individual.
In that way, using a craft in occupational therapy can address a variety of different skills, with different levels of accommodation or modification, input, cues, or difficulty, based on the specific needs as determined by the occupational therapy professional.
Halloween Activities for Occupational Therapy
What are your favorite Halloween Occupational Therapy activities? Is there something you do each year with the kids you work with? Let us know in the comments below!
Halloween Cutting Activities
Many times, occupational therapy practitioners work on the functional skill of cutting with scissors.
Snipping paper, cutting shapes, and making crafts require cutting straight lines and multi-angular shapes with scissors. We can use the Halloween cutting activities in occupational therapy sessions to work on this motor skill:
You’ll LOVE these free pumpkin scissor skills pages that allow kids to “cut the pumpkin” and work on line awareness, cutting curved and angled lines, and even coloring. It’s free to print and go!
Work on underlying fine motor and visual motor integration skills so you can help students excel in handwriting, learning, and motor skill development.
7 digital products that can be used any time of year- has a “pumpkins” theme
5 pumpkin scissor skills cutting strips
Pumpkin scissor skills shapes- use in sensory bins, math, sorting, pattern activities
2 pumpkin visual perception mazes with writing activity
Pumpkin “I Spy” sheet – color in the outline shapes to build pencil control and fine motor strength
Pumpkin Lacing cards – print, color, and hole punch to build bilateral coordination skills
2 Pumpkin theme handwriting pages – single and double rule bold lined paper for handwriting practice
I wanted to add a quick and easy Halloween fine motor activity that I love, because you need one interactive Halloween worksheet that can be used in so many different ways. It’s actually a Halloween play dough mat and I love using this as a therapy tool to support many different skills.
You can see in the video below how we used this play dough mat. I have this printable inside The OT Toolbox Membership Club.
You’ll print off the play dough mat. Then slide it into a page protector sleeve. Then, you can start building skills:
You can place craft pom poms on the mat.
You can roll small balls of play dough and then press them onto the circles on the mat.
You can write letters with a dry erase marker and then use a code to work on visual perceptual skills as you place colored craft pom poms onto the play dough mat to match letters. This is great for letter reversals.
Then, you can use a pickle picker to pick up and sort the craft pom poms.
It’s a great way to work on many OT goal areas at once! Here are more of our play dough mats we have on the website that you can use in similar ways.
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 fine motor skills with kids doesn’t need to require the same old items every day. Recently, we’ve been sharing creating ways to promote fine motor skills with everyday items. Today, you’ll find fun fine motor activities with playing cards. We all have a deck of cards in a drawer or game closet…here are creative ways to use those cards to build the skills kids need for functional tasks like pencil grasp.
Working on fine motor skills? Here are just a few ways that a simple item like l=playing cards can be used to promote fine motor areas like bilateral coordination, finger isolation, in-hand manipulation, arch development and intrinsic hand strength, and other areas.
Add a deck of playing cards to your STEM fine motor kit, too.
Playing with cards can be a great way to increase several fine motor skill areas:
Separation of the two sides of the hand- When holding the string, it is useful for the ring and pinkie fingers to bend into a fist in order to stabilize the hand. This positioning is effective for a functional grasp on the pencil when writing. In this way, lacing cards boost fine motor skills as a pre-writing tool.
Visual Motor Skills- Coordinating visual information with motor movements of the hands is essential for handwriting, cutting with scissors, and many other tasks. Manipulating lacing cards is an excellent way to address these needs.
Motor Planning- A motor plan is functional execution of a task which is viewed with the eyes and carried out with the hands in order to complete tasks, such as mazes, walking around obstacles, cutting along a line, and writing within a space on a form. Visual motor skills can be difficult for children with visual processing difficulties. Identifying and organizing information is in a motor plan works on problem solving skills.
Pincer Grasp: Manipulating cards with a pad-to-pad grasp is a fine motor skill children need for many functional tasks. Picking up small items like coins, beads, seeds, etc require a pincer grasp.
Eye-Hand Coordination: Eye-hand coordination is using the information received through the vision system to coordinate the hands with control, in order to complete a task, such as handwriting or catching a ball. Find more hand eye coordination ideas here.
FUn Fine Motor activities with playing cards
Clip clothes pins onto match numbers
Make the cards into mini lacing cards with a hole punch and some string.
Sort cards by color
Sort cards by number
Write words on cards and math to handwriting tasks
Create a coping strategies deck
Invent yoga moves for each card or suit in the deck. Use as a movement break activity
Slide paper clips onto cards, match the number of clips to the number on the card
Work on holding the cards and spanning them out in the hands
Encourage picking up one card as you can. Make it a card race! Pick up a single card as fast as you can. This is a great team activity
Play minute to win it games
Turn the cards into crafts
Fold cards and crease to work on pinch strength
Use play dough to create a house of cards. Roll balls of play dough and stick cards into the dough
Teach kids to sort the deck as in beginning a card game
Work on mixing the deck with two hands
Pinch a single card between the thumb and pointer finger. Toss the cards into a target such as a basket
More fine motor activities
Love using regular, everyday items to boost the skills kids need? Here are a few more ideas you will love:
Print off some of these free cursive alphabet cards to work on fine motor skills AND cursive letter handwriting.
There is a new series here on The OT Toolbox! We’re talking all things fine motor activities wand the fine motor skills needed for functional tasks. These are fine motor activities for preschoolers and fine motor activities for toddlers to help kids develop the skills they need. These fine motor ideas are easy and quick ways to boost fine motor abilities using an item that is probably already in your craft supply bin or therapy bag. Craft Pom Poms are a great tool for fine motor development while improving dexterity and the motor skills kids need. Read on for fun and easy ways to use craft pom poms in fine motor play!
Kids need more FIne MOtor Activities
You may have heard stories about how kids are lacking in fine motor skills more and more. THere are several reasons for this problem. It’s very concerning! Kids have less outdoor time and more scheduled activities, allowing for less free-play. Kids need fine motor skills for school and play. When fine motor skills are impaired, there may be challenges with pencil grasp, functional tasks like scissor use, clothing fasteners, and tasks like manipulating materials.
Easy Fine Motor Activities with craft pom poms
Adding more fine motor activities into a child’s day can be a struggle. So having an easy list ready to go makes recommending fine motor activities a no-brainer. Use these activity ideas in fine motor home programs or in the classroom for fine motor centers. Adding them to math centers would be easy…craft pom poms are fun to sort, count, and manipulate!
Why Use Craft Pom Poms in FIne Motor Activities?
Craft pom poms are so versatile! There’s a reason why every OT has them in their therapy bag of tricks! Craft pom poms are a great way to work on various fine motor skills including:
Separation of the sides of the hand– Pom poms make a great item to hold in the palm while encouraging movement and precision with the pointer finger, middle finger, and thumb.
Pincer grasp– Craft pom poms make a powerful means of promoting the precision grasp between the thumb and pointer finger.
In-hand manipulation– Craft pom poms can be used as a manipulative item for transfering from the palm to the finger tips or vice versa. This is an essential skill needed in pencil grasp.
Finger isolation– Craft pom poms can be used in various ways to promote finger isolation needed for fine motor dexterity and functional tasks.
Eye-hand coordination– This skills is an essential fine motor precision skill needed for so many functional tasks. Craft pom poms can be a powerful way to work on this skill area.
Craft Pom Pom Activities
Here is a big list of activity ideas for using craft pom poms to work on fine motor skills. What would you add to this list? To start, here are more fine motor activities that use craft pom poms. Using this craft item in fine motor development requires easy set-up with activities like the ones listed below. You’ll see using a water bottle to work on fine motor skills in the list. Here’s a better description of how to make that craft pom pom fine motor activity work.
Drop craft pom poms into an empty water bottle
Use tweezers to place craft pom poms into an ice cube tray
Pinch them with tongs or tweezers
Pinch them with clothes pins
Poke toothpicks into craft pom poms
Pound a golf tee into a craft pom pom, using a hammer and a cardboard box
Press them onto double sided tape
Squeeze craft pom poms with color coded fingers. Use color-coded hair bands to mark fingers
Hide them in the palm of the hand and drop into color coded spice containers
Fill containers by sorting the pom poms by color
Create a color by number picture with craft pom poms
Press them into paint and dot paint by squeezing and swiping pom poms onto paper
Place a certain number of pom poms onto number cards or playing cards
Fill number puzzle by placing pom poms into the open spaces one-by-one
Use craft pom poms to form numbers and letters
Press them onto contact paper
Create texture mazes with clear packing tape
Create a fine motor ninja course using craft pom poms to hop fingers over and around
Make a Simon game board by using craft pom poms to form “buttons”
This toy theme play dough mat may be just the incentive kids need to build hand strength! Kids can improve hand strength in fun ways when play dough is added to the mix. We’ve been sharing a variety of free play dough mats based on several different themes. These are free printable playdough mats that kids can use to increase hand strength, specially strength of the intrinsic muscles of the hands.
Kids love toys, right? I haven’t met a child who isn’t captivated by a new toy. This toy theme play dough mat builds on the fundamental “job” that kids have…play!
You can print off this printable play dough mat that focuses on toys and an toy theme and use it to work on fine motor skills and the intrinsic muscle strengthening that kids need to complete many functional tasks…and even play!
Toy Themed Play Dough Mat for Fine Motor Skills
Show your child how to use the finger tips and thumb of one hand to roll a small ball of play dough. By using just one hand, they can develop and define the arches of the hand, while strengthening the other muscles of the intrinsic muscle groups at the same time.
Then, ask the child to place and press the play dough on the circles on the toy play dough mat. They may need to pull off a bit of dough to make the play dough ball fit into the circles. This is a great activity for boosting visual perceptual skills too!
Enter your email in the form below and access your free printable play dough mat. Then, pull out the play dough!
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
If you work with kids, you might be thinking about Christmas activity ideas that promote the development of fine motor skills. These Christmas Fine Motor Activities are creative ideas that boost dexterity, build fine motor strength, promote precision of grasp, enhance separation of the two sides of the hand, and enhance tripod grasp with a Christmas theme.
Christmas Fine Motor Activities
These fine motor activities can be used in the classroom as a Christmas craft that doubles also develops the underlying fine motor skills that are needed for so many functional tasks.
Go through the activities below and find your favorite way to play and develop fine motor skills this holiday season!
Christmas theme fine motor activities
When kids make crafts or holiday decorations, they are using and developing many skills. Manipulating tools such as scissors, glue, hole punches, tape, glitter, etc, kids experience various tactile experiences.
Creating with paper or other material requires visual motor skills (eye-hand coordination), fine motor manipulation and strength, dexterity, bimanual coordination, visual perceptual skills, visual attention, prehension, midline crossing, and visual spatial awareness.
By using tools such as scissors or a hole punch, children can gain proprioceptive input that can be calming within the classroom environment.
Here are Christmas themed Fine Motor Activities that can be used in the classroom, home, or clinic this holiday season: Use this Christmas Tree Hole Punch activity to develop strength in the hands and more. This activity uses a hole punch to create lights for each Christmas tree. The bonus with this craft is the learning and math component. Add a colorful twist by adding colored tissue paper to the backs of the trees with glue.
Make a fine motor Christmas card that kids can make too, while working on hand strength, coordination, and eye-hand coordination skills…with a fun Christmas card that kids can make and gift to friends or family!
Use crumbled tissue paper to create this Fine Motor Christmas Tree from Crafts on Sea. Crumbling paper develops the arches and builds strength in the hands. Kids will love this Christmas Jingle Bell Sort activity and won’t even realize they are building skills they need for development. This activity can be used all season long to help kids develop in-hand manipulation and separation of the two sides of the hands as kids sort colored jingle bells.
Make these Fine Motor Lacing Christmas Trees from Happy Hooligans to develop skills like visual motor integration, bilateral coordination, tripod grasp, and more. Creating this Snowman Fine Motor Craft is a fun way to develop skills like bilateral coordination, pincer grasp and more. This craft is one that builds fine motor strength and precision while creating a fun holiday decoration.
Boost fine motor skills like grasp, strength, and more when making these Craft Stick Christmas Trees from Easy Peasy and Fun. This Fine Motor Christmas Tree Craft addresses many skills needed for development and function. This craft has been very popular here on The OT Toolbox. It’s a way to recycle egg cartons while working on various skills: bilateral coordination, fine motor strength, visual attention, spatial awareness, arch development, wrist extension and stability, and more.
These Fine Motor Christmas Trees from Stir the Wonder are fun decorations that promote bilateral coordination skills. Use recycled bottle caps to make this Bottle Cap Fine Motor Christmas Tree Craft. This fine motor activity can be a holiday decoration that boosts fine motor skills such as precision, in-hand manipulation, tip-to-tip pincer grasp, rotation and dexterity of the fingers needed for in-hand manipulation, and bilateral coordination.
You can find more Christmas themed play and fine motor crafts and activities here on this 25 days of Christmas Play series that we shared a few years back.
Christmas Handwriting Activities
Writing out that Christmas wish list is a difficult task that brings out tears instead of holiday excitement. I’ve got a solution for your kiddo with handwriting difficulties: a packet of modified paper for all of the Christmas handwriting tasks that come up each year. Use this handwriting pack to help kids who struggle with handwriting to participate in holiday traditions while even working on and developing their handwriting skills!
Working on handwriting with kids this Christmas season? Grab your copy of the Christmas Modified Handwriting Packet. It’s got three types of adapted paper that kids can use to write letters to Santa, Thank You notes, holiday bucket lists and much more…all while working on handwriting skills in a motivating and fun way! Read more about the adapted Christmas Paper here.
Christmas Theme Handwriting
For more Christmas fine motor work, try paringin the activities in this post with Christmas handwriting. Use the modified paper to work on areas such as line awareness, spacing, letter size, and legibility with bold lines, highlighted lines, and color-coded lines.
Looking for done-for you therapy activities this holiday season?
This print-and-go Christmas Therapy Kit includes no-prep, fine motor, gross motor, self-regulation, visual perceptual activities…and much more… to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, Christmas-themed, motor activities so you can help children develop the skills they need.
This 100 page no-prep packet includes everything you need to guide fine motor skills in face-to-face AND virtual learning. You’ll find Christmas-themed activities for hand strength, pinch and grip, dexterity, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, endurance, finger isolation, 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.
Fine motor feather burlap weaving activity is a creative way to build many fine motor skills needed for functional tasks. This creative weaving activity uses a few materials you might have in your craft area or can be easily found in craft stores. Grab some feathers and get ready to work on those fine motor skills! If you re looking for easy ways to sneak in bilateral coordination skills, we’ve got a ton to share!
For another fun fine motor activity with feathers, be sure to check out this beaded feather activity.
Burlap Weaving Activity
This post contains affiliate links.
This fine motor activity was last minute project that used feathers and burlap ribbon in a couple different colors.
To work on fine motor skills with this weaving activity, cut the burlap ribbon into squares. Then, start weaving the feathers through the holes of the burlap material. There is no right or wrong way to complete this activity. It’s a true process art activity that works on so many fine motor skills.
Overlap pieces of burlap ribbon for a colorful collage art that is hands-on and multi-textural.
Try “racing” one feather against another in a piece of burlap ribbon. This is a great way to build spatial and positional awareness as well as eye-hand coordination.
Weaving Burlap Fine Motor Skills
When weaving burlap, there are many fine motor skills that are addressed.
So, what exactly are you working on when completing this project?
You’ll find more bilateral coordination and fine motor activities in our Fine Motor Kits:
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
This hand strengthening activity with an egg carton is an easy way to use a recycled egg carton to work on fine motor skills, hand strength, pincer grasp, tripod grasp development, intrinsic hand strength, eye-hand coordination, and other fine motor hand strength skills.
Fine Motor Activity with an Egg Carton
Recently, I shared how intrinsic muscle strength benefits handwriting and specifically a functional grasp on the pencil. Today, I’ve got a super easy way to work on endurance with the lumbrical muscles that are used in maintaining a nice pencil grasp.
This will enable a child to write at appropriate speeds and lengths of time without fatiguing and allow a child to color in a picture without stopping because their hands are tired.
The bonus to today’s activity is that the strengthening tool is very easy to re-create and (almost) completely free.
This would be an awesome compliment to our recent 31 Days of Occupational Therapy activities using Free or Almost Free Materials!
Intrinsic Muscles of the Hands Lumbricals Strengthening Exercise
This is a great finger strength exercise…and it only uses an egg carton and straws. The reason it’s such a great strength activity has to do with the lumbrical muscles in the hand.
This post contains affiliate links.
For this activity, we used a recycled egg carton, a wooden skewer (Amazon affiliate links), and cut pieces of straws.
Use the top of the egg carton and poke holes using the wooden skewer. Wiggle the skewer until the holes are larger. Cut the straws into one inch sized pieces, and you are ready to go!
Show your kiddo how to poke the straw pieces into the holes. We used both sides of the egg carton, but using the inside of the egg carton sections especially works on the lumbrical muscles in the hand.
Holding the small straw sections requires a tripod grasp and when the child is required to push the straw through the hole in the section of the egg carton, they are positioning their hand in an Intrinsic Plus Position.
Ask your child to hold several straw pieces in their hand at once to address in-hand manipulation. This skill is needed to manipulate the pencil and rotate the pencil during handwriting tasks.
We cut off the lid of our egg carton for this activity. It was a good way to work on bilateral hand coordination which is necessary for holding the paper and pencil with two different hands during a hand writing task.
Once the straws are partially in the holes of the egg carton, your child can press them the rest of the way through the hole, utilizing finger isolation. Then, turn the egg carton over and use a tripod grasp to pull the straws the rest of the way through the holes.
Read about how and why this is great for handwriting here.
Need another activity with an egg carton?
Looking for more ways to recycle an egg carton? Try these:
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.
This rainbow color sorting activity is one of the oldest ones we have on this website, because we love using this classic occupational therapy activity. It’s a great tool for supporting color recognition skills in kids, fine motor skills, eye hand coordination, and more.
Chain Link Activity in Occupational Therapy
This rainbow chain can be used in a toddler activity to teach colors and color matching in a creative, hands-on approach to teaching toddlers colors. This is an activity that I’ve used over and over again with my own toddlers. Older siblings can make and build the plastic chain links to make a rainbow chain…and younger siblings can sort the colors of the chain links. This is a chain link activity that builds so many skills!
Today’s learning with manipulatives activity uses something that I LOVE. I had these plastic chain links in my therapy bag for years, and used them daily in school based and outpatient occupational therapy treatment. Now, I get to play with my kids using these plastic rainbow chain links. Today, we used them with my toddler to practice color sorting.
And, here’s a little preview for you: We went a little crazy with playing with these chain links. I’ve got a bunch of fun chain link ideas coming your way, soon!
Rainbow Chain
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Chain links are completely awesome for find motor skills in kids. Linking the chains together and pulling them apart requires intrinsic muscle strength, bilateral hand coordination, tripod grasp, and pronation/supination of an extended wrist.
These chain links are tools that can used to work on so many goal areas. From using two hands together, to a functional pencil grasp, to using spoons and forks with an appropriate write positioning, to holding a zipper with the right wrists angle…these little guys are great skill builders!
Linking the chains together requires a bit of muscle oomph, so for preschoolers and school-aged kids, building chains are a great strengthening activity.
(This set comes in a big bucket of 500, so you’ve got plenty for multiple kids playing at the same time, or different age-appropriate activities happening with the chain links)
You’ll also need colored card stock in matching colors.
I cut squares of equal sizes and placed them out on the table. I figured this would be a great activity for older toddlers, but my 19 month old completely surprised my by correctly placing the colored links on the matching paper squares. I had a few links in place to show her what to do and she was able to put them on the correct squares.
I even put an incorrect colored link on a different colored square and she was able to fix the mistake. It was a proud mama moment!
Looking for more learning activities using rainbow manipulatives? Stop by our Learning With Manipulatives team to see what they’ve come up with:
AND, be sure to stop by Instagram and check out the #toolsforlearning hashtag to see them all. Tag your hands-on learning ideas using rainbow manipulatives, too! We would love to see them!
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.
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.
together requires a bit of muscle oomph, so for preschoolers and school-aged kids, building chains are a great strengthening activity. 
