gross motor skills Archives - Page 5 of 13

What are Visual Spatial Relations

February 23, 2023June 8, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Visual Spatial Relations is an important visual perceptual skill that is important for many functional tasks. Spatial relations allows the organization of the body in relation to objects or spatial awareness. This is an important part of spatial awareness in handwriting and many other movement-based activities. An important part of visual spatial relations includes laterality and directionality. In general, these spatial relationship terms refer to left-right body awareness and the ability to perceive left/right relationship of objects.

Spatial Relations is being aware of oneself in space. It involves positioning items in relation to oneself, such as reaching for items without overshooting or missing the object. Most of us realize as we walk through a doorway that we need to space ourselves through the middle of the door.

Some with poor visual spatial skills may walk to closely to the sides and bump the wall. It also involves the fine motor tasks of coordinating handwriting with writing in spaces allowed on paper, placing letters within an area (lines), and forming letters in the correct direction.

What are spatial relations?

Spatial relations, or visual spatial awareness, refers to an organization of visual information and an awareness of position in space so the body can move and perform tasks. Spatial relations are needed for completing physical actions, moving in a crowded space, and even handwriting.

Knowing which shoe to put on which foot. Understanding that a “b” has a bump on the right side. Putting homework on the left side of the take home folder before putting books into a locker beside the gym bag. Visual spatial relations are everywhere!

More examples of spatial relations

Here are more everyday examples of spatial relations at work:

Letter formation and number formation
Writing letters without reversal
Reading letters without reversal
Sports
Completing puzzles
Walking in a crowded hallway without running into others
Standing in line without bumping into others
Left/right awareness
Understanding spatial reasoning concepts such as beside/under/next to/etc
Reading without losing one’s place
Copying written work with appropriate spatial awareness
Reading maps

Visual spatial skills in occupational therapy activities are an important skill.

Visual Spatial Skills and Handwriting

Spatial relations, and the ability to organize physical movements related to visual information impacts handwriting.

You might be thinking: “Movement and handwriting!? What?? I want my kiddo to sit still and copy his homework into his planner without wiggling all over the desk!”

Ok, ok. Here is the thing: We are asking our kids to write way to early. Preschoolers are being given paper with lines and are asked to write their name with correct letter formation. Kids are being thrown into the classroom environment with expectations for legible written work an they are missing the necessary basics.

When kids are not developing the skills they need to hold a pencil, establish visual perceptual skills, and organize themselves, they are going to have struggles in handwriting.

NOTE: There are a few other baseline tools that kids need in order to establish a base for better handwriting. Fine motor experiences, positioning, attention are just a few of these areas.

Here are a few easy hands-on strategies to help with spatial relations in written work:

Read this resource on hand dominance and laterality.
Then check out this post on what you need to know about writing with both hands.
Finally, check out this movement activity for direction following that involves spatial relations.
Spatial relations also plays a role in near point copying skills, or accuracy of copying written work.

These resources are all connected and can impact spatial relations skills!

Another resource is this post on Hand Aerobics and Fine Motor Skills Needed in the Classroom

You can find all of our handwriting posts here.

Spatial Relations Quick Tip:
Write a letter on the student’s back using a finger or a pencil eraser. Ask the student guess what letter it is. Then, ask the child to air write the letter. (While holding a pencil, with large motion, whole arm motions AND very small with just the fingers!) Finally have him write the letter on paper.

These activities all require the ability to perceive an object in space. The way they interpret position in space to their body and to other objects in the environment impacts motor skills.
Spacing pieces of a puzzle amongst the others and writing in relation to the lines is one way to work on this skill.

Fine Motor Quick Tip:
Encourage pinching activities. So many kids are exposed to screen technology from a young age. Screen interaction uses the pointer finger in isolation or just the thumb. These digits become strong and a dynamic pencil grasp is limited. Promote strengthening of the intrinsic muscles by pinching clay or tearing and crumbling small bits of paper. Read more about intrinsic muscle strengthening here.

What are visual spatial relations and how are visual relationships and visual concepts needed for functional tasks?

Spatial Relations Activities

Try these movement-based spatial relations activities to work on the visual spatial skills needed for writing and completing everyday tasks:

Create a paper obstacle course. Draw obstacles on paper and have your child make his /her pencil go through the obstacles.
Draw circles, holes, mud pits, and mountains for them to draw lines as their pencil “climbs”, “jumps”, “rolls”, and even erases!
Create an obstacle course using couch cushions, chairs, blankets, pillows to teach left/right/over/under.
Write words and letters on graph paper. The lines will work as a guide and also a good spacing activity.
Use stickers placed along the right margin of to cue the student that they are nearing the edge of paper when writing.
Highlight writing lines on worksheets.
Draw boxes for words on worksheets for them to write within.
Play Simon Says. Use these therapy Simon Says commands.
Practice directions. Draw arrows on a paper pointing up, down, left, and right. Ask your child to point to the direction the arrow is pointing. The child can say the direction the arrows are pointing. Then create actions for each arrow. Up may be jumping. Down may be squatting. The Left arrow might be side sliding to the left, and the Right arrow might be a right high kick. Next, draw more rows of arrows in random order. Ask your child to go through the motions and try to go faster and faster.

This map activity is great for building and developing spatial concepts and higher level thinking right in the backyard, using a map and lights to develop spatial relations.

Teaching Spatial Concepts to Preschoolers and Toddlers through play. Over, under, around, and through and their need in functional tasks like shoe tying and handwriting.

Visual Perception and spatial awareness in kids. What is Spatial awareness and why do kids have trouble with spacing between letters and words, reversing letters, and all things vision. Great tips here from an Occupational Therapist, including tips and tools to help kids with spacing in handwriting.

What is spatial awareness? Tips and tools for handwriting, reading, scissors, and all functional skills in kids and adults, from an Occupational Therapist.

Other activities to incorporate spatial relations include:

Try these other activities that challenge visual spatial relations:

Movement and spatial relations worksheet to improve spatial awareness in kids

Free Movement and Handwriting Worksheet

Today’s free printable shares movement based activities to help kids improve their spatial relations. These are the skills kids need to write legibly. It includes tips and activities to improve spatial relations, that were mentioned above. This free handout is a great resource to add to your occupational therapy toolbox.

You will receive this handout when you join the Handwriting Tips and Tricks series. Each day over the course of 5 days, you’ll receive a free handwriting worksheet to use in addressing common handwriting issues.

Join the free handwriting series!

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.

Virtual Picnic Therapy Activities

May 21, 2021May 10, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

This week’s free slide decks are fun virtual picnic therapy activities that can be used to encourage motor skills in therapy sessions. I love the picnic theme for the upcoming warmer weather this summer, but also as a fun way to spend the last few weeks of the school year. Kids will love this virtual picnic in therapy or at home! Also be sure to grab this left right discrimination picnic theme slide deck.

Virtual Picnic

When you use this virtual picnic to facilitate gross motor skills, kids can move, strengthen core stability, work on bilateral coordination, crossing midline, motor planning, eye-hand coordination, body awareness, muscle memory, and many other skills.

Plus, the virtual picnic activities includes a visual perceptual skills activities, and picnic handwriting activities.

These virtual picnic activities go hand-in-hand with picnic crafts, fine motor activities, mindfulness activities, making a full week of camping themed or picnic themed fun for kids.

Combine the picnic therapy activities on this slide deck to some other, hands-on picnic themed activities to round out the therapy theme:

Backyard sensory diet activities
Ant crafts for kids
Outdoor lawn games for kids
ABCs of Summer Learning
Summer Sensory Seating (use a beach ball at your picnic!)
Outdoor Phonologic Awareness Activity (great for auditory processing skills!)

And, when you have a picnic, making picnic foods with kids is a must…further building fine motor skills, cognitive skills like planning, preparation, impulse control, and other executive functioning skills, and independence in daily tasks! Try these cooking with kids activities that help to build skills, but are GREAT picnic foods for kids to make:

Frozen Fruit Kabobs
Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats (or skip the PB!)
Fruit Tray and…
Jam and Greek Yogurt Fruit Dip
Sandwiches

Kids can participate in the virtual picnic by making one of these cooking activities (as long as they have a helper at home for their cooking activities) or, make pretend food and work on direction following, sequencing, planning, and task completion.

So, you can use these ideas to combine therapy recommendations for the home OR use these ideas in therapy sessions to create picnic themed therapy activities!

Want to add virtual picnic activities to your sessions or home programming? This week’s free slide deck covers several different occupational therapy intervention areas (and are great for physical therapy sessions, too.)

Picnic Gross Motor Activities

The first part of the slide deck includes picnic gross motor activities.

Kids can look at the image on the slide deck and pick out one piece of visual information in order to act out the picnic scene. Each picnic scene includes several people that are in various gross motor positions to challenge core strength, coordinatin, midline crossing, bilateral coordinaiton, motor planning, and more.

Kids can also work on visual perceptual skills such as visual discrimination, visual figure ground, visual closure, etc.

Children can then use this part of the slide deck to foster muscle memory, visual memory, and sequencing. You could go through this part of the slide deck several times and work on recalling physical motor sequences or play a memory game. The slides are pretty open-ended to facilitate a number of goal areas when it comes to gross motor skill, coordination, visual skills, etc.

Picnic Handwriting Activities

The next several slides in the slide deck are open-ended picnic writing prompts. There are more picnic scenes that include a variety of picnic items.

Children can scan the image and pull out words to write on paper, or they can use the list on the slide deck to copy and then find the hidden items in the picture.

To grade this activity, ask kids to compose a sentence using the picnic words on the slide. Or, ask children to circle the items on the slide using a shape feature on Google slides. These activities challenge the visual perceptual skills and visual motor skills needed for handwriting and copying written work.

Use these picnic handwriting activities to focus on letter formation, spacing, sizing, and overall neatness in handwriting skills.

Free Virtual Picnic Slide Deck

Want to add this virtual picnic slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below to access this slide deck. Don’t forget to check out all of the Free Slides that we have available for teletherapy and for facilitating therapy sessions with kids!

Construction Truck Brain Breaks

June 14, 2021April 28, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

These construction truck brain breaks are heavy work fun with a truck theme! The gross motor activities that kids can use as a brain break or a heavy work activity to help with attention, focus, and sensory input. The construction truck activities are great for kiddos that love all things trucks! You can access these heavy work activities in a free therapy slide deck and use it in teletherapy sessions or in face-to-face therapy (or at home and in the classroom, too!)

These are perfect for kiddos that love all things garbage trucks, backhoes, excavators, cranes, steam rollers, and more. We’ve got all the construction vehicle activities covered in this therapy set!

Construction Truck Brain Breaks

I love using brain breaks in themed activities that kids love. The thing is that children are drawn to certain topics or themes, and construction truck themes are no different. There is just something about garbage trucks, dump trucks, backhoes, cement trucks, and excavators that are irresistible to children.

These particular construction truck brain breaks offer an opportunity for kids to gain much-needed heavy work input in the way of proprioception. You can read more about proprioception and brain breaks here.

The truck activities also allow children to move while gaining vestibular input as well. Adding movement in a variety of planes and directions in conjunction with input from the eyes, and heavy work feedback from muscle and joint receptors, is able to contribute to posture, coordination, and appropriate response of the visual system.

Another reason to use heavy work activities like these truck brain breaks, is for the benefit of improving body awareness. Heavy work improves body awareness by incorporating proprioceptive input, with motor planning, attention, and “self-checks” that allow us to know where our body is in space during tasks. This is so important for kiddos facing more and more screen time than ever.

For more heavy work activities, try these heavy work cards that come in a variety of themes.

Free Construction Truck Brain Breaks

You can grab these construction truck activities and use them in teletherapy sessions, in face-to-face therapy sessions, in the classroom, or in the home. They are presented in a Google slide deck, so that they can be easily accessible from different devices and situations, using a Google drive.

Check out all of the free therapy slide decks we have available here on the site.

Want to add this resource to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below.

NOTE: Try to add a personal email address for deliverability, as work emails (who have a strict security wall in place) may block the deliverability of the PDF email.

Use the Heavy Work Activity Cards in play, learning, and brain breaking!

Superhero Gross Motor Activities

June 14, 2021April 23, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Today, I have a fun therapy slide deck to share: Superhero Gross Motor Activities! These superhero exercises are movement activities that challenge motor planning, balance, core strength, and crossing midline. When kids move through the superhero movement activities, they can build and develop many areas. Grab this gross motor activity set and start building those motor skills!

Superhero Gross Motor Activities

I wanted to create a gross motor activity set to go along with our superhero writing activity deck, so be sure to grab that free resource as well. This is just one of the free teletherapy slides for OT and PT that are available on the site.

The gross motor activity set includes 24 different slides and superhero exercises that challenges users to complete different movement patterns. Users can go through the exercises in order and work on various gross motor skills that can be a challenge to incorporate into teletherapy sessions, sometimes.

By following along with the different superhero gross motor positions, kids can challenge and build:

Core strength
Stability
Balance and equilibrium skills
Coordination
Range of motion
Bilateral coordination
Flexibility
Motor planning
Crossing midline
Movement patterns
Posture and postural control
Muscle tone
Proprioceptive input
Vestibular input

These various gross motor skills can help children with self-regulation, attention, and other areas.

Add these other superhero activities for more skill-building:

Superhero Clothes Pin Craft– builds hand strength and endurance!
Superhero Heavy Work Cards– part of a set of 11 different themes.
City Play Dough Mat (Free play mat)- perfect for saving by your favorite superhero!

Free Superhero Gross Motor Slide Deck

Want to add this slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address below and you will receive a PDF containing a link to copy the slide deck onto your Google drive. Save that PDF file, because you can come back to it again and again and send it to the kids on your caseload (or classroom) so they can make their own copy on their Google drive.

Note- You many need to use a personal email address in this form due to increased difficulties with sending deliverables to school district emails, organizations, and those with high security networks.

Unicorn Yoga

April 6, 2022April 6, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

If you’ve got a little one who is a big fan of unicorns, than this Unicorn Yoga is a sure win. I’ve had this unicorn craft on the site for years and wanted to add a few other unicorn activities to go with the craft. That’s where these stretches and gross motor exercises come into play.

Unicorn Yoga

Just in time for Unicorn Day (yep, that’s actually a thing! Unicorn Day is on April 9th), these unicorn yoga exercises are a great addition to your therapy toolbox.

The exercises are a free slide deck that can be used in teletherapy, or as a brain break activity to incorporate into a functional sensory diet or self-regulation strategy.

Kids that love all things unicorns will find these unicorn yoga poses a fun way to incorporate their interests into a meaningful and motivating sensory and gross motor exercise.

In each slide deck, kids can follow along with the unicorn yoga pose to challenge core strength, stability, strengthening, motor planning, crossing midline.

Other benefits of yoga exercises for kids include:

mindfulness
proprioceptive input
vestibular input
calming input
self-regulation.

Unicorn fitness was never so much fun…or cute!

Also included in this slide deck is a deep breathing activity. The unicorn image shows children how to take in deep breaths for the sensory and regulating benefits. Kids can use these deep breathing strategies while completing each unicorn yoga pose throughout the slide deck.

Unicorn Yoga Slide Deck

To incorporate these slides into your therapy practice, you’ll access the slides via the form below. Then, you can pull up the slide deck onto your Google drive. Go through each yoga pose with children in your virtual therapy sessions, at home, or in the classroom. Kids can copy the positioning with your verbal cues, and correct any body positioning, depending on spatial awareness and body awareness needs.

Parents, teachers, and therapists may want to follow along with the cute unicorns on each slide, too!

Want to add this free therapy slide deck to your toolbox? Enter your email address below and the exercises will be delivered to your inbox.

NOTE: Please consider using a personal email address rather than a work or school district email. Due to recent changes with network security measures, the email delivering the resource may be blocked by your work institution.

Butterfly exercises

April 3, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

This week’s occupational therapy theme is all about the butterfly activities. And, these butterfly exercises help with coordination, motor panning, coordination, and add heavy work input. You’ll love the butterfly yoga activities that are fun, motivating, and engaging! Add these butterfly gross motor exercises to your Spring occupational therapy activities.

In this free slide deck, you’ll love the heavy work and gross motor coordination activities with a butterfly theme. Butterfly exercises get those kiddos moving and building coordination skills so they can move, play, and develop skills.

Butterfly exercises

Kids will love these gross motor exercises that challenge the following skills in kids:

Balance
Coordination
Motor planning
Crossing midline
Movement changes
Sequencing

When kids follow along with the visual images in the slides, they can work on planning out gross motor actions, crossing midline, and building core strength that helps with attention, following directions, and getting much needed proprioceptive and vestibular sensory input.

These are fantastic butterfly gross motor activities for preschool, Pre-K and grade-school kids as a brain break that builds gross motor skills.

Butterfly yoga

In the slide deck are butterfly yoga positions to challenge balance and build strength. These exercises use a variety of yoga positions with a butterfly theme. Some of the activities use the butterfly yoga pose and others have visual images of a butterfly net or other images to make the yoga exercises motivating and fun for kids.

Can they balance on one foot while pretending to catch a butterfly with their net?

Butterfly gross motor activities

You’ll also love the deep breathing exercise in the slide deck to encourage deep breathing. Try using this deep breathing exercise while doing the butterfly yoga!

MORE BUTTERFLY ACTIVITIES

Butterfly life cycle crafts
Butterfly Handwriting Activities Slide Deck
Butterfly painting craft (great for fine motor skills, too!)
Butterfly scissor skills craft
Butterfly heavy work activities in the heavy work cards

Use the butterfly life cycle heavy work activities in the Heavy Work Cards to work on calming proprioceptive input.

Butterfly Exercises Slide Deck

Want to add these butterfly yoga and butterfly exercises to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below to access this slide deck.

Note that if you are using a school system’s email address, the PDF delivery may be blocked by your institution or workplace as a result of your system’s security measures. A personal email address may be better used.

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:

Spring fine motor kit set of printable fine motor skills worksheets for kids.

Lacing cards
Sensory bin cards
Hole punch activities
Pencil control worksheets
Play dough mats
Write the Room cards
Modified paper
Sticker activities
MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Beginner HIIT Treadmill Workouts

June 29, 2022March 24, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Because self-care is such a necessary component of battling caregiver burnout as a therapist, a beginner HIIT treadmill workouts can add the physical exercise piece that is often missing from self-care. Here, you’ll find HIIT beginner workouts for the treadmill. These are simple ways to get started with HIIT workouts and adding the much-needed self-care piece of occupational balance.

Self care activities play a role in addressing burnout that many occupational therapists experience. As occupational therapists, we often educate clients on

Here, we’ll cover easy strategies to get started with HIIT on a treadmill workout.

Physical Self Care- Having a simple physical exercise strategy in place helps when caregiver stress and burnout and overwhelm make you want to skip the physical exercise.

Implement an easy treadmill exercise program that doesn’t require a lot of thought or planning. Treadmill routines can address different needs including endurance, muscle building, weight loss, etc.

Beginner HIIT treadmill workouts

Adding physical activity that impacts physical wellbeing is the HIIT workout, or high intensity interval training. We talked about the use of a treadmill to assist with wellbeing in a previous post.

HIIT workouts are beneficial for many because they provide the physical health benefits in a shorter amount of time.

Those periods of high intensity running along with slower periods are very effective. There’s a reason why studies show that HIIT exercise impacts health and fitness. For busy therapists, quick and impactful exercises that helps with weight loss, and physical wellbeing.

And, in fact, one study determined that HIIT exercise and MIT (moderate intensity training) decreased anxiety, stress, and depression as well as increased resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic confinements to home. The study also determined that the HIIT intervention seemed to be more beneficial to reduce depression than the MIT intervention. These are great findings when it comes to addressing factors that impact burnout in therapists and overall self-care.

Put it on your schedule- When a physical exercise plan is written down, it becomes a part of your day visually. It’s easier to commit to an exercise plan that is on your daily schedule. And, having a fast routine a part of your day can create a daily habit that becomes part of the routine.

A self-care workout plan includes time for you, Warm up, quick sprints, recovery intervals, and a cool down. During the high or moderate intensity period of the exercise session, your heart rate should rise at a perceived level of exertion.

For beginners, getting started with a treadmill program can gain the benefits of a HIIT program but can start with a short activity plan.

Setting up a treadmill plan can begin with just 10 minutes of activity at first, and then can gradually build up to 20-30 minutes and then longer.

HIIT and MIT in treadmill intervals

An essential part of physical exercise includes a warm-up, whether that be stretching, walking, or deep breathing. Adding relaxing music or pump-up music that fits with your interests makes getting started fun. This can then be incorporated into a cool-down at the end of your treadmill workout. The warm-up and cool-down periods reduce risk of injury as well.

Use these clues as guides to determine if your treadmill intervals workout is high intensity interval training or moderate intensity:

Moderate intensity exercise

MIT, or moderate intensity training feels difficult, but at medium of the road level. Some signs of a somewhat difficult level include a quicker breathing rate, but you’re not out of breath. You should be able to easily carry on a conversation during your exercise. And, you should note perspiration during your exercise.

High intensity exercise

High intensity training is a more challenging level of exercise, where breathing rate is more vigorous. You need to pause during conversation to breathe, and perspiration occurs sooner in the exercise period. It is possible to quickly move from moderate level to a high level of intensity throughout exercising.

Interval training routinely switches between these levels of intensity.

Interval training sessions can switch between periods of higher rate of perceived exertion and lower rates of perceived exertion. It doesn’t take much to get started with HIIT. You can start with 30 seconds of high intensity running followed by 90 seconds of a recovery stage at a lower intensity.

Another option for interval training can include treadmill speed, or incline.

Still another HIIT workout can utilize the treadmill programs within the treadmill.

With the Horizon Fitness treadmills and fitness equipment, there are a number of programing options, including quick, 20 minute programs, and other streaming fitness opportunities. The print-intensity workout is pre-programmed and some of the treadmills have a button to select the intervals.

Check out the Horizon fitness deals, including free shipping that you can access now on the Horizon site.

Affiliate links are included in this post, but I only recommend products that I own, and love!

Flower Balance Activities

June 14, 2021March 21, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Want to help kids with balance, coordination, strength, and mobility? Need some core strengthening and stability activities to help with balance and vestibular integration? These flower balance activities are fun ways to help kids work on these very areas so they are able to move, play, learn, and function in day to day tasks. And, it’s all packaged up in a free Google slide deck so you can use these balance exercises in therapy sessions, at home, in the classroom, or clinic. These are Spring gross motor activities that really build skills!

Balance Activities

You’ll find a lot of balance activities and exercises here on The OT Toolbox. We’ve shared balance beams, obstacle courses, brain breaks, prone extension activities, movement activities, and vestibular activities before. you may have even seen this DIY wobble disk made from ice. All of these activities are so great to help kids develop strength, coordination, movement pattern skills, and get them moving through play.

Core strengthening is just one benefit of these balance activities kids can copy. We’ve talked before about core strength and it’s relationship to handwriting and other functional tasks.

The free slide deck that I have available today, adds just one more balance tool into your therapy toolbox. It’s a fun way to challenge kids to move while copying visual images of body positioning. These exercises integrate visual processing to see the image and copy the positioning as well as motor skills as kids coordinate their body to move their arms or legs into the correct positioning.

I’ve tried to use both sides of the body in this flower balance activity, so they can work on left-right discrimination as well.

When kids incorporate one leg stance, and holding a body position in a squat or lunge, they are adding proprioceptive input, so they gain the calming regulatory benefits, too.

And, the therapy slide decks use a flower icon in various positions on each slide. So the user can copy the form by placing a pillow, stuffed animal, roll of socks, or bean bag into different places while maintaining balance. This can be a real challenge for some children!

There is a fun flower deep breathing exercise in the slide deck as well.

Free Balance Exercise Slide Deck

Want to use this free slide deck in teletherapy, in home programs, or in the classroom as a brain break? Just enter your email address into the form below.

NOTE- Due to an increase in security measures, many readers utilizing a work or school district email address have had difficulty accessing free resources from the delivery email. Consider using a personal email address and forwarding the delivery email to your work account.

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!

Lacing cards
Sensory bin cards
Hole punch activities
Pencil control worksheets
Play dough mats
Write the Room cards
Modified paper
Sticker activities
MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Sensory Stations Free Spring Printables

September 28, 2022March 17, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

This sensory stations printable set is a free resource that you can print off and hang up as an easy sensory path. You may have seen sensory walks in school hallways, or outdoor sensory walks on sidewalks. Sensory paths can even be done at home as a DIY sensory activity. The reason why we are seeing so many of these sensory strategies in place? They are a great way to get kids motivated and moving to incorporate the sensory input and motor planning that kids need.

The Spring themed sensory paths in this blog post are just one of the popular seasonal sensory path printables you’ll find on this site. Try these other themed sensory walks: Winter Sensory Stations, Summer Sensory Stations, and Fall Sensory Stations.

Free printable sensory stations for a sensory path with a Spring theme

What is a Sensory Path

First, let’s talk about what a sensory path is. You’ve probably seen the videos of kids completing motor activities in a hallway or even on a sidewalk. There are typically several sensory stations, or sensory and movement-based activities that kids can do as they move through the sensory walk.

A sensory walk (or a sensory path) is a fun and engaging series of movements and activities designed to incorporate the senses and movements. They are designed to promote motor skills so kids get the sensory input they need in order to focus, pay attention, regulate their sensory systems so they can learn and function along with their peers. They are a fun and engaging way to incorporate sensory diet tasks into the school or home environment.

When kids move through the colorful path, they are challenged to hop, jump, skip, tip toe, turn, spin, push, etc. All of these movements incorporate gross motor skills and sensory systems of vision, vestibular, and proprioceptive senses. You can read more here about heavy work of gross motor skills and sensory processing.

What are Sensory Stations?

In a sensory hallway or sensory pathway, there are typically “stations” or different movement activities that challenge different sets of muscles or actions. You might see a station where kids move through the letters of the alphabet as they hop along ABC images. You might see a sensory station that asks kids to tip toe along a spiral path, or complete wall push-ups. You may see a hopscotch board on the floor with numbers, letters, colors, or even sight words.

Other sensory paths stations for deep breathing exercises, animal walks, or figure 8 visual motor activities.

There are sensory pathways that incorporate different themes into the sensory stations. The sky is the limit when it comes to coming up with movement-based activities within a sensory walk.

All of these sensory stations offer an opportunity for the child to engage the senses in a particular movement or activity.

Free sensory stations printables

Today, as part of our Spring Week, I have a free printable set of sensory stations for you. These are PDF sheets with several different sensory station activities. Print them off, hang them in a hallway, classroom, or in the home to engage vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual senses.

The sensory stations included in this free resource include a figure 8 deep breathing activity. Kids can trace along the figure 8 as they take in deep breaths and then breathe them out.

The next sensory activity in this DIY sensory path is a frog hop activity. Kids can hop like a frog and engage proprioceptive input as they hop up and down. The printable is open-ended so you can ask kids to complete as many from hops as you like.

Next, you’ll find a wall push-up activity. Kids can complete wall push-ups against the hand visuals and engage heavy work input through their upper body as a calming motor activity.

Then, there is a jumping jack activity that engages the vestibular sense and gets kids active, moving their whole body, and working on coordination, motor planning, and symmetrical and asymmetrical movements gross motor movements.

Finally, the sensory path printables includes a spiral deep breathing activity with a buzzing bee. Kids can trace along the spiral and take deep breaths in and out. This calming activity can re-set kids and help with relaxation.

All of these sensory station activities are open-ended so you can ask kids to say the ABCs or count as they complete the tasks. You can also rearrange the order of the sensory walk tasks or omit some of the activities is you like.

Printable Sensory Stations

Want to add these sensory path stations to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email into the form below and you’ll receive them in your inbox. Enjoy and happy sensory path planning!

This handout is just one creative way to work on fine motor skills, precision, and dexterity this Spring? You’ll love these other free PDFs here on the website (all are available in our Member’s Club):

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This resource is just one of the many tools available in The OT Toolbox Member’s Club. Each month, members get instant access to downloadable activities, handouts, worksheets, and printable tools to support development. Members can log into their dashboard and access all of our free downloads in one place. Plus, you’ll find exclusive materials and premium level materials.

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Spring Fine Motor Kit

Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!

Lacing cards
Sensory bin cards
Hole punch activities
Pencil control worksheets
Play dough mats
Write the Room cards
Modified paper
Sticker activities
MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Add these other Spring printables to your toolbox this time of year:

Spring Sensory Stations– These printable sensory stations are great for building a sensory walk anywhere: Print off these sensory station sheets and hang them in hallways, in a classroom, or even in the home.

Spring Worksheets for Handwriting and Fine Motor Skills– Therapists love this resource because it includes a fine motor and visual motor warm-up that can be integrated right into the handwriting activity, using a fun theme.

Spring Cootie Catcher– This printable resource is a fine motor, handwriting, and eye-hand coordination activity as well as bilateral coordination, and motor planning skill work.

Cute Bugs Visual Closure Worksheets– These visual perceptual skills worksheets are perfect for Spring, and they are included in our free huge visual perception worksheet packet.

By Audience

By Category

What are spatial relations?

More examples of spatial relations

Visual Spatial Skills and Handwriting

Spatial Relations Activities

Try these other activities that challenge visual spatial relations:

Free Movement and Handwriting Worksheet

Virtual Picnic

Picnic Gross Motor Activities

Picnic Handwriting Activities

Free Virtual Picnic Slide Deck

Free Virtual Picnic Therapy Activities Slide Deck

Construction Truck Brain Breaks

Free Construction Truck Brain Breaks

Construction Truck Brain Breaks (free slide deck)!

Superhero Gross Motor Activities

Free Superhero Gross Motor Slide Deck

Free Superhero Gross Motor Therapy Slide Deck!

Unicorn Yoga

Unicorn Yoga Slide Deck

FREE Unicorn Yoga Slide Deck

Butterfly exercises

Butterfly yoga

Butterfly gross motor activities

MORE BUTTERFLY ACTIVITIES

Butterfly Exercises Slide Deck

Butterfly Exercises Slide Deck!

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Beginner HIIT treadmill workouts

HIIT and MIT in treadmill intervals

Moderate intensity exercise

High intensity exercise

Balance Activities

Free Balance Exercise Slide Deck

Flower Balance Activities Slide Deck!

Spring Fine Motor Kit

What is a Sensory Path

What are Sensory Stations?

Free sensory stations printables

Printable Sensory Stations

FREE Printable Sensory Stations for a Sensory Path

Spring Fine Motor Kit

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