handwriting Archives

Superhero writing

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

This superhero writing activity is a free therapy slide deck that can be used in telehealth sessions or face to face occupational therapy interventions. Get ready for superhero handwriting fun, because those pencils are about to be superheroes! Your kiddos will love these superhero writing prompts, superhero drawing prompts that make handwriting practice fun!

This is another one of the many free therapy slides available here on the site.

Superhero Writing

The cool thing about this free therapy slide deck is that it includes a superhero craft to get those hands warmed up for writing practice. Kids can make the pencil superhero craft and then use their pencil superhero to write with for the writing portion of this therapy activity.

The slide deck includes superhero words that children can copy. I’ve included many different words that are scattered all over the slide. When users visually scan for the superhero images, they are working on a few different visual perceptual skills:

Visual memory
Visual attention
Visual scanning
Visual discrimination

All of these skills are used when copying words or math problems from a distance like when students copy math problems or a homework list from a smart board in the classroom. They need to visually shift from near to far and find their place in order to copy the information without missing letters or other information.

Superhero Writing Prompts

Also included in this slide deck are several superhero writing prompts. Users can use the slides as a starting point for handwriting tasks that are longer in nature. Then, work on areas such as spatial awareness between letters and words, line use, margin use, letter formation, and overall writing legibility. You can help children to check over their written work using this handwriting self-assessment list to build carryover of writing skills.

Draw a Superhero

Finally, in the superhero writing slide activities are several slides that invite kids to draw a superhero. The superhero drawing prompts include various pencil line forms that are easy and more complex to meet a variety of needs.

When drawing and copying from a form, kids work on visual motor skills that are needed for letter formation, eye-hand coordination, spatial awareness, and pencil control. Plus drawing a superhero is fun!

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 Writing Activity

Want to add this free therapy slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below and a PDF will be delivered to you. Use that to access the Google slide deck for therapy sessions. Have fun writing about superheroes!

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.

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.

Free Virtual Connect 4 Game

June 14, 2021April 19, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Today I have another fun virtual therapy activity: A therapy board game Connect 4! This therapy slide deck is a free virtual Connect 4 game designed for occupational therapy services (or other therapy services) that combine motor skills with visual perception and eye hand coordination. Therapeutic games are nothing new; Occupational therapists use board games in therapy services all the time to address function and independence skills. This therapy game is a bit different: it builds skills in kids through game play, and is a fun game for teletherapy.

Grab this free virtual Connect 4 game for building skills in occupational therapy, using a outer space connect 4 game!

Therapy Board Game

We’ve shared virtual games and board games to use in therapy previously on this site. Some games are great for helping kids develop specific skills:

To work on executive functioning skills, try these board games to help with executive functioning.
And, here are more games to work on extractive functioning skills.
Try these games to improve pencil grasp.
For visual processing skills, use these games to improve visual tracking.
For games to use in telehealth, try these teletherapy games.
To address cognitive skills, try these multisensory learning board games.
Kids love these games to help with math skills.

Today’s virtual Connect Four game is just as much fun, and it’s a great tool to add to your therapy toolbox!

Virtual Connect 4

When it comes to teletherapy services, it can be hard to incorporate game play into therapy sessions in a way that addresses functional goals like handwriting, motor skills, or self-regulation. This virtual Connect 4 game does just that!

This game is a Google slide deck and one of our free slides that can compliment therapy services, both online or in face-to-face sessions.

To play the game, you’ll add the free slide deck to your Google drive, pull up the slide deck during therapy sessions, and work on a variety of skills. To use this game in distance therapy situations, you can send the link to students and you’ll each play on your own computers, watching as the edits are made to the slide deck. (Be sure to make a copy and send that specific link to a student- this way your student has their own copy of the slide deck on their Google drive.)

The game is just like the classic Connect 4 game: try to get four in a row and block the other player from getting four in a row.

This particular Connect 4 game has an outer space theme. So, the game pieces are planets! Check out more space theme activities below.

When suing the Connect 4 game in therapy, kids can work on the following skills:

Visual perception
Visual motor skills
Eye hand coordination
Fine motor skills
Mouse use/keyboard use
Finger isolation

The virtual Connect 4 game includes handwriting slides, so that when users place the game pieces, they cover a letter or a number. These are designed to promote handwriting skills and number formation skills.

Use the handwriting slide to work on letter formation, word writing, sentence writing, and copying skills.

Use the number slide to work on forming numbers, writing number words, or even gross motor skills: kids can do a motor activity like jumping jacks to animal walks the same number of times as the number they covered with their game piece.

To reset the game pieces:

When you are done playing, just hit the EDIT HISTORY link.
Look on the right side bar for “Version History”.
Click the box that says “Reset Game”.
Then go to the top left corner of the screen where there is an arrow pointing left. Click this arrow.
All of the movable game pieces will be reset to their original spots. You can start the game over again.

This Space Connect 4 game will be a hit in your therapy sessions (or at home and in the classroom!)

More space activities for therapy

You can add this virtual Connect 4 game to these other Space theme activities, to help with therapy planning:

Outer Space Theme Therapy Slide Deck (includes self-regulation, fine motor activities, handwriting, and movement activities, all with a space theme for therapy sessions)
Space Activities– use these hands-on activities to work on motor skills.
Galaxy and Outer Space Sensory Activities– Use these sensory activities for sensory play, sensory challenges, and multisensory learning.
Space Play Dough Mat– work on hand strength, precision, and eye-hand coordination with a free space theme play dough mat.
Outer Space Visual Perception Worksheet #1- This free printable worksheet addresses visual perceptual skills with planets.
Outer Space Visual Perception Worksheet #2– Be sure to grab this one, too.
Martian Spacing Tool for Handwriting– Make a spacing tool with an outer space theme and incorporate fine motor work as well as visual spatial skills in handwriting.
Bilateral Coordination/Math Space Maze– This space math activity is great for learning concepts, but the therapy benefits are even greater!
Outer Space Books– This collection of space books are fun for incorporating books into therapy sessions.

Free Virtual Connect 4 for Therapy

Want to add this free slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below and you’ll gain access to this slide deck on your Google drive.

For those using school district, university, or organization emails- You may have trouble accessing the free slide deck due to increased security warnings. To get around this, try entering a personal email address.

NEW RESOURCE: Outer Space Fine Motor Mini-Pack!

Working on fine motor skills? Know a child who loves all things outer space? This Outer Space Fine Motor Mini-Kit is for you!

Work on grasp, hand strength, eye-hand coordination, handwriting, scissor skills, and all things fine motor with this Outer Space fine motor mini-kit.

Addressing hand strength, endurance, and precision is out of this world fun!

Includes:

Fine Motor Mazes
Fine Motor Ten Frames for motor activities
1-20 Star Counting Cards
Bead Copying Strips
Space Alien Directed Drawing Sheets

Grab your copy of this no-prep Outer Space fine motor worksheet set!

Butterfly Handwriting Activities

April 3, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Today, I have another free slide deck activity that is great for Springtime, or anytime of year! These butterfly handwriting activities can help to foster handwriting practice with a butterfly theme. Or, use this free therapy slide deck to facilitate a therapy session while working on letter formation, copying skills, spatial awareness, and size awareness. Want to add this handwriting activity to your therapy toolbox? Let’s break down the butterfly themed activities in this virtual therapy activity. Add this activity to your Spring occupational therapy activities.

Butterfly handwriting activities

Working on handwriting with kids doesn’t need to be boring. When you help kids work on the visual perceptual skills associated with legible written work, students sometimes do well in the therapy session, but are challenged to carryover written work into their classroom handwriting tasks.

In this slide deck, I’ve created handwriting activities that use a butterfly theme to work on different aspects of handwriting.

In the slide deck, the activities start off with a butterfly maze to challenge visual perceptual skills, spatial awareness, eye-hand coordination, visual attention, and visual tracking.

All of these areas play a part in handwriting.

In the slide deck, students can click the caterpillar images and drag them through the tree maze in order to match the identical caterpillars.

Butterfly Writing Activities

In the next slides in the deck, you’ll see various butterfly writing tasks. There are slides designed to copy longer words and shorter words to challenge copying skills.

Encourage users to break apart parts of the words such as spelling butterfly by the word’s syllables. Kids can then copy each section of the word and work on copying accuracy.

Other butterfly words to copy include:

Caterpillar
Monach
Painted Lady
Viceroy
Beautiful
Cocoon

These words are presented with lined paper for writing the butterfly words, and in a simple copying activity.

To extend this handwriting exercise, you could ask some students to write sentences and others to simply copy the butterfly terms.

Butterfly Writing Task

Included in this therapy slide deck is also a blank slide. Use this as an open-ended activity to work on skills for each individual’s specific needs. Try some of these butterfly writing tasks with this part of the session:

Ask students how to spell butterfly.
Break the word butterfly apart into smaller words
Rearrange the letters in butterfly to spell different words
Work on forming the specific letters of the word butterfly (work on letter b reversals and diagonal letters)
Work on visual memory to write out the words in a butterfly life cycle.

Draw a Butterfly

The next section of the therapy activities include butterfly drawing activities. Kids can copy the simple and complex forms to copy each butterfly drawing.

This can be a fun way to end a therapy session while working on visual motor skills needed to copy the butterfly forms.

There are so many ways to use this slide deck in therapy sessions!

More butterfly activities

Butterfly life cycle crafts
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.

Free butterfly therapy slide deck

Want to add these butterfly handwriting activities to your therapy tools? Enter your email address into the form below and you’ll receive this full slide deck to implement into therapy sessions.

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.

This slide deck activity goes really well with these hands-on butterfly crafts and activities:

Bug Fine Motor Activities

March 28, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Today’s free therapy slide deck has a bug fine motor activities theme for creepy crawly fine motor fun. The bugs and insects activities in this virtual therapy slides will get those hands moving and building coordination, dexterity, and motor planning skills. Just in time for Spring bugs, this is just one of the many free slides we have on the site.

Add these bug activities to your Spring occupational therapy activity ideas.

Bug and insect fine motor activities for occupational therapy sessions.

Bug Fine Motor Activities

We recently released this bug emotions slide deck to help with social emotional skills, so if you are wanting to create a bug theme in therapy, today’s fine motor slide deck is the perfect addition.

I created this slide deck with several different activities, designed to use in teletherapy or to guide a therapy session. (Use this slide deck as an outline for therapy services for face-to-face sessions, too!)

Here are more teletherapy activities you’ll like.

Bug Sign Language Activity

The first fine motor task asks kids to use ASL to sign the letters to spell different bugs and insects names. Kids can copy the slide deck to find the letter they need to spell each bug or insect’s name.

As they scan for the letters to spell ladybug, grasshopper, ant, or dragonfly, they are challenging their visual scanning and visual attention skills to look for each letter in the key.

The sign language forms is a great way to build finger isolation skills, dexterity, and motor planning skills while learning ASL.

Bug Play Dough Activity

The next part of the slide deck asks kids to use play dough to copy the caterpillar designs. This also challenges visual motor skills, but asks kids to create small balls of play dough and then use them to make the caterpillars.

Play dough builds intrinsic hand strength when children roll small balls of dough with their fingertips. This hand strengthening activity is a great one for building endurance, separation of the sides of the hand, and precision.

You may want to take the hand strengthening further with our Roll and Write Play Dough Mats. There is a bug theme play dough mat included that would be a great addition to this bug theme slide deck!

Bug Color and Cut Activity

The next section of the slides includes a color and cut activity to help kids with functional fine motor skills. Kids can use materials they have in their home to create different ladybug images. This challenges direction following, visual motor skills, bilateral coordination, and eye-hand coordination.

Bug Visual Motor Activity

The next part of the slide deck asks kids to copy designs to work on visual motor skills. This is a good way to integrate the fine motor warm up from the previous slides into a handwriting activity. Copying forms like the insects and bugs on these slides challenge kids in the skills they need to copy letters and words without omitting parts.

Bug Handwriting Activity

The last part of the bug theme is a handwriting activity. Kids can copy the different bug and insect names. There is a Jamboard option for these slides so if you’re using the slides in virtual sessions, kids can write right on the screen.

Free Bug Theme Slide Deck

Want these bug fine motor activities in your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below and you’ll get a slide deck with all of the activities listed above, as well as a link to a Jamboard version.

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.

Flower Visual Motor Therapy Slide Deck

December 8, 2022March 21, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Flower visual motor exercises for therapy

This week’s occupational therapy theme is flowers and so today, I have a free flower visual motor therapy slide deck for you. In this free Google slide deck, you’ll find various aspects of visual motor skill work. With the official start of Spring, flowers are starting to pop up all over, so if the daffodils, lilies, and tulips make you smile, these visual motor flower activities are sure to brighten your therapy session!

Flower visual motor therapy exercises for therapy

Flower visual motor therapy activities

If you are looking for Spring occupational therapy activities to help kids develop skills, this flower visual motor slide deck is it. Add this virtual therapy activity to some hands on flower activities and you’ve got a therapy plan for the week. It’s a great way to make a weekly occupational therapy plan and use the same activities again and again all week, saving yourself time and planning hours. Simply adjust each activity to meet the needs of each child on your therapy caseload to work on their specific goals.

Flower visual motor activities for occupational therapy teletherapy sessions with a free Google slide deck for therapy.

As you know, visual processing breaks down into smaller components that all work together to allow us to take in visual information, process that input, and complete motor operations so we can complete functional tasks. Visual motor skills include eye-hand coordination, visual perception, and visual skills like tracing, convergence, and other skill areas. All of these aspects of visual processing are important parts of performing day to day occupations.

That’s why I created this flower theme therapy slide deck that includes different vison exercises.

In the slide deck, you’ll find pre-writing line activities that ask the user to trace along the forms using a movable flower icon. This eye-hand coordination task requires visual tracking, visual attention, and motor integration with visual input.

Work on visual motor skills with this flower theme slide deck in occupational therapy.

Also, the slide deck includes copying activities. Users can copy the simple and more complex flower forms as they challenge aspects of visual motor skills that are needed for handwriting and math tasks.

There is a handwriting portion as well. Kids can trace the letters on the slide deck using the movable flower piece. This makes the slide deck interactive, as they can work on mouse work, use of a stylus, or finger isolation to trace the flower along the letter. Then, the slide asks them to write words or phrases so they can incorporate handwriting work.

Then finally, the slide deck includes several visual perception activities. Kids can complete each slide, typing or writing out their responses as they work on skills like visual discrimination, form constancy, visual memory, figure-ground, etc. All of these visual perceptual skills play a role in visual motor tasks that we perform on a daily basis.

Free Flower Therapy Slide Deck

Want to add this free slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Use it in teletherapy sessions, home activities to work on visual motor skills and visual processing, and to make therapy planning easier!

Enter your email address into the form below to add this slide deck to your Google drive account.

NOTE- Due to an increase in security measures, many readers utilizing a work or school district email address have had difficulty accessing 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.

Free Spring List Writing Prompts

April 11, 2024March 19, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Here, you can grab a free set of Spring list writing prompts to use in handwriting practice. If working on handwriting is a task you are focusing on with kids, then using list writing as a tool is the way to go. Writing in list format helps kids focus on a shorter writing task, so they can focus on the letter formation, space, size, and accuracy. While writing in sentences definitely is a necessary next step, using list writing in addressing handwriting issues can be motivating and fun way to work on difficult skills with kids.

Spring Writing Prompts

If you are like my kids, they start thinking about ice cream as soon as Spring hits. They love to see the local ice cream shop open after the winter break this time of year! So, a fun prompt like our ice cream writing is a perfect fit!

Other Spring writing prompts can be lists of things or open ended prompts. Think about things like:

What do you like to do in the Spring?
What is your favorite Spring holiday and why?
What animals do you see in the Spring, and where do you see them?
Describe your ideal Spring day. What would you do?
What Spring flower do you find most beautiful or interesting?
How does the weather change in your area during Spring, and how does it affect you?
What are some Spring traditions or celebrations you know of or participate in?
Write about a memorable Spring experience from your past.
How do you see the community or environment changing around you during Spring?
What Spring foods are you most excited to eat, and why?

List Writing

There are a few reasons why writing in lists can be beneficial to children working on handwriting skills. Let’s explore the concept of list writing a bit more.

Writing lists is shorter! For kids that struggle with handwriting, it can be hard to get them to sit and concentrate on writing practice. Writing lists is a much shorter writing prompt, and kids see that they have only a certain number of items to actually write. This can help them focus on making those limited number of writing items in their neatest handwriting.

List writing is organized! Children struggling with spatial awareness and other organizational issues might see a page of writing paper and visually fall apart at the sight of a page full of lines. An empty journal page or loose-leaf paper can be overwhelming! Where to start writing, where to end a sentence to fit the word in…how much to write…all of these are going through a child’s head when they have a page to fill in. So, you might get super quick and sloppy writing just so they can finish the job. Sound familiar?

List writing is motivating! When kids write a list of words or phrases, they can come up with words to write on their own. They can complete the writing task as a sort of brain teaser. The nice thing about using lists as a writing prompt is that kids can choose the topic, too. Do they really like sports? Use that as a meaningful and motivating topic to write a list about. There are endless lists that can be written about.

To take handwriting practice to the next level, check out our Interest-Based Writing Prompts Packet. It’s 150 interest-based list writing prompts that can focus on a child’s interests to make handwriting practice motivating and meaningful.

List writing is progressive! By this, I mean that moving to the next step of words, to phrases, to sentences, to paragraphs is a progressive sequence. Kids can start at the beginning of this progression by writing lists of words while concentrating on legibility: letter formation, line use, spacing, sizing, and margin use. Then, you can ask them to write two word phrases. Then a longer phrase. Then a list of sentences. Now, can they put that list of sentences into paragraph form? The use of lists to practice handwriting can really help with carryover of skills, too!

Free Spring List Writing Prompts

So, what do you think? Would you like to try list writing as a tool to promote handwriting skill carryover?

Below, you can grab a free printable set of writing lists with a Spring theme. These lists are formatted to include very basic writing spaces in the way of a rectangle block as the writing area. This way, you can use the writing pages with a variety of ages and writing abilities. Some kids might just need to work on writing in a given space. For others, you can add a middle line. Still others may need a highlighted lower line. You could even add a LegiLiner stamp lines to the blocks, or WooTape to the spaces.

To grab this set of Spring writing prompts, enter your email into the form below.

NOTE: Please use a personal email address. Emails on a school district or university server (emails ending with .org, .ed, .edu, .unv etc. may be blocked by your organizations security wall.

Want more free Spring Printables? Try these:

Free Spring Memory Game
Free Spring Sensory Stations (sensory path printables)
Free Spring Heavy Work Cards
Free Spring Fine Motor Cootie Catcher

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.

Spring Writing Prompt Cootie Catcher

March 24, 2022March 14, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Want to help kids build fine motor skills with a fun cootie catcher game? This Spring writing prompt activity includes fine motor benefits with a cootie catcher that kids can color, write in, and use as a writing prompt to work on handwriting skills. Print this free cootie catcher template and get started building skills! Add this resource to your Spring occupational therapy activities.

Spring Writing Prompt Cootie Catcher

This cootie catcher activity is a fine motor skills powerhouse. Kids can work on fine motor skills including:

Coloring
Cutting
Folding paper
Writing numbers, words, and sentences

Once the cootie catcher is cut out, kids can write on each space on the cootie catcher. The free printable includes a few different versions.

In one of the free printable resources, you’ll see that the cootie catcher is filled in with writing prompts. Once you go through moving the cootie catcher to open it to the center, kids can write out their response to the Spring writing prompt, working on handwriting skills.

There is also a cootie catcher with Spring images. Kids can color in these icons, working on pencil control and hand strength to color in the small areas. Then, they can write the names of the images in the center of the cootie catcher, working on handwriting.

Finally, there is a blank cootie catcher included, where kids can fill in the spaces while writing in a small space and working on the visual motor skills needed to write in the correct spaces and in the correct directions.

Fine Motor Cootie Catcher

When going through the process of creating a cootie catcher, kids can develop many fine motor skills.

First cut out the square cootie catcher, working on scissor skills.
Follow the directions to fold the paper along the lines. This direction-following task is a GREAT challenge in visual motor skills!
Folding and creasing paper builds hand strength.
Kids can write in words, numbers, and writing prompts in the cootie catcher or set it up for them!
Opening and closing a cootie catcher builds separation of the sides of the hands, bilateral coordination, and arch development/hand strength.
To make a handwriting challenge, sentences can include topical lists such as “Write a list of favorite foods.” or “Write a list of animals.”
Use this challenge to practice spelling words, sight words, vocabulary words and definitions, etc.

Free Spring Writing Prompt Worksheet

Want to grab this free worksheet and work on Spring writing prompts AND fine motor skills? Enter your email address into the form below and the PDF will be sent to you.

Want to add this resource to your therapy toolbox so you can help kids thrive? Enter your email into the form below to access this printable tool.

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.

Level 1 members gain instant access to all of the downloads available on the site, without enter your email each time PLUS exclusive new resources each month.

Level 2 members get access to all of our downloads, exclusive new resources each month, PLUS additional, premium content each month: therapy kits, screening tools, games, therapy packets, and much more. AND, level 2 members get ad-free content across the entire OT Toolbox website.

Join the Member’s Club today!

Looking for more Spring printables?

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):

Spring Worksheet for Fine Motor Skills and Handwriting– This printable set is one of our most popular handwriting and fine motor worksheet sets here on the site. Readers love this resource to support eye-hand coordination, intrinsic hand strength, precision, and handwriting with fun themes.
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.
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.

Spring Write the Room Slide Deck

March 17, 2021March 12, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

Spring write the room activity for handwriting

This Spring Write the Room slide deck is one of our many free slides designed to be used in occupational therapy teletherapy activities. The nice thing about write the room activities is that they can be adjusted to meet the needs of each child…and this handwriting activity is no different!

Write the Room

So what exactly is write the room? Write the room is a writing task that has become more and more popular over the last few years. It’s a handwriting activity that this occupational therapist loves because it works on so many different skill areas:

Handwriting
Letter formation
Copying from near and far points
Visual scanning
Visual attention
Visual memory

Spring write the room activity for teletherapy and virtual sessions and working on handwriting.

In the classroom or home, this might look like cards that are posted around the room. It can be a set of cards that are taped in various locations where kids need to visually scan the room and when they find a card, they copy the words onto their paper. Sometimes, Write the Room activities include a special handwriting page with icons for the child to match to the words so they have to write the word in a specific space on the paper. (Great for spatial awareness and visual memory!)

Write the Room is also a fun way to work on visual scanning, copying from different distances, and visual shift in writing. You can focus on copying the words without missing letters and visual perceptual skills needed to locate the different words in varying planes in a room.

Write the Room for Teletherapy

But in the virtual setting, write the room activities still work really well as a handwriting activity that develops skills!

In the free Google slide deck that is featured this week, kids can go through the slides with their therapist and work on “writing the room” (virtual room that is!)

The virtual write the room activity uses a slide to feature all of the words. The child can copy each word and focus on letter formation, sizing, copying skills, spacing, and overall legibility.

There is a visual memory piece to this teletherapy handwriting activity. One slide includes a blank page where kids can copy the words onto the slide deck, either from memory, or by going back and looking at the icons.

Therapists can lead their students to copy the words onto paper on their desk, too. In this way, they are getting the benefits of a visual shift. This helps to strengthen visual memory and visual attention skills when copying from a vertical plane such as from the chalkboard or from a distance. ids can check over their work to make sure they aren’t missing any letters once they complete the writing task.

Draw the Room Slide Deck

The handwriting activity also includes a ‘draw the room’ activity where children are asked to draw Spring forms like simple flowers, birds, leaves, and other Spring icons.

Copying simple to complex forms strengthens the visual motor skills needed for tasks such as handwriting, math, and other eye-hand coordination tasks.

The slide decks all include a space where kids can “write” right on the actual slide. This is because when you access the free slide deck below, you also get a free Jamboard link. There, kids can use the Google dry erase app to write directly on the screen using a stylus, fingertip, or mouse.

If write the room is a handwriting activity that you would like to try in a face-to-face situation, either in the classroom, in the clinic, or in the home for practice, be sure to grab our Colors Handwriting Pack. It includes write the room cards in upper case letters, lowercase letters, and cursive letters, as well as different handwriting paper sheets.

Colors Write the Room Pages — Write the Room activity with colors is in the Colors Handwriting Kit. Includes lowercase, uppercase and cursive write the room activities.

The Colors Handwriting Pack also includes many other handwriting skills worksheets and activities designed to promote letter formation, legibility in writing, pencil control and so much more.

Free Spring Write the Room Slide Deck

Want to access this free slide deck and work on handwriting in teletherapy sessions with your occupational therapy clients? Enter your email address into the form below and you will receive the free Google slide deck as well as a Jamboard. Let’s write the room AND draw the room for better handwriting skills!

St. Patrick’s Day Writing Slide Deck

March 5, 2021 by Colleen Beck OTR/L

St. Patrick's Day writing prompts and activities

Another free therapy slide deck in this week’s St. Patty’s Day theme is this St. Patrick’s Day writing activity. It’s an occupational therapy activity that addresses handwriting, legibility, self-correction in writing, and fine motor skills. Sometimes it can be hard to work on handwriting in teletherapy and this activity strives to make that fun and motivating for kids. Use the St. Patrick’s Day writing prompts as activities to get kids started on letter formation, sizing, spacing, and the motor skills needed to hold the pencil with a fun March theme.

This slide deck goes really well with our recent freebies: Four Leaf Clover balance exercises and Shamrock Theme Visual Perception Activities.

All are part of the free slides teletherapy resources here on The OT Toolbox.

St. Patrick’s Day Writing

Working on handwriting isn’t fun for a lot of children. That’s why the slide deck starts off with a writing “ice breaker” activity of sorts. Kids can check out the St. Patrick’s Day items on the slide and try to memorize the items. Then, you can move to the next slide and ask the child to tell you two items that are missing.

This visual constancy exercise is a way to help kids notice details about what they see, and can be a powerful way to work on handwriting accuracy and formation of letters. Use this as a building block to work on self-correcting handwriting mistakes.

When children write, that self-assessment piece is important to legibility and accuracy of writing, so when kids can notice and recall missing information or details, they can self-correct for legibility issues.

As kids go through the slides, ask them to write down the items that are missing. This handwriting activity challenges kids to write without a model, so they are building letter formation skills.

Then, the next slide shows the answer to the missing pieces. Kids can check their letter formation for accuracy and correct letter formation.

St. Patrick's day writing prompt and puzzle

There are two different exercises like this one.

Depending on the child, you can then have them write down all of the St. Patrick’s Day items.

Next, users are asked to write the St. Patrick’s Day words in alphabetical order. This activity challenges visual shift from the vertical plane to the horizontal plane and back again. This skillset is needed for copying material from a blackboard or classroom environment. Putting words into alphabetical order also challenges the visual attention and visual memory needed for reading and math work.

The next several slides of the therapy deck include a fine motor piece where kids are challenged to spell St. Patrick’s Day words in American Sign Language. They will need to visually shift their attention from the word to the sign language sign and form that letter.

Spelling several words with sign language is a fine motor exercise that helps with finger dexterity, precision, finger isolation, arch development, and motor planning skills.

St. Patrick’s Day Writing Prompts

Then, the final piece of the St. Patrick’s Day writing task is to use the words that have been used throughout the slide deck to write sentences. It’s an open-ended St. Patrick’s Day writing prompt that incorporates multisensory learning into the whole lesson.

Encourage kids to self-check their writing for accuracy and to help with carryover of writing skills.

Free Writing and Fine Motor Slide Deck

Add this therapy slide deck to your toolbox. Enter your email into the form below and you will get a copy to use in teletherapy, home programs, or in the classroom.

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.

Click here to get your copy of the Colors Handwriting Kit.

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