We had a clean take out container that was just asking to be made into something 🙂
Lacing Cards, of course!
Lacing cards are so important for pre-schoolers and kids of all ages to use in development of so many skills:
Fine Motor Skills (tripod grasp), Motor Planning (figuring out how to pull the string allll the way through and push it through the other side), Visual Motor Skills (moving along hole to hole), Bilateral Coordination (using both of those hands together in a coordinated manner to hold the card and work the string)…
I asked them what shapes they wanted. Big Sister chose a heart and Little Guy said his favorite shapes are an octagon or a pentagon (!).
They got started and loved it!
Little Guy needs a little work on the hole-to-hole thing haha!!
He was so into it!
The finished products…
We are gearing up for our 5th Share It Saturday link up…Hope to see you there!
There is something about kids and a pile of shaving cream…They Looooove to play in it!
We added some old sprinkles from last Easter to give this Indoor Play Idea a different twist. They loved feeling the texture of the sprinkles on their hands while they played. It probably has a great exfoliating factor too 🙂
You may have noticed a polar bear theme here on the website in the past few days. Here, you’ll find all of these linked in one place so when you are creating a therapy theme, you have everything you need for polar bear crafts, polar bear sensory activities, polar bear gross motor ideas, and more. Add these ideas to an arctic animal theme, and have fun this winter!
Polar Bear Activities
This time of year, polar bear themes are common. There are many ways to incorporate this fuzzy arctic animal through play and learning while still building skills.
Here are some of the fun ideas we’ve shared:
Polar Bear Sensory Bin- A polar bear sensory bin goes well with the books and snack listed below. Make a day of polar bear learning and play for home activities or a therapy theme.
Polar Bear Self-Regulation Activity- Use this polar bear deep breathing printable to help kids with mindfulness and deep breathing as a coping strategy. It’s a free self-regulation tool you can use in a polar bear theme at home or at school.
Polar Bear Science- Kids can use play dough and cut straws to explore how a polar bear’s fur keeps him warm. It’s a great fine motor workout, too.
Polar Bear Worksheets- You’ll love all of the items in our Winter Fine Motor Kit. It’s loaded with coloring sheets, handwriting pages, puzzles, and crafts with a polar bear theme. There are sensory bin materials, polar bear finger puppets, lacing cards, modified handwriting pages, scissor skills activities, and so much more.
Polar Bear Books
{Note: This post contains affiliate links.} Head to the library with this list in hand. There are so many great polar bear books out there, and they make a great addition to sensory play, handwriting activities, and gross motor play. We’ve been reading these books all weekend, and they are SO much fun! The kids especially love Ice Cream Larry, which is such a silly, fun story! Some of our favorite Polar Bear Books for Kids:
I put together a bin with a bunch of craft supplies so we are ready to do all kinds of Polar Bear activities. We had a stay-at-home day today and did a few fun things while it was frigidly cold outside…
We checked out the areas where Polar Bears live and found the Arctic Ocean, Alaska, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, and Russia.
We talked about how the mama bear finds a big mound of snow and paws a shelter to protect her and her baby cubs during winter. Then the mama and baby come out in the spring.
Polar Bear Imagination Activities
This felt board was quick to snip up while the kids were eating breakfast this morning. So fun for imagination play! Big Sister pretended to be the mama bear and dug out the snow mound for a little home so the baby could stay inside.
We made this big snow mound using blankets over a table. All of the kids played in here for a long time! Little Guy kept saying “Humans are coming! Humans are coming!” and crawling in and out of the opening. Baby Girl LOOOOVED all of the action and just got really excited to be part of it 🙂
Polare Bear Craft
Big Sister did a cutting and gluing craft to make a Polar Bear. She thought Mr. Bear needed some buttons on his belly 🙂 You’ll need just a few items for this polar bear craft:
White paper
Bubble wrap
Black Marker
Scissors
Glue
To make the craft, draw circles in different sizes on the paper. You’ll need a big circle for the belly, a smaller circle for the head, two circles for the ears, two circles for the eyes, and a circle for the nose. You could also just draw on the eyes and nose.
Cutting circles is a great beginner scissor skills activity for kids. Curved lines is a more difficult progression in cutting with scissors because kids need to hold the paper with their assisting hand and turn the page in order to cut with smooth cuts.
To make this activity easier, use thicker paper or draw thicker lines.
Glue the circles onto the bubble wrap and add the face features.
Polar Bear Snack Idea
We finished up with a little kiddie cooking activity for snack time. Raisins, bananas, apple slices, and marshmallows made some cute little Polar Bears.
I thought Little Guy’s Polar Bear snack was pretty cute 🙂
We have more ideas in store for the rest of the week, so be sure to stop back to see what we are up to! Have you done any cute Polar Bear themed activities? Link them up in the comments, I would love to check them out!!
You’ll also love all of the items in our Winter Fine Motor Kit. It’s loaded with coloring sheets, handwriting pages, puzzles, and crafts with a polar bear theme. There are sensory bin materials, polar bear finger puppets, lacing cards, and so much more.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Grasp Strengthening and Learning Colors With SNOW???
Some days, it is just HARD to get the kids dressed up in snowsuits/gloves/hats/boots/scarves…only to bring them back in 10 minutes later because the baby wants to follow the big kids, but can’t pick up her boots to walk through the snow that is up to her mid-calf…so she stands still in the yard until I pick her up…
Today was one of those days.
We needed an activity for after baby-nap-time and before dinner-making-time and this was just the one!
I had this idea in mind since right after Christmas when we got some snow, and I wanted to dye it using eye droppers. After looking everywhere around the house, I just can. not. find the eye droppers! So, on to another idea…
Turkey Baster
Spray Bottle
Scoops and Spoons.
These kids were so beyond excited to see me setting this up. They helped stir the food coloring into the bowls of water. (Get Dollar Store food coloring for projects like this! So cheap, and it will last you many, many projects…) But they could not guess what we were doing with it. Once I brought the snow in, there were cheers!
We did some mixing of colors on the snow…What does red and blue make? We had green in the spray bottle and it was fun to change the stream to get more color on the snow. They were pretty excited to get brown, of course 🙂
Squeezing the turkey baster bulb and the spray bottle nozzle is wonderful for grasp strengthening in hands.
The strength of the whole had is needed for so many fine motor work in play and school based activities.
This was the extent of the mess…not too bad! They kept the tray on the right pretty clean of color mostly since that was Baby Girl’s side and she was busy eating the snow 🙂
Brings Christmas Preparations, Getting Gifts Ready, and DIPPING CHOCOLATE!
This was our Second Annual Chocolate Dipping Playdate. And it was another success!
Each mom brought some chocolate, an item to dip, and kids that were ready to play with friends 🙂 They left with exhausted kids…and a huge tray of assorted chocolate covered items to take to holiday parties/gift to family (or eat before the chocolates actually made it to any holiday festivities)!
We had a lot of fun with some moms helping to melt chocolate, some dipping, one running the treats between the kitchen and dining rooms, and a couple supervising the kiddos.
Check out this spread!
Later, I had my kids get some gifts ready for family. They did some painting,
I have loved hearing news that you and the kids have enjoyed one or a few of our ideas! This has been a fun month in our house and hope it was for you too. We are so excited to enjoy this holiday together with lots of snuggles, laughs, play, and love!
and
I finally got the Christmas card finished…just a little late this year. There may just be a New years card this year…
Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and Wonderful New Year!
I wanted try making these cute salt dough handprint ornaments I saw on The Imagination Tree earlier this week. The recipe was simple and it was so FUN! My daughter had a blast mixing the dough with her hands for a long time.
I rolled them out pretty thick so they had to bake for several hours on low heat (200F). I baked them on a silicon baking sheet that had some textured bumps on the back. I let them sit out overnight turned upside-down to make sure they were nice and hard, ready to paint!
My daughter had so much fun with this one. Little guy thought it was pretty neat feeling when he pushed his little hand into the dough.
We decided to make it pretty simple, just paint the handprint one color and the outside another color. I painted their names and the year on the back with black paint to make it stand out.
String a little string through the holes and tie them in a knot, Ta-Da! Simple handprint ornaments to enjoy for years to come!
I am so happy to have these little handprints! I don’t want to think about how little they are going to look when comparing them next year…these little babies are growing so fast!
We love all kinds of fun Christmas play activities. From Christmas sensory play to Christmas handwriting activities, we love play and learning with a Christmas themes. When it comes to celebrating the season, we love to plan fun kid-friendly parties with snacks, activities, and games. This Reindeer Party was a great way to celebrate friends and the season and had to share the fun with you!
Sometimes you just need a Christmas play date with a few friends. I invited friends and their kids over to join us as we enjoyed some Prancer PB&J sandwiches, decorated a Blitzen Brownie, and played some Reindeer Games.
Reindeer Party Ideas
While we waited for everyone to arrive, the guests could color on our table. I covered the table in wrapping paper (got this roll at end of season last year for 50 cents!) and scattered some crayons around for a kid-friendly eating/coloring area.
Reindeer Party Food
We served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but any type of sandwich would work for these reindeer. Add raisins for eyes and pretzels for antlers. The red nose is a red m&m. The children will love it! Anytime candy is served with lunch, there are cheers.
We had a reindeer sugar cookie. Make using an upside down gingerbread man cookie cutter.
Then everyone decorated their own Blitzen Brownie…
Provide each child with a brownie square. Pretzels are the antlers, green candies make eyes, and a red m&m makes the nose.
Reindeer Party Games
We played Pin the Nose on Rudolf…
Draw a reindeer on a sheet of craft paper. Cut noses from red construction paper and cover the child’s eyes. Have them attempt to stick the nose where they believe the reindeer’s nose may be. Hilarity ensues.
And we finished up with one more Reindeer Game… Pass the stocking.
I filled the stocking with little bubble favors from the dollar store (you can get a pack for a dollar!) We had Christmas music going and the kids would pass the stocking around. When the music stopped, who ever had the stocking got to take out a prize.
We had a fun morning with our friends!
We are having lots of fun with Christmas Play! Looking for more ideas?
Try these Christmas play ideas from some of our blogging friends:
We’ve had this ice cube tray/chocolate mold thing for a few years and have used it to make all kinds of yummy treats. I had an idea to make ice cubes with it and Little Guy thought that was a pretty good idea.
The snowflake ice cubes have been in our freezer for a few days now and he was very excited when we popped them out. (He had helped me dye the water green and pour it into the ice cube tray so he knew it was in there, just waiting for a fun activity!) We put them into a bin of water right on the kitchen floor.
We decided to make it more Christmas-y and add some red food coloring to the water.
Chasing those ice cubes around with the ladles and spoons really helps with visual motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and motor planning.
Baby Girl took over after Little Guy moved on to something else. She played for a while in this. Look how small the green snowflake ice cubes are!
We had a great weekend of playing at home, snuggles, laughter, and enjoying every bit of crazy-awesome-chaos!
. Cut noses from red construction paper and cover the child’s eyes. Have them attempt to stick the nose where they believe the reindeer’s nose may be. Hilarity ensues.
