These leaf activities are fun ways to incorporate colorful fall leaves into occupational therapy sessions! Fall themed activities to use all week in done-for-you therapy planning. Use real leaves from outside, or materials on hand. Fall leaves make a great theme for weekly occupational therapy themes!
Leaf Activities
Leaf Handwriting– These Fall writing prompts include leaf writing prompts, among other fall themed prompts. Includes sentence prompts and single words, all with a Fall and leaf theme.
Pre-Writing Lines Activity- Work on Pre-writing activity with real leaves. Use real leaves to work on eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, and pre-writing lines with hands on fine motor work.
Bilateral Coordination Activity: Use this Leaf Craft to address bilateral coordination skills. Use real leaves to make a craft that builds bilateral coordination, heavy work proprioceptive input, and scissor skills.
Leaf Craft for Older Kids: This Sewing Skills Leaf Craft is great for older kids that need to address fine motor skills. Use a needle and thread, wire, lacing cord to thread around leaf shapes. We used plastic canvas, but you could use cardboard, cereal boxes, or even laminated paper.
Leaf Auditory Processing Activities– You can use leaves found out in the lawn to work on so many auditory processing skills including auditory discrimination and more.
Leaf Therapy Activities– This free printable home program uses a Fall leaves theme for a leaf tic tac toe game. Kids can complete different leaf themed therapy activities and score tic tac toe!
Hand Strength– Leaf Ten Frames are a great way to build hand strength using leaves. Use a hole puncher with leaves to work on hand strength and hands-on math.
Leaf Sensory Play– This Nature Water Table is perfect for sensory exploration, but is a fun toddler Fall activity with very little prep. Use a bin, water table, or bowl to explore Fall’s colors and textures and challenge the senses.
Leaf Sensory Activity– This corn husk painting activity is sensory activity art with the corn husk leaves of Fall! Sensory Painting- Use leaves, corn husks, and grasses for sensory painting. Then, practice handwashing!
Leaves Heavy Work Activity– We used play dough and Fall leaves in this Fall Play Dough Press to add heavy work through the hands. Use natural materials and play dough to add heavy work for the hands. This is a great visual perception activity, too.
Leaf Eye-Hand Coordination Activity– Use leaves to make these Fall tree crafts. They are great to work on eye-hand coordination and problem solving with a sensory experience to make these fall trees.
Fall Scissor Skills Activity– This Fall leaves scissor activity uses leaves found right outside the home or therapy clinic! Use leaves to work on line awareness, bilateral coordination, and visual motor skills.
Bilateral Coordination Activity– Work on bilateral coordination skills with this Fall leaf garland craft.
Shoulder Stability and Posture– Use a vertical surface to build strength, stability, posture, balance, coordination, and eye-hand coordination skills with this easel leaf activity. We used these easel leaves to work on sight words and trick words, but you could use this activity for any multi-sensory learning or math activity, too.
Fall Crafts
This Fall Art Collage from A Little Pinch of Perfect adds a sensory and fine motor component to Fall art for preschoolers!
These Autumn Leaf Hats from Mosswood Connections are a fun craft to work on scissor skills, bilateral coordination, and fine motor skills.
Address bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, finger isolation, and precision skills to make these Leaf Stamping Tee Shirts from Mommy Crusader.
Printable 76 page, (no-prep) Fall themed fine motor activities and fine motor worksheets designed to build strong hands so kids can learn, hold & write with a pencil, and play.
This print-and-go Fall Fine Motor Kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, Summer-themed, fine motor activities so you can help children develop strong fine motor skills in a digital world.
Includes Fall themed activities for hand strength, pinch and grip, dexterity, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, endurance, finger isolation, handwriting, scissor skills, pre-writing skills, and much more.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Scooping and pouring. Toddlers pour, and dump toys (or cereal, a cup of water, a bin of diapers…) as soon as they discover that they can. It’s a developmentally appropriate skill that happens as mobility develops. When little ones pick up a bowl or cup and turn out the contents on the floor, it may be frustrating to a mama that’s just picked up all of the toys in the house for the third time, but it is such a great function that is the occupation of play.
These scooping and pouring activities can also help with questions of being ambidextrous or simply having a mixed dominance present.
Today, we’re exploring how scooping, pouring, and transferring materials benefits toddlers and preschoolers, in big ways. You can use this fun fine motor and visual perceptual motor activity with children at the toddler, preschooler, and school-aged levels to improve the precision of skills, practice math, and discover skills, all through scooping, pouring, and transferring small items.
Scooping Activities for Toddlers
There are so many benefits to scooping, pouring, and transferring materials. These scooping activities for toddlers are an easy way to help to build motor skills in toddlers and preschoolers, at just the right stage of development. It’s during the toddler years that children develop more motor control, stronger eye-hand coordination skills. They are starting to gain more control of their arms in a coordinated manner, especially when manipulating tools like scoops, spoons, cups, and bowls. It’s through play and the weight of sensory materials that the benefits of scooping, pouring, and transferring of materials builds motor control, more refined movements, and tolerance of a variety of sensory materials.
But, you don’t need to stop at the toddler years. Manipulating tools and sensory materials to pour, scoop, and transfer is great for preschoolers, too!
Benefits of Scooping, Pouring, and Transfering
Fine Motor Benefits of Scooping and Pouring– By manipulating sensory materials, cups, scoops, and bowls, toddlers and preschoolers refine and build motor experience in fine motor skills. Areas of development include: pincer grasp, precise wrist movements, arch development, wrist extension, and separation of the wrist from the elbow.
Development of these areas promotes a more distal motor control while using the proximal arm (shoulder and elbow) to stabilize and support the movements of the distal arm (wrist, hand, thumb, and fingers).
This separation of the proximal stability from the distal mobility is a needed motor development for coloring with the hand and fingers instead of using the whole arm to move the crayon.
You can show a child of this age how to dump the dry cereal from the scoop into a large tray. Kids in the Toddler range would benefit from scooping and pouring using larger scoops or small cups.
In order to scoop food when eating or scooping like in this play activity, kids need precision of very small wrist motions.
Moving the wrist from side to side is called radial deviation (moving the wrist towards the thumb side) and ulner deviation (moving the wrist towards the pinkie finger side).
In addition, slight wrist extension (the wrist slightly bent back in the direction of the back of the hand) is needed to accurately and efficiently scoop and pour.
Simply holding the scoop is an activity for grasp development by refining the arches of the hands and intrinsic muscles.
When kids have trouble with holding a spoon to eat, you can try targeting functional grasp patterns so the child can feed themselves. This is possible with spoon scooping activities that target specific grasp patterns. While this can be accomplished through play and scooping play materials, it’s a great transfer of skills to scooping foods.
Hand dominance with Scooping, pouring, transferring– Hand dominance is an area that they can be working on, depending on their age. It takes experience, or muscle memory through activities to refine and establish a dominant hand or side of the body. By scooping, pouring kids can hold the container, bin, cups, or bowls with their non-dominant hand while scooping and pouring using a spoon, cup, or bowl with their dominant hand.
As children establish a hand dominance, this refined motor coordination becomes easier to control. Toddlers can start with larger objects and larger scoops. Progressing to more fluid or smaller materials like smaller pellets, flour, or liquids can help preschoolers further refine coordination and manipulation of materials.
Self-Awareness Benefits of Scooping and Pouring– Pouring and dumping is discovery and exploration of gravity, weight, muscle control, cause and effect, and self-awareness. Not only are toddlers discover what they can do by pouring, they are learning about their environment while working on so many skills.
Motor Skills Benefits of Scooping and Pouring– Scooping small items is important in development and refinement of motions needed for managing utensils during self-feeding. This is an important independence step in the Toddler range. The establishment of visual input and motor output results in eye-hand coordination skills.
Also needed is the muscle memory or “experience” in pouring materials. You’ll see this in action when pouring a liquid or something that really “flows”. You don’t want to pick up a pitcher of milk and pour with speed. The liquid will splash out of the cup and onto the floor. It takes motor skill development and experience to know that pouring different materials, liquids, and containers take different amount of force, accuracy, and controlled movements.
Learning by Scooping and Pouring- Adding in learning objectives makes this play activity a bonus. You can add themed materials, counting cards, letter cards, or sensory bin cards. Add math and reading activities by counting or using sight words. Add sensory bin cards. the options are limitless when making pouring and scooping activities educational. One idea we love is using water beads like in our purple sensory bin.
Scoop and Pour for Bilateral Coordination Skills- When pouring and manipulating containers, a development of bilateral coordination skills occurs naturally. A weighted material is in one hand, while the non-dominant hand stabilizes. This transfers to bilateral coordination tasks such as holding the paper while coloring or writing, using two hands in clothing fasteners, cutting with scissors and holding the paper, and the very functional task of pouring materials in cooking!
Mindfulness Benefits of Scooping and Pouring- There is a mindfulness component to sensory play too. Have you ever tried using a zen garden to rake or manipulate sand using a sand tray? If so, then you know the power of mindfully manipulating sensory materials. This mindfulness activity works with children too. Many children find a scooping and pouring activity fun and relaxing. Use the scooping and pouring activity as a heavy work activity that adds calming proprioceptive input with visual attention. Help kids to focus on the sensory material as it slowly pours from the hands or from a cup to another cup.
If kids are moving too quickly or if they become overly excited with the sensory material, add slow movement, a calm environment, a set of “rules” before beginning the scooping and pouring activity, and a broom to clean up!
Sensory Benefits of Scooping and Pouring Activities– By experimenting with pouring, scooping, and transferring materials, children gain sensory benefits. This occurs through the proprioceptive input from manipulating the materials, as well as tactile sensory input.
I’ve found pouring and scooping activities to be very calming for children. They love to watch the beads as they fill the scoop and watch them fall into the bowl as they pour. Other children can become overly excited by the visual stimulation of scooping beads and soon the beads will scatter all over the table. You can eliminate mess by doing this activity in a large bin like an under the bed storage bin.
Scooping and Pouring Activities
This post contains affiliate links, but you can use items that you already have in your home. We used plastic scoops found in food like cocoa powder, coffee, or iced tea mixes. For the scooping, we used plastic beads that we already had, however, this activity will work with any small item such as rice, dry beans, field corn, pebbles, or sand. Use what you’ve got on hand to make this activity free!
Materials for this scooping and transferring activity include:
Small Plastic beads OR other materials to pour and scoop (Toddler-aged kids can use dry cereal or edible items. See below.)
This activity is very easy to set up.
Simple set out a bowl or tray of beads and scoops in different sizes.
Show your child how to scoop, transfer, and pour the beads into another bowl.
Play!
Precautions for Pouring and Scooping Activities with Toddlers
Just be sure to keep a close eye on your little one. Materials like dry cereal are great for starting out. However, if you try scooping activities with other materials like beads, toys, corn, dry beans, etc, it can be easy for them to forget they are scooping beads and not cereal!
As with any activity found on this blog, use your best judgement with your children. This activity, while beneficial developmentally, is especially a choking hazard for young children. Always stay within hands-reach of young children with a developmental activity like this one.
If you are concerned with your child placing beads in their mouth, simply don’t do this one and put it on hold for a few weeks of months.
Development of Scooping and Pouring skills in Toddlers
Note: Use edible materials for this activity with Toddlers. Dry baby cereal or broken up finger foods (like Cheerios) are great. For Toddlers, they will be focusing on simply scooping and pouring with accuracy.
Grasping pellets (bead-sized items) is a fine motor skill that typically develops around 11 months. Children at that age can grasp small pellets with their thumb and the pad of their pointer finger, with their arm positioned off the table. Holding a scoop with either the dominant or non-dominant hand typically develops around 13 months of age.
Toddlers will use an exaggerated elbow motion when they first begin an activity like this one and until those small wrist motions are developed.
At around 15 months, Toddlers will be able to scoop and pour from a small scooping tool, although as soon as 13 months, many children are able to complete this activity.
Managing a spoon during self-feeding happens around this age, as well, as children scoop food and bring it to their mouth. It is messy, but they are able to get food to their mouth.
Using a scoop to move beads or spoon to eat develops with more accuracy at 15-18 months.
At around 12-13 months, children will begin to develop unilaterality in hand dominance. They will begin to show a preferred hand that manipulates as the other, non-dominant hand assists in holding the bowl or tray.
(Other kids don’t define a hand dominance until later. You can use this activity in the preschool years to work on hand dominance!) You will want to use a wide tray or large bowl for improved accuracy in both scooping and pouring. Try using a spoon for scooping the cereal pellets, too.
Scooping and Pouring Preschool Activity
In the preschool years, sensory bin play with a concentration on scooping, pouring, and transferring is very powerful. It’s at the preschool age that motor skills become more refined. The dominant hand becomes stronger in preparation of pencil grasp and handwriting. The muscles of the hands are used in coloring and cutting activities.
Preschoolers can use scooping, pouring, and transferring activities for functional tasks and learning activities, but also development of motor skills needed for tool use like pencils, scissors, crayons, etc. Use crayons based on development, as we covered in a resource on the best crayons for young children.
Helping kids establish a hand dominance can be a pivotal moment for addressing fine motor skill development concerns. Kids can refine motor actions by using a preferred hand consistently.
Preschool aged children can refine their scooping and pouring activity using beads.
Hand preference in Preschool
While Toddlers begin to show a hand preference, a true hand dominance doesn’t typically develop until 2 to 3 1/2 years. That is such a huge age range! That is because while a toddler can show a hand preference, hand usage is experimented with during different activities throughout the Toddler and Preschool years.
There is typically variability in hand preference as toddlers and young preschoolers poke, pick up, throw, color, and play. Another consideration is that often times, kids of this age are influenced in which hand they choose by position of toy, location of the adult or playmate, method materials are presented, and sitting position of the child. True hand dominance may not be completely integrated in the child until around 8 or 9 years of age.
Knowing all of this, use this activity to practice and play while working on a hand preference. If your child shows a preferred hand, set up the activity to work on scooping with the typically used hand. If your kiddo uses their right hand most of they time in natural situations (You will want to watch how they do things on a normal day and in a variety of activities.), then set the bowl of beads on the left side of the child and the scoop on the right side.
When using pouring and scooping activities in preschool, try these strategies:
Show them how to scoop from left to right. A set up like this one also encourages the left-to-right motion of reading and writing.
Use a variety of materials: dry beans, rice, beads, dry cereal, flour, sand, shaving cream, water, etc.
Use a variety of scoops: spoons, coops, small bowls, cups, pitchers, mixing cups, measuring cups, etc.
Kindergarten Scooping, Pouring, and Transferring Activities
For children in kindergarten and older, scooping, pouring, and transferring activities are powerful as well! You can use this pouring and scooping activity in math, learning, and sensory play-based learning.
Work on measurement
Work on reading, spelling, and letter awareness. This sight word scooping activity is a great multisensory reading activity for kindergarten.
Use scooping in math to add or subtract scoops
Count the number of scoops it takes to fill a container
Use letter or word cards in reading or handwriting activities
Work on prediction- Ask them to predict how many scoops it will take to fill different sized cups and bowls. They can count the number of scoops and see if their prediction was correct.
Incorporate addition and subtraction as they move scoops of beads from one container to another.
Address motor skill development- Scooping works on important skills like bilateral hand coordination, including using the non-dominant hand to assist as they would in holding the paper in writing, coloring, and cutting with scissors.
Pouring, Scooping and Transferring Activities
Try these various pouring scooping and transferring activities with each age range to develop specific skill areas depending on the individual child:
Use a variety of materials for scooping besides beads to work on fine motor control and dexterity. Other ideas include wet sand (heavier and great for coordination and strength) and a light material like foam pillow filler (for more coordination and dexterity).
Water Sensory Bin Ideas– Use a bin and water, along with some scoops and other materials to work on motor skills, coordination, and refined movements. Scooping water takes precision and control, but it’s a great functional task for children.
Scoop Nuts– Use seeds or nuts to scoop and work on scooping different sizes, different weights. This is a great activity for graded precision, sorting, and eye-hand coordination.
Scoop Ice– This simple scooping and pouring activity uses just ice, water, and scoops. Children can work on eye-hand coordination skills to scoop up ice within a bin of water to work on controlled motor skills, utensil use, visual tracking, and more.
Scoop, pour, and transfer dry corn– Grab some un-popped popcorn and some bins or spoons to transfer materials from one container to another. This simple scooping and pouring activity is easy to set up and works for all ages.
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
This rainbow sort activity is a fine motor skills idea to help kids sort colors while developing dexterity and precision and learning colors. By sorting the colors of the rainbow into small containers, a rainbow fine motor activity is a colorful way to help kids develop fine motor skills. Add this idea to your rainbow theme in therapy interventions, or home activities for developing motor skills.
Extend this activity and sort the rainbow colors to make a Fruit Loop rainbow craft for more fine motor and visual motor fun.
Rainbow Sort
We have been on a rainbow kick recently and have a ton of rainbow projects going on right now. This color sorting activity was a fun one that the big kids and my toddler really got into.
This rainbow sort activity is easy to set up. All you need is colorful craft pom poms and an ice tray or two. The ice trays are the perfect size for the crafting pom poms.
Preschool Rainbow Activities
This color sorting activity is great for toddlers to develop fine motor skills in the preschool and toddler years. Baby Girl (17 months) got right in there.
In the preschool years, fine motor skills are a precursor for handwriting and pencil grasp. This pre-writing activity is perfect for preschool aged children.
Add this rainbow fine motor activity to the preschool classroom or home by adding tongs, tweezers, or scoops to help kids develop the precision, motor coordination, and eye-hand coordination skills kids need at the preschool age.
Plus, this rainbow sort activity is a great way to teach preschoolers colors, too.
To work on pre-writing skills in other ways, try this rainbow prewriting activity available on a free slide deck.
Tongs are a powerful fine motor tool to use in occupational therapy activities that develop fine motor skills. To elevate this fine motor activity, ask kids to make their own craft stick tongs to manipulate these colorful craft poms. Preschool children can sort the colors using different colored tongs that are easy to make.
She is ALWAYS watching the big kids and copies everything!
Look at that concentration. And that cute little baby belly!
I can’t stand the cuteness!
Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
Colors Roll & Write Page
Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
There are so many ways to include multisensory play in teaching colors to children. Here, you’ll find hands-on, creative ways to teach colors of the rainbow using play that helps kids develop skills, move, and grow. Use these color activities in preschool or to teach toddlers colors. It’s a fun way to develop visual discrimination skills in young children.
Teaching colors and coloring goes hand-in-hand. Our resource on the best crayons for toddlers is a huge help, especially when deciding on the type of crayon to use at the age of teaching colors to toddlers and young children.
I’m including color activities for kindergarten and school-aged children, as well, because this color themes can be used in therapy activities or to help kids develop handwriting, or visual motor skills in the older grades. There is a lot of fun, hands-on activities listed here that help children learn colors and explore through play!
Teaching Colors to Toddlers
Toddler play and development is all about the hands-on exploration of the world. We have a lot of toddler activities designed to develop motor skills and learning here on the website that you’ll want to check out.
To teach colors to toddlers, it’s all about making things fun. These toddler activities will get you started with hands-on development activities.
So many color activities in the toddler years involve sorting colors, identifying colors, and pointing out colors. All of these activities lay the building blocks for visual discrimination that kids will use in reading and writing down the road.
Try these activities for teaching colors to toddlers:
Toddler Color Sorting with Toys– This activity uses toys and items that are found around the home, making the color identification part of every day life. You can use items that the child uses and sees every day.
Teach Color Sorting Activity– This simple color sorting activity is great for families that have a preschooler and a toddler. The preschooler can cut foam sheets and work on scissor skills and then both the preschooler and toddler can sort the paper scraps by color. This is a nice activity that allows siblings to work together to learn concepts and grow skills together.
Color Sort Busy Bag– Toddlers love to drop items into containers, and put things into buckets, bins, and bags…and then take them back out again. It’s all part of the learning process! This color sorting busy bag gives toddlers colored craft sticks or dyed lollipop sticks and has them sort by color. It’s a great activity for developing fine motor skills and coordination, too.
Cup Sorting for Toddlers– This color sorting activity uses items in the home, like plastic toddler cups! There is just something about toddlers playing in the kitchen with baby-safe items…and this one builds pre-literacy and pre-math skills that they will use long down the road…through play!
Talk about colors– Pointing out colors during play, conversation, in reading books, and going for walks…there are so many ways to teach colors to babies and toddlers through everyday conversation. It’s as simple as saying, “look at that blue flower” to add descriptive terms to kids.
Color with painting– Incorporate all of the colors of the rainbow in multisensory activities from a young age. These art play activities incorporates colors into play and learning through art with toddlers.
In the preschool stage, learning occurs through play! These color learning activities are designed to promote learning through hands-on exploration, because those are the ways that learning “sticks”…when hands are busy and developing motor skills that they will later need for holding and writing with a pencil. Let’s look at some ways to teach colors in the preschool years:
Color by Letter Worksheets– These are great for the preschool age because they are getting the exposure to letters in uppercase and lowercase format but not through writing. the coloring builds hand strength and fine motor skills needed in kindergarten and beyond.
Teaching Shapes and Colors with Rainbow Rocks by Fun-A-Day- This activity is fun because it uses the heavy weight of rocks to teach colors and shapes. But, kids are also strengthening their hands and gaining motor feedback about objects as they explore colors and other discriminating factors like weight and size.
Color and shape sorting– This preschool color sorting activity gives kids fine motor experiences with wikki stix. Ask preschoolers to copy the shapes, too for extra fine motor skill building and visual motor integration.
Fine Motor Color Sort– Grab an old spice container or cheese container, and some straws. This color sorting activity lays the groundwork for fine motor skill development and math skills. Kids can count the straws as they drop into the container and work on sorting colors while developing open thumb web space, separation of the sides of the hand and arch strength.
Color Matching Water Bin– This color learning activity is a sensory motor activity that also teaches letters. It’s perfect for preschool and kindergarten or even older grades as kids are immersed in multi- sensory learning with letters and pre-reading skills.
Clothespin Color Match– Children will love this fine motor activity that builds hand strength in a big way.
Bear Sees Colors Book and Activity– We used a snack to explore colors with a beloved preschool book. This is multisensory learning at its finest.
Gross Motor Color Games– There are many ways to explore and teach colors using games. Try some of these to add movement and play into learning colors at the preschool level:
Color I Spy- Call out a color and kids can run to touch something that is that color. Add variations of movement by asking kids to skip, hop, leap, crawl, or bear walk to touch the colors.
Color Simon Says- Call out directions based on clothing colors that kids are wearing. Add as many variations of movement and auditory challenges. This is a great activity for building working memory skills in preschoolers.
Color Tag- Kids can play tag and when they tag another player, they need to say a color for that person to go to. Another variation is having the players who are tagged run to a color that the tagger calls out.
Teach Colors in Kindergarten and older grades
Once children are school-aged, teaching colors doesn’t end. In the school years, children explore color mixing, learning about primary colors, and more. Look at all of these color experiences that kids learn during the school years:
Spelling color names
Learning Primary Colors
Learning secondary colors
Color mixing
Color theory
Color wheel
Complimentary colors
Try some of these color activities for older children:
Color I Spy free therapy slide deck- This color themed scavenger hunt will get kids up and moving, using the items they have in their home as they work on visual perceptual skills, handwriting, and more. Kids can visually scan around their home to match the colors on the slide deck. Then, there is a handwriting component. This is a great slide deck for anyone working on handwriting skills with kids, virtually.
Color Exercises– Use gross motor exercises and stretches as well as fine motor exercises to get kids moving while working on SO many skill areas: bilateral coordination, motor planning, strengthening, core strength, precision, dexterity, visual motor skills…
Rainbow Deep Breathing Exercise– This free printable PDF is super popular. There’s a reason why: kids love the deep breathing activity and We love the mindfulness, coping skills, calming, and regulation benefits. Great for all ages.
Rainbow Binoculars Craft– Kids can use paper towel tubes in a craft that helps them look for and identify colors. Use these rainbow binoculars in visual scanning, visual discrimination, visual figure-ground, and other perceptual skills.
Colored pencils activities– All you need is a couple of colored pencils (or substitute with a regular pencil if that’s all you’ve got on hand) to work on pencil control, line awareness, pencil pressure, and letter formation.
Make crayon play dough– Explore colors with heavy work input through the hands and arms using all the colors of the rainbow. This crayon play dough recipe is a popular sensory recipe here on the website.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
This Valentine’s Day math activity is an easy activity designed to promote hand eye coordination and other fine motor math activities. Hand eye coordination, otherwise known as eye hand coordination,is a visual motor skill needed for so many functional tasks in children. This particular hands-on math activity was created to not only help with math skills around Valentine’s Day, but also to develop the essential coordination skills that kids need. It was easy to throw together and made working on a few Kindergarten math concepts more fun for my kiddo.
Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
To create this Valentines math activity, I cut a piece of cardboard into smaller pieces and then used them to make small heart shapes. On those hearts, I wrote numbers 1-20. The hearts that we used were about 1 and a half inches tall but, you could create larger hearts, if coordination skills are something you need to address.
In our hand-eye coordination activity, we used a large red tweezer to work on picking up the hearts from a small container.
Typically, using tweezers is a great way to work on fine motor skills like hand strength, tripod grasp, and arch development. Here is information on the fine motor skills that tweezers help to establish, especially when using a smaller, hand-sized tong or tweezer.
With these extra large Jumbo Tweezers, the actual tweezer tool is larger than the hand. Because of this, different muscle groups are working.
The size of the Jumbo Tweezers requires the hands to open and shut with the thumb and all of the fingers. This adduction and abduction of the thumb and slightly flexed MCP joints uses encouraged more of opposition of the thumb. The wrist is extended and in an effective position for functional tasks.
Grabbing up the cardboard hearts requires hand-eye coordination or visual motor integration. The ability to effectively use hand-eye coordination in activities like handwriting, scissor use, games, and play allows children to write within given spaces, cut along lines, and move game pieces in a coordinated and fluent manner.
Free therapy resources for Valentines
If eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills, and handwriting are tasks that you are working on with children, you’ll love both of these free therapy slide decks. Use them to outline occupational therapy interventions or to use in teletherapy sessions this time of year.
These number hearts worked well with a few different hands on math activities, especially kindergarten math concepts. And, the heart counters made a great Valentines math activity for this time of year.
The activity is very open-ended, so there are many ways you could use this activity to work on math concepts at different levels. Here are some of the hands-on math activities that we completed:
Practice odd/even numbers- We then did a round of looking for and picking up the even numbers and then the odd numbers with the tweezers.
Number order- To practice our hand-eye coordination with these hearts, I had my son try to find and pick up the hearts in number order.
Counting by 10s- Practice counting up by tens and then count by tens into 100.
Number bonds- You can use the number hearts to build and take apart numbers to build and understanding of addition and subtraction facts. My son’s favorite was using the side without numbers to build and take apart numbers. We did a snowman version of number building when my older daughter was in Kindergarten.
Composing and decomposing numbers- With the cardboard hearts, we practiced composing and decomposing numbers. I named a number, like “7” and my son had to use the hearts to build number 7 in many different ways. He pulled out 7 hearts and separated them into two piles: one with 3 hearts and one pile with 4 hearts. We used more hearts to make other ways to take apart 7, too: 6 and 1, 5 and 2, 4 and 3, 2 and 5, and 1 and 6.
More Valentine Math activities
Try some of these ways to play and learn using the
Practice number formation: pull out a heart with the Jumbo Tweezers and have your child write that number.
Ask your child to pull out a pile of hearts. They can count with one to one correspondence and then write the number.
Use the hearts in a ten frame.
Practice counting the hearts, starting at different numbers.
Here are more Valentine Math Activities:
Love Heart Number Bonds to Ten by Adventures of Adam to add a fine motor eye hand coordination component to adding up to 10.
Scratch Art cards by Castle View Academy can be used to create marks in counting.
Valentines Fine Motor Activities
If you need more hand eye coordination activities for Valentine’s Day fine motor fun, try the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit.
The Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit is here! This printable kit is 25 pages of hands-on activity sheets designed to build skills in pinch and grasp strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, precision, dexterity, pencil control, handwriting, scissor skills, coloring, and more.
When you grab the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit now, you’ll get a free BONUS activity: 1-10 clip cards so you can challenge hand strength and endurance with a counting eye-hand coordination activity.
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.
We had some fish learning activities based on a penguin theme going on for a while around here. Penguin activities are so much fun for learning and play! This fish learning activity was a fun way to explore letters, words, and numbers AND incorporate our penguin theme. We did this learning and counting activity one day after we made our penguin themed snacks. Add it to the penguin yoga activity and penguin deep breathing activities to round out full-body movement and learning.
Fish learning activity
Penguin math is fun when it comes to catching fish for penguin food! Use these ideas for a polar bear theme, too.
We used sheets of scrapbook paper and construction paper to make fish shapes. Kids can cut these out to work on scissor skills.
Next, we drew a pond on a large sheet of crafting paper. I wrote words, letters, or numbers on the fish. On some, I attached a paperclip or clip. We used a net (from a Bug Net toy) or a fishing pole from a puzzle set to scoop up the fish like a penguin would.
You could also use a magnetic fishing pole from a puzzle set to catch the fish with clips on them. We scooped them in numerical order or in alphabetical order and then in random order too.
How fun would this be to read a few fun penguin books and then do some fishy counting to continue the penguin theme?
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
These bear brain breaks are perfect for winter time movement, or using in a bear theme in school or in therapy. Sometimes, brain breaks are the perfect tool to can help with movement or sensory needs in the classroom. We used a favorite childhood book to come up with bear themed brain breaks that can be used alongside the book in a movement and learning activity or in a bear-themed classroom activities. Not long ago, we shared more brain break ideas that you might like to add to your classroom.
Use these bear brain breaks along with ideas from our hibernation activities for more winter fun!
Have you read the book, “Time for Sleep” by Denise Fleming? My kids loved to hear about all of the animals as they prepared for sleep over the winter. We decided to try a few bear gross motor moves based on the book.
Bear Theme Brain Breaks
Stretches and whole-body movements that happen in a calm manner are a great way to prepare for sleep, so these activities went along nicely with the bear in the book as well as the getting ready for sleep theme.
If fidgeting, wiggling, or just a break from screens is needed, try these movement breaks to help.
We created these themed brain breaks to go along with the book, Time to Sleep, but they are perfect for any day (or when paired with other bear books)!
If you are looking for resources for sleep or bedtime relaxation stretches, we shared some based on another children’s book.
This is such a fun book to read with kids. It would go along perfectly with a bear theme in your classroom. Try adding some gross motor movement activities based on the book.
Kids can then use the bear themed brain breaks throughout their day when it seems the classroom or individual students need a movement break.
Below, you can enter your email to access the free brain break printable that would go along perfectly for teaching the classroom about these bear brain breaks. They can be cut up and laminated for the children to pull out of a cup. Or, add them to a key ring for bear themed movement activities.
Using these bear brain breaks, kids can stretch, roll, reach, climb, and crawl like a bear. There are eight bear themed movement activities included that allow kids to move with a bear theme.
Read the book Time for Sleep and try the movement activities!
Bear Activities
Looking for more bear themed activities? Try these hands-on ways to play with a bear theme based on bear books like “Time for Sleep”.
These brain breaks would be a great addition to our Winter Fine Motor Kit, loaded with winter theme and bear activities! It’s got all things fine motor in print-and-go activities. You’ll find lacing cards, modified handwriting sheets, pencil control strips, cutting activities, crafts, coloring exercises, and MUCH MORE!
We are continuing with our Polar Bear Theme with all kinds of play ideas. Check out the polar bear gross motor activities listed here and challenge kids to move, and develop coordination, balance, direction changes, movement patterns, core strength, stability, and more. These polar bear activities go well with our polar bear gross motor virtual therapy slide deck, too, so you’ll want to check that out as well. Add gross motor play to your winter line-up!
Polar Bear Gross Motor Activity
For this gross motor activity, you’ll need masking tape, some couch cushions, and other small items (cotton batting, polar bear figures, or other materials can be used).
Start by creating a path with the masking tape. We made a zig zag path across the room, but the options are limitless here.
The masking tape path is perfect for polar bear crawls, toe walking, walking backwards, and knee walking.
Masking Tape Balance Beam Ideas
Once the masking tape is positioned on the floor, there are so many ways to use this in therapy in a classroom, hallway, clinic, or therapy at home activity.
I put a couple of pillows at the end to make a “snow pile” for the polar bears. Your kids can jump or hop into the pillows, or use them as balance challenges.
We put some cotton batting along the path that the kids had to bend and stoop to grasp using one hand or the other. Then, they had to transport the “snow” to the other end of the path.
A balance beam is so great for gross motor skills including coordination and balance. You can start with normal toe to heel steps, and then increase the balance and coordination needed by asking your child to take bigger steps, side steps, backward steps, tip toe, go fast/slow.
Kids can hold an object and transport it from one end of the path to the other. Ask them to hold the item in their hands, on their head, on their toes, or on their back as they bear walk. Objects can be large or small, heavy or light.
Use couch pillows as pretend ice blocks for the polar bears.
Use tongs and a small plastic ice cube to incorporate fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination skills. You can place buckets or bins along the path for obstacles to place the small objects in while challenging core strength, motor planning, and movement changes.
Add buckets or cones along the path for children to step over or hop over. If cones aren’t available, just use couch throw cushions as an obstacle.
Add a big duvet blanket or other large blanket at one end or both ends as a DIY crash pad for heavy work and proprioceptive input. Crawling into and under the heavy blanket offers heavy work, and that blanket makes a great “igloo” for your little polar bear.
Advance the motor planning and core development by asking kids to stand along the path as they try to catch/toss a ball, navigate turns, curves, hop…There is so much you can do with the masking tape balance beam! Add more fine motor skill work by using paper snowflakes along the balance beam.
Use a polar bear sensory bin along the path to challenge kids to transport items from one end of the path and to place them into the sensory bin. This is a fantastic occupational therapy or physical therapy intervention that challenges so many skills.
For more polar bear gross motor activities, (and fine motor work), grab the Winter Fine Motor Kit, with 100 pages of done-for-you therapy activities, including polar bear themes. There are sensory bin materials, crafts, and activities designed to boost fine motor skills. These would be great additions to a polar bear gross motor theme in therapy sessions.
Grab it now before January 9th and you get a bonus of 3 fine motor slide deck activities.
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.
Looking for indoor recess ideas? Below, you’ll find winter indoor games and activities to add to the recess line up when it’s too cold to go outdoors for recess. We’ve tried to come up with indoor recess games for older kids AND indoor recess ideas for kindergarten and the younger grades. Some of these ideas work well with traditional indoor recess group activities, and others are better suited for socially distancing during indoor recess, while still allowing kids to move! All of the inside recess ideas can be used to add activity and movement when it’s raining or too cold for outdoor recess!
Indoor Recess Winter Activities for Kids
Here are more ways to get the kids moving this time of year:
This time of year can be a real struggle for kids. They’ve got a long school day, where it’s too cold to go outside for recess. Many are on screens during much of that day, especially if schooling is done virtually or at home with distance learning.
After school brings continued cold temps and an followed by coming home to an early sunset. Not to mention, many kids have after-school activities scheduled. It’s no wonder that kids are less active than ever before.
Because of this, I wanted to share these indoor recess ideas that can be used to add activity, motor planning, visual motor skills, midline crossing, and general movement!
1. Turn on the music and have a Crossing Gross Motor March. Crossing Midline is a developmental ability that is important for so many gross motor tasks. When a child has difficulty with crossing midline, they may demonstrate inefficiency with other areas like fine motor skills, bilateral coordination, hand dominance, self-care, reading, handwriting, and so many other areas. This can be done in a socially distanced format in a well-spaced out area such as a gym or hallway. And, for our virtual learners, this activity is fun for the whole family.
2. Add proprioceptive and vestibular input with an Indoor Skating activity! All you need for this activity is a pile of paper plates or old tissue boxes. If you have a carpeted area in the classroom, this can be a great way to identify a space for indoor ice skating during indoor recess. Add specific moves and have kids copy the ice skating moves to really incorporate motor planning and direction following.
3. Do the Hokey Pokey. Need some fresh ideas when it comes to the classic hokey pokey? Try playing “Snow-key Pokey” with a snowman theme. Just label the various body parts a snowman would have. For example: Snow cap, stick arms, boots, snow bottom, etc.
4. Animal Races- Gather a group of kids and have relay races in the hallway or gymnasium area. Kids can split into two teams and race against one another. Each child will need to come up with an animal walk as they race back to tag another person on their team. Some animal walk ideas include: donkey kicks, penguin waddles, bear walks, crab walks, frog jumps, elephant walks, snake slithers, etc.
5. Arctic Animal Yoga- Add animal walks with an artic theme. These would go perfectly with an animal theme and add the bonus of calming stretches. They are a great movement break during the day, use at circle time, morning meeting, free time or for use during stations. These cards are fun for use during physical education or in group/individual physical and occupational therapy. They are a great way to add simple movement into the day which we know is essential for learning and concentration. Use them with an arctic unit! These polar bear gross motor therapy activities can be used as a winter brain break or recess activity.
6. Freeze Dance- Turn on YouTube and dance to the music. When the music stops, everyone needs to FREEZE!
7. Charades- Ask each student to write on a slip of paper a character, animal, or object. Combine themes from the curriculum, favorite books, or movies. Students can act out the people or objects on the cards while the rest of the class guesses what the student is describing with movement.
8. Indoor Balance Beam- Try some of these indoor balance beams using everyday items or a roll of painters tape. There are so many benefits to using balance beams. It’s a fun way to break up indoor recess into centers, too.
9. Ribbon Wand Dance- Make a handful of DIY ribbon wands and sneak in some gross motor skills and movement by dancing to music.
10. Indoor Gross Motor Game- Get the whole class involved in gross motor play with jumping, hopping, and more with this Dinosaur Gross Motor Game uses mini dinosaur figures. Grab the free printable game spinner and activity here.
12. Play the Four Corners Classroom Game– Add movement and sneak in some auditory processing work with this fun game shared over on The Game Gal.
13. Who Am I Game- The kids can write down book and movie characters on a sticky note and stick it to their forehead. They can ask other students questions as they move around the room, trying to figure out who they “are”!
11. Winter Toothpick Art– Use the Winter Fine Motor Kit materials to get kids moving with the toothpick art activities. These can be used on cardboard or a carpeted area to help kids build fine motor strength and tripod grasp.
12. Winter Crumble Art- This is another fun fine motor activity for indoor recess. Use bits of tissue paper or crumbled up construction paper to create a winter picture. These sheets are in the Winter Fine Motor Kit, too.
I hope these ideas are helpful in creating opportunities for movement and activity during these indoor recess months at school!
The Winter Fine Motor Kit has materials to print-and-go, including arctic animal finger puppets to develop finger isolation, toothpick art activities with winter themes, crumble art pages, coloring and pencil control activities for building strength and endurance in the hands. All of these materials are included in a 100 page packet with winter themes: snowmen, mittens, snowflakes, penguins, polar bears, arctic animals, and more.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
