These Apple Brain breaks are a resource that has been popular on the site for many years. During the fall months, all things apple theme is the way to go, so when it comes to adding themed resources into a Fall, harvest, farm, or back-to-school theme, apple themed exercises and movement activities are the way to go!
Apple brain Breaks
Many of you have used the brain break activities that we have here on the OT Toolbox help kids focus and pay attention in the classroom environment. Movement in the classroom is helpful for learning and helping kids with movement needs such as fidgeting or attention. The brain break activities listed below can go along really nicely with an apple theme. Try adding the Apple themed brain breaks in between activities, lessons, and other classroom tasks.
Apple themed brain breaks can be a great way for kids to extend on an Apple theme activity while adding movement into the classroom.
Related read: These visual perception apple theme shape stamps are a perfect way to work on visual perceptual skills and fine motor skills with DIY stampers.
How to Use Apple Brain Breaks
Get this list of apple theme activities as a printable sheet to use in the classroom. Print them off, glue them to cardstock or index cards and laminate for durability. Kids can complete apple brain breaks as a group or individually.
In the PDF below, you’ll find printable cards that you can cut out and use over and over again as a movement break for kids. Other ways to use these fall brain breaks?
Incorporate into an apple tree life cycle curriculum or any apple lesson plan
Use with talking about Johnny Appleseed during the Fall months
Use as a Johnny Appleseed game
Add to a harvest theme or visiting the Farm during the Fall
Use as a transition activity between classroom activities
Great for waiting activities or transitions in an apple themed classroom!
Use when waiting periods during classroom breaks
Add as sensory motor activities to promote attention, focus, re-direction, or needed heavy work input
These apple theme exercises can be added to a weekly therapy theme when planning occupational therapy lesson plans, and then individualized based on the child’s needs and interests.
Apple Exercises
The brain break cards include activities like these ones. These apple theme exercises can be adapted or modified as needed to meet specific needs.
Here are some apple think brain break activities that can be used at movement into the classroom using an Apple theme:
1.) Reach and climb- Ask students to stand up beside their desks and pretend to climb a ladder. Students can reach up high with alternating arms as they climb in place. Imagine climbing up a ladder to reach the top of an apple tree.
2.) Pick apples- Ask students to imagine reaching up to grab an apple from an apple tree’s branch, and then bend down to drop it into a basket. Ask students to repeat this motion repetitively reaching up high and then bending down low to the ground.
3.) Peel and toss apples- Ask students to imagine peeling an apple as they roll their arms over and over again at the elbows. Then ask them to toss an imaginary apple into a bucket. They can imagine the buckets are at different levels and distances as they pretend tossing apples. Continue this exercise for one minute.
4.) Apple dash – Ask students to run in place and imagine running at an apple farm. Students can pretend they are delivering bushels of apple from a tree to a barn as they run in place while carrying an imaginary bucket. Ask them to imagine hopping over logs or running faster or slower.
5.) Make a pie- Ask students to imagine picking an apple and buffing it with their sleeve. Ask them to buff an apple on their left sleeve and then their right sleeve. Doing this activity encourages crossing of the midline. They can then pretend to slice the apple, roll out dough, pour the apple slices into the pie pan, and putting the pie into an oven.
6.) Apple spell- Ask students to form the letters used to spell the word “apple” using their arms and legs. To make an “A”, the student can reach up over their head putting their hands in the middle and stretching their legs wide next. Next, make a “P” by standing with feet together and arms curved toward the side to create the bump of the letter. Complete the same movement again for the second P in the word apple. Next, form a letter L using by sitting on the floor and bending at the waist stretching legs out straight. Finally, create a letter E by sitting on the floor bent at the waist with leg s extended straight and feet together. Put one arm out at the waist and reach the other arm out overhead bent at the elbow.
7.) Spell and clap- To the tune of “BINGO”, spell the word apple. After singing a round, replace one letter with a clap of the hands. Each round adds another clap in place of a letter. Try adding other movements in place of clapping such as hopping in place or stomping a foot.
8.) I’m a Little Apple- Use the song “I’m a little teapot” only pretend you are an apple. Kids can sing “I’m a little apple small and round. Here is my stem and here is my leaf. When I get so red, I fall from the tree. Reach down low and pick me up.” Add movements to go along with the words.
Can you think of any other apple themed brain breaks?
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More Apple Theme Activities for Kids:
You will love these apple activities to go along with an apple 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.
Today’s post is all about finger isolation: what does finger isolation mean, why this fine motor skill is important, and even finger isolation exercises and activities to support precision and dexterity in the fingers. As children develop dexterity in fine motor skills, more precision and refined movements allow for coordinated skill work. It’s through this motor skill that one can do specific tasks that use only one finger or several fingers.
Finger isolation is needed for daily tasks, and finger games are just one way to build this skill.
You may have heard of finger isolation as a component of fine motor skills that kids need for dexterity and precision. Today, we’re discussing this important motor skill, how finger isolation impacts function, and activities to build finger dexterity. So, what is this motor skill that allows us to point, hold up a single finger, or make fingerprints? Let’s discuss!
What is finger isolation?
Finger isolation is the ability to isolate and use the fingers one at a time in functional tasks. The fine motor skill of finger isolation is the development of being able to “isolate” or individually use each finger of the hand. Counting one finger at a time, tying shoes, typing on a screen or computer keyboard, finger games like “Where is Thumbkin?”, and opposing one finger to the thumb are examples of finger isolation. One way to target this is using typing programs to improve finger isolation.
When children are developing they begin to use each finger individually; as infants, children tend to use the hand as one solid unit. Finger isolation is one of the first important developmental milestones that leads to children’s ability to write well with a pencil, type on a keyboard, play a musical instrument, tie shoes ect!
If you’re wondering how to see if your child has good finger isolation, you can ask yourself:
Does your preschooler or kindergartner avoid pointing?
Do they tend to gesture in the direction of an object instead of pointing?
Do they use their whole hand to grasp objects rather than one or two fingers when that makes more sense for the size of the object?
Do they struggle to manipulate coins, turn a page of a book, tie shoes, or other task requiring refined movements?
Then adding a few finger isolation activities and games might be helpful for your child!
Development of finger isolation
Finger isolation typically develops in the baby at around 6 months of age as they begin to pick up small pieces of cereal. It progresses to pointing, and then separation of the two sides of the hand with in-hand manipulation. Finger isolation is so important in fine motor dexterity in every task that the hands perform.
There are other components of fine motor skills that contribute to the precision of isolating fingers in activities:
Separation of the sides of the hand-Separating the sides of the hand isolates the precision side of the hand from the power side of the hand allows for, and requires isolation of fingers and joints during motor tasks.
In-hand manipulation-In hand manipulation includes moving objects within the hand and refined isolation of digits and joints on the fingers contribute to this skill.
Arch development– This hand strength allows for fingers to move in isolation of one another.
Opposition- Finger and thumb opposition of the thumb to the fingers also plays a role in finger isolation. This ability to oppose the thumb to a single digit allows for more refined and precise grasps on objects.
Open thumb web space- Similarly, to oppose the thumb to the fingertips, an open thumb web space is necessary.
Finger Isolation and Screens (apps and games)
From a very young age, many small children are efficient at using tablets and phone apps with finger isolation to point, swipe, and move through images on the screen. However, when kids are scrolling the screen, and using their finger in isolation on a tablet, they typically use only one finger (the index finger OR the middle finger) and do not exert strength on the screen.
They are not receiving feedback through the muscles and joints of the hand (proprioception) to build motor plans for fine motor tasks. They are not establishing a “store” of fine motor experiences.
You then may see that single finger is stronger and more dominant in tasks such as pencil grasp or tying shoes. This concept is similar to the dominance of a hand or side of the body. Equally of interest is this post on deciphering the difference between dominance and ambidextrous. It’s all related, and to the occupational therapy professional, so interesting to read about the connections!
So, how can you build and develop finger isolation? There are many ways to build finger isolation skills. You’ll also find more finger isolation activities along with a craft that can help kids become more aware of this fine motor skill. Below are small motor tools to help with development. Add these finger strength exercises to your therapy plans or home programs.
One great way to develop precision in a single digit of the hand is to instruct the individual to tap each finger to their thumb (give them a demonstration so they can mirror you!),
Isolation of the individual fingers really develops with hand strength and coordination through the use of hand clapping games and finger rhyming songs. Show the individual finger and hand games such as “Where is Thumbkin?”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, and other rhyming games that involve hand motions.
Overall, fingerplay songs are a powerful tool to support the development of finger isolation!
Pop bubbles
Play “I spy” with items around the house and encourage your child to point
Counting on fingers one at a time
“Itsy Bitsy Spider” (this is a great beginner motor plan with easy finger isolation hand motion)
Shadow hand puppets using a flashlight
Dampen fingers to pick up small items such as glitter, confetti, other small items
Teaching common finger expressions such as “A okay”, thumbs up, finger guns etc
“Lizard fingers”: this is one of my favorites that really makes kids laugh, stick small pieces of tape on each finger and have kids pretend to be a lizard and see what they can pick up around the room! (Make sure to have small items that can actually be picked up, we’ve had a couple failures with this activity!)
Other finger isolation ideas here on The OT Toolbox:
Using a pointer finger to trace shapes in foam, slime, various sensory mediums
Make “spaghetti” strings by rolling play-doh between the index finger and thumb
Make a “finger soccer board” by folding up a small piece of paper into a triangular shape and have your child “flick” the “ball” into the goal
If there is ever an easy craft that you and the kids make, this is it. These button rings are as cute as they are effective in developing the skills needed for tasks like maintaining a pencil grasp, shoe tying, and managing clothing fasteners.
These super cute button rings are a craft that my kids loved making. They wore these rings every day for a while there. (This mom did, too!)
To make the rings, cut the pipe cleaners into small pieces. You’ll want them small enough to fit little fingers, but a little longer in order to add the buttons.
Thread the buttons onto one end of the pipe cleaner.
Twist the two ends together and tuck the end of the pipe cleaner on the outside of the ring (so it won’t rub up against the skin).
You can add extra buttons and layer different colored buttons for fun rings.
Finger isolation activity with rings
When wearing the rings, incorporate finger isolation by placing rings on different fingers.
Ask your child to hold up the finger with a specific colored button or pipe cleaner.
Try tapping fingers with the rings one at a time by calling out a colored ring and asking your child to play a “SIMON” type of memory game.
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 beaded feather activity is a fine motor task that we created YEARS ago. WE love it because beads and feathers are common craft materials found in many pediatric occupational therapy professionals’ therapy toolbox. In fact OTs love crafts as a fine motor strategy and this feather bead activity is a powerhouse!
Beaded Feather Activity
If you need a quick and easy little activity for the kids while you are making dinner, or just something fun for the kids to keep practice a few fine motor skills, then this is a great activity for you. Simple to set up and easy to clean up, this one will get those little muscles going and moving with fine motor dexterity!
This can be a great skill-building task to add to a STEAM activity or a STEM fine motor activity.
Beading with feathers
This activity works on several grasps, color awareness, counting, sorting, visual scanning, and eye-hand-coordination. How can you beat such an easy activity with so many benefits??
This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
You’ll need just two craft materials for this fine motor activity:
Get your feathers and some coordinating beads and lay them out on the table. I started a few feathers to show the kids what we were doing and had the invitation to start ready to go.
They came over to check it out and would bead a bit here and there throughout the day. It was kind of like a therapeutic little break from bouncing off of couch cushions and each other.
Their little bodies needed a chance to slow down and re-group before getting back into the routine of regularly scheduled chaos.
But maybe that’s just my kids?
Pincer Grasp Activity With Beads and Feathers
You could also put out a big old tray of all kinds of beads with different colors, shapes, sizes to work with.
This slightly makes the activity just a little more difficult as the child has to visually scan for the colors needed and pick out the beads that they want with a neat pincer grasp.
Using the tips of the index finger and the thumb in a precision grasp to manipulate beads from a big tray of colors is great for eye-hand coordination.
Holding the feather and the beads requires two hands to work together in a coordinated way (bilateral hand coordination).
This is a great way to practice pre-writing skills and those requirements needed for self- care like managing buttons, zippers, shoe-tying, and scissor skills.
Bead Feathers to learn colors
Younger children (Baby Girl is just getting this!) can learn colors and practice naming colors as they pick out the beads and match to the color of the feather.
How many other ways can you think of to make this a learning opportunity?
Patterns, sorting, counting…this is a fun learning op and a great way to get those little hands moving!
The beaded feather activity and the other fine motor tasks listed above are a great addition to our popular Fine Motor Kits:
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
This robin craft is a fun activity for Spring that develops fine motor skills, bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, and precision skills. This is the perfect addition to the occupational therapist’s Spring fine motor activities and a great tool for kids to make that they also use to work on skills in occupational therapy. Plus, the worm activity is just fun for kids! Use this egg carton craft to work on so many fine motor skills!
Robin Craft with an Egg Carton
Spring and Robins go hand in hand. We made this Robin craft as a Spring Fine Motor activity one day and the kids were giddy with excitement to play!
This robin craft is a busy bag type of activity will keep the kids busy and little fingers moving as they count worms to feed the Spring robins.
This egg carton family of robins was fun to make with the kids and even more fun to watch them play.
We used a cardboard carton so the paint would stick. You’ll need a clean and dry egg carton. Cut off the lid off the egg carton. You’ll want to keep the egg sections for this robin craft.
Paint the egg carton.
Paint a red belly on each egg compartment. Paint the sides and back of each robin with brown paint. You can paint the whole egg section or you can leave a space at the top to add a number, depending on if you are making a family of robins, or each student is making a single robin.
Punch a hole in each egg carton compartment.
Use a hole punch to punch a hole towards the top of the robin. This will be the beak of the robin, and where students will “feed” pipe cleaner worms to feed the birds. Little Guy (age 5) got a big kick with this part. He wasn’t able to squeeze the hole puncher to make the holes, but he really liked watching!
Make paper beaks for the robin craft.
Cut small triangles from yellow cardstock. Drag the wide end of the triangles in glue and press into the holes. These will be the beaks for the robins. Let the glue dry.
Make pipe cleaner worms!
Cut brown pipe cleaners into small sections. The worms can be as small as an inch or two or much longer. Show the student how to bend the pipe cleaner slightly to create wiggly worms. This is a simple worm craft of it’s own! This is also a great bilateral coordination and scissor skill activity for Spring. Kids love making pipe cleaner worms!
Draw Eyes on the Egg carton robins.
Use a permanent marker to make two small dots for eyes for the robins. You can also add a number on the top of each robin. Now it’s time to count and play!
Now it’s time to play and feed the robins!
Pipe Cleaner Worm Craft
Three is just something about those pipe cleaner worms. Kids love making them and using them to feed the robins. Let’s take a look at skills that are being developed with this fine motor task.
Little Guy enjoyed cutting pipe cleaners and bending them into little bendy worms. Cutting and bending the pipe cleaners is a bilateral coordination task that requires using both sides of the body with different motor plans and degrees of strengthening. This task is a great one for building motor plans and focusing on graded strength.
Cutting the pipe cleaners is a scissor skills task that requires and develops hand strength. What a great hand strengthening activity this is! Squeezing the scissors requires a lot of hand strength to snip the pipe cleaners.
Make a bunch of worms; You will need them!
Feed the Robins Craft
If you draw numbers on the top of each robin, you can feed each bird the correct number of worms. But, if you are working with a whole caseload or class of students, collecting many egg cartons can be difficult. You could always use just one egg carton section for each student so they have their own individual bird craft to make and feed.
In that case, skip adding a number to the top of the egg carton. Users can roll a dice and feed the bird that number of pipe cleaner worms.
This activity builds several fine motor skill areas:
Eye-hand coordination
Bilateral coordination
Separation of the sides of the hand
Pincer grasp to pick up the pipe cleaner
Tripod grasp, or a refined tip to tip grasp to thread the pipe cleaner into the bird
In-hand manipulation- Pick up several pipe cleaners at once and hold them in the palm of the hand. Then, feed one worm pipe cleaner at a time to “feed the robin”!
Robin Math Activity
To expand on the eye-hand coordination skill work, and to make this a great multisensory learning activity, use this as a one-to-one correspondence task for preschoolers. Young children can count the number of pipe cleaner worms, match the number to the works, and build pre-writing skills through play.
Little Sister (age 3.5) counted out the number of worms for each bird (She needed help with one-to-one correspondence). She was able to press the worms into the robin mouths using a tripod grasp.
It was fun to watch her play and count for a long time. I overheard a little dramatic play happening as she talked to the robins and pretended they were a family eating their lunch.
Use the Robin Craft to Build Skills Over and Over Again
This egg carton robin was a tool we made once and then used over and over again, making it a great fine motor activity for the occupational therapy toolbox.
Use it in a robin sensory bin! Add the pipe cleaner worms to a sensory bin and kids can find the worms and then feed them into the robin. There are so many ways to build skills with this one craft.
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:
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
If you’ve worked with kids teaching handwriting or fixing handwriting issues, they you probably have come across a common handwriting problem area…Pencil pressure when writing. Handwriting pressure can play a huge role in legibility, whether pressing too hard when writing or writing too lightly.
Pencil Pressure in Handwriting
Some kids press too hard on the pencil. They may press so hard on the pencil that the pencil tears the paper when they write. When they try to erase, there are smudges that never really go away.
Other students use too little force when writing. Or, you might see pencil pressure that is so light that you can’t discern letters from one another.
Either way, pencil pressure plays a big part in handwriting legibility.
Here are tips for pressing too hard when writing…and tips for helping kids write darker. Scroll down for everything you need to know about writing with that “just write” pencil pressure…Typo intended 🙂
Pencil Pressure with Writing
Learning to write is a complex task. Choosing a hand to hold the pencil with, pencil grasp, managing the paper with the assisting hand, sitting up straight.
And then there is the physical task of marking letters: letter formation, line awareness, letter size… this is multi-level functioning for a child!
Yet another aspect to consider is the pressure one exerts on the paper when writing. Press too lightly and the words are barely able to be seen. Press too hard, and the letters are very dark, the pencil point breaks, lines are smudged, and when mistakes are erased, they don’t really erase all the way, the paper tears, and frustration ensues!
Sometimes, when it comes to pencil pressure, simply helping kids become aware that they are writing too lightly or writing with too much pressure can make a big difference. Here is one simple activity to work on pencil pressure. All you need is a sheet of foam crafting paper.
Pencil pressure is dependent on proprioception, one of the sensory systems. With October being Sensory Processing Awareness month, this is the perfect time to talk sensory and handwriting!
As an occupational therapist in the school setting, I’ve come across many school-aged children showing difficulty with pencil pressure. There are reasons for these dark pencil marks and some tips and tools for helping with this handwriting difficulty.
This post contains affiliate links.
Proprioception and Handwriting
The proprioceptive system receives input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, stretch, movement and changes in position in space. Our bodies are able to grade and coordinate movements based on the way muscles move, stretch, and contract.
Proprioception allows us to apply more or less pressure and force in a task. Instinctively, we know that lifting a feather requires very little pressure and effort, while moving a large backpack requires more work.
We are able to coordinate our movements effectively to manage our day’s activities with the proprioceptive system. The brain also must coordinate input about gravity, movement, and balance involving the vestibular system.
When we write, the pencil is held with the index finger, middle finger, and thumb, and supported by the ring and pinkie finger as the hand moves across a page.
A functioning proprioceptive system allows us to move the small muscles of the hand to move the pencil in fluid movements and with “just right” pressure.
We are able to mark lines on the paper, erase mistakes, move the paper with our supporting arm, turn pages in a notebook fluidly, and keep the paper in one piece.
Heavy Pencil Pressure
When students press too hard on the pencil, handwriting suffers. Sometimes, children hold their pencil very tightly. Other times, they are seeking sensory feedback. You’ll see some common signs of heavy pencil pressure:
They press so hard on the paper, that lines are very dark when writing.
The pencil point breaks.
When erasing, the pencil marks don’t completely erase, and the paper is torn.
The non-dominant, assisting hand moves the paper so roughly that the paper crumbles.
When turning pages in a notebook, the pages tear or crumble.
Movements are not fluid or efficient.
Handwriting takes so much effort, that the child becomes fatigued, frustrated, and sore.
It may take so much effort to write a single word, that handwriting is slow and difficult.
All of these signs of heavy pencil pressure are red flags for pencil pressure issues. They are not functional handwriting.
Below, we’ll cover ways to reduce pencil pressure?
Writing Pressure: Too Light
The other side of the coin is pencil pressure that is too light.
Writing with too little pencil pressure is another form of non-functional handwriting. Some signs of too little pencil pressure include:
Kids may write so lightly that you can’t read the overall writing sample.
You can’t discern between certain letters.
The writing pressure is just so light that the child’s hand or sleeve smudges the pencil lines and the writing sample is totally not functional or legible.
The student starts out writing at a legible pencil pressure, but with hand fatigue, the writing gets lighter and lighter.
All of these signs of too light pencil pressure and too much force when writing can be addressed with some simple tips. Working on proprioceptive input and hand strengthening can help with too light pencil pressure. Try some of the writing tips listed below.
Pencil pressure and Messy handwriting
Messy handwriting can be contributed to many factors. Decreased hand strength, Visual motor difficulty, motor planning issues, visual memory difficulties, or impaired proprioception.
Difficulty with grading the movements required in drawing or making letters in a coordinated way may present as messy, smudged, illegible handwriting.
Writing Tips for Pencil Pressure
Bringing the writer aware of what’s occurring is one way to support pencil pressure issues. Proprioceptive activities allow the muscles to “wake up” with heavy pressure.
Moving against resistance by pushing or pulling gives the muscles and joints an opportunity to modulate pressure.
Resistive activities before and during a handwriting task can be beneficial for children who press hard on the pencil.
Pencil Pressure Activities:
Some of these pencil pressure activities are writing strategies to help kids become more aware of the amount of pressure they are using when writing.
Others are tools for helping the hands with sensory needs. Still others are tools for strengthening the hands. Try some or a mixture of the following ideas to addressing handwriting needs.
Stress balls or fidget toys can help to strengthen pinch and grip strength.
Use carbon paper or transfer paper to help kids become more aware of the amount of pressure they are exerting through the pencil when writing. Here is some easy ways to use a Dollar Store find to use carbon paper to work on handwriting. (affiliate link)
resistive bands (affiliate link)- Use these as an arm warm-up to “wake up” the muscles of the whole upper body. They are great for positioning warm ups too.
theraputty (affiliate link) with graded amount of resistance (speak to a license occupational therapist about the amount of resistance needed for your child. An individual evaluation and recommendations will be needed for your child’s specific strengths/needs). Use these theraputty exercises for ideas to get started.
hole puncher (affiliate link) exercises before a writing task
Gross grasp activities- These activities can be a big help in adjusting the grasp on the pencil, helping the hands with sensory input and strengthening the hands to help with endurance when writing.
Write with a mechanical pencil (affiliate link)- The lead will break if too much pressure is applied. Children can learn to monitor the amount of pressure used and it will provide feedback on modulation of pressure. A pencil with .7mm lead is better to start with for heavy writers. Read more about using a mechanical pencil for kids who write too dark or too light.
Some children will benefit from using a liquid gel pen for fluid handwriting marks. The gel ink will provide feedback when gobs of ink are dispensed when writing too hard.
Still others will benefit from a gel pen, marker, or using a dry erase marker on a dry erase board. This can be beneficial as a tool for teaching about pencil pressure or as an accommodation for those writing too lightly.
Pencil Weights (affiliate link) or Weighted Pencils (affiliate link)- Weighted pencils can be helpful in providing sensory feedback through the hands.
Practice writing on a dry erase board with dry erase markers to work on consistent pencil pressure- Pressing too hard will make the marker lines wider and press down on the tip of the marker. Can the learner keep a consistent line with their writing or drawing?
Use a grease pencil- These pencils are commonly used to marking wood or used in construction. The lead of the pencil is very soft and can be a great alternative for those that press too hard on pencils.
Cheap eyeliner pencil- One cheap alternative to a grease pencil is using an inexpensive eye liner pencil from the dollar store. Get the kind that you sharpen with a turn sharpener (almost like a hand held pencil sharpener). Kids can use that pencil to draw lines and match the amount of pressure they are using. This is a good activity for those that press too hard when writing, too.
Practice Ghost Writing: Encourage the child to write very lightly on paper and then erase the words without leaving any marks. The adult can try to read the words after they’ve been erased. If the words are not able to be read, the writer wins the game.
Hand exercises are a great way to “wake up” the hands before a handwriting task. Encourage the child to squeeze their hand into a fist as tight as he can. Then relax and stretch the hand and fingers. Repeat the exercise several times. Practice holding the pencil with the same type of tight and relaxed exercises Practice writing on tissue paper. A very light hand is needed to prevent tears. Discuss the amount of pressure needed for writing on the tissue paper.
This will provide the child with awareness and words for the way they are holding the pencil.
Wrap a bit of play dough or putty around the pencil as a grip. Encourage the child to hold the pencil with a grasp that does not press deeply into the dough. Encourage using a “just right” pressure.
Provide terms for they way they write. Encourage “just right” writing and not “too hard” or “too soft” marks.
Use a lead pencil to color in a small picture, using light gray, medium gray, and dark gray. Talk about how using different amounts of pressure changes the shade of gray.
Instead of writing on a notebook, pull a single sheet from the pages and place on a hard table or desk surface. The firm surface will limit the amount of pressure. You can also slip a clipboard between pages of a notebook to provide that hard surface, if sheets must remain in a notebook.
Need more tips and tools for addressing handwriting needs? Be sure to check out all of our handwriting activities here on The OT Toolbox.
More Handwriting Tips
For a comprehensive resource on handwriting, check out The Handwriting Book. This e-book was written by pediatric occupational therapists and physical therapists who focus on function and take a developmental look at handwriting.
In The Handwriting Book, you’ll find practical suggestions to meet all needs that arise with messy or sloppy handwriting. The developmental-based approach to teaching handwriting focuses on strategies to support common issues with written work.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
If you’ve ever played with Play Doh then you may have made a play dough snake. But did you ever stop and think about the various fine motor skills being developed with that simple play dough creature? Here we have a super simple and fun activity using play dough and rocks: Making play dough snakes! When you make a play dough snake so many skills are developed.
Play Dough Snakes
We are big fans of play dough. Adding in fun little extras (like making play dough snakes!) is a great way to keep it interesting, and get those fingers moving with fine motor work. We shared a picture of this activity on Instagram and it was such a hit, that we had to share our play in a blog post! We used regular play dough this time, but a batch of homemade play dough recipe would be perfect for this activity, too.
The thing is that Play Doh snakes can be made with any type of play dough, homemade dough, slime, or even kinetic sand.
Simple therapy tools like play dough can support big goal achievement. Similar to these games with paper clips, using play dough to build hand strength and fine motor skills is easy and fun.
{This post contains affiliate links.
Play Dough Snakes and Fine Motor Skills
Baby Girl loved this!! I pulled out a few colors of play dough and a basket of River Rocks. She got started sorting, picking out her favorites, and pushing them into the play dough.
I showed her how to roll a play dough snake to really work on those fine motor skills.
By rolling a snake from playdough, so many fine motor skills are developed:
Pinching those play dough snakes and pressing the stones into the play dough really works the intrinsic muscles of the hand, and upper body strength. It’s a fun way to practice tripod grasp, too.
How to Make a Play Dough Snake
To roll a play dough snake, all you need is a lump of play dough. Then, follow these directions to support fine motor skill development:
Use both hands to roll play dough on the table surface. Both hands should work symmetrically together (bilateral coordination)
As the play dough is rolled, it gets longer.
Use varying amounts of pressure through the palms of the hands to make sure the play dough snake is even. (Graded pressure)
As the playdough snake gets longer and thinner, use the finger tips to roll with more precision. (Precision skills)
Rolling a snake from play dough is a great way to strengthen the muscles of the hands, lengthen the muscles inside the hand (intrinsics), and work on grasp, and finger isolation.
I made a play dough snake and pressed rocks along the length. Baby Girl watched and started making her own.
More skills with Play Dough Snakes
After you’ve made a few snakes from play dough, you can continue the skill-building.
Freeze the play dough to make a stronger resistance.Freezing play dough for heavy work play is a great opportunity to challenge fine motor skills and add more resistive feedback through the hands.
Cut the Play Dough Snake- After you have a nice long ribbon of playdough created, use scissors to create marks along the length. Cut the play dough snake along those textured marks to work on scissor skills and visual motor skills. The play dough offers great feedback through the hands.
Add rocks to the play dough snake- Pushing the rocks into the play dough is a great fine motor proprioception activity. This resistive activity really “wakes up” the small muscles in the hands. What a great way to warm up the hands before a handwriting activity for older kids. Proprioception activities like this one are a good way to calm and organize your child. This activity would be a great addition to a Sensory Diet or a Sensory Lifestyle.
We made our snakes into faces, too. I made a play dough face and Baby Girl was able to copy one to make her own. We talked about all of the parts of the face. Such a fun way to play and learn!
After she made her play dough face, she made them talk to each other…”hi, how are you…” and conversation back and forth. Language development is fun with play dough!
These cuties were best buds by the time we were done!
Let us know if you do this activity at your home or school.
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.
I am SO excited about this challenge. What is the Pencil Grasp Challenge? Well, if you know a child who struggles with pencil grasp, holds the pencil with a tight or inefficient grip, uses all of their fingers to hold a pencil , or writes with an awkward grasp, the Pencil Grasp Challenge is for you!
Let me tell you a little more about the challenge.
PENCIL GRASP CHALLENGE
If you already signed up, be sure to check your email, because I have some surprises there for you and access to our private community.
If you haven’t sighted up yet, but want to, find the link to join us below.
What is the Pencil Grasp Challenge?
The pencil grasp challenge is a free, 5 day mini course and challenge. During the course of five days, I’ll be teaching everything you need to know about the skills that make us a functional pencil grasp. You’ll learn what’s going on behind the inefficient and just plain terrible pencil grasps you see everyday in the classroom, clinic, or home. Along with loads of information, you’ll gain quick, daily activities that you can do today with a kiddo you know and love These are easy activities that use items you probably already have in your home right now.
Besides learning and gaining a handful (pun intended) of fun ideas to make quick wins in pencil grasp work, you’ll gain free printable handouts that you can use to share with your team or with a parent/fellow teacher. You’ll get access to printable challenge sheets, and a few other fun surprises. And, possibly the best of all, you’ll get access to a secret challengers Facebook group, where you can share wins, chat about all things pencil grasp, and join a community of other therapists, parents and teachers working on pencil grasp issues. This is going to be fun!
If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up now, because we’re gearing up for a fun week in the pencil grasp Facebook group.
More about the challenge
This challenge has been a yearly challenge for the last three years.
The Pencil Grasp Challenge started because on The OT Toolbox, we have had many questions on handwriting and pencil grasp. Parents, teachers, and therapists have questions on concepts such as:
How do I fix pencil grasp?
What is an appropriate pencil grasp?
How does pencil grasp develop?
What is a functional pencil grasp?
How does pencil grasp impact handwriting?
I need handwriting help! Where do I begin?
When is it developmentally appropriate to work on pencil grasp?
My child/student has a terrible pencil grasp! What do I do?
As a result, I have A LOT of handwriting and fine motor activities here on The OT Toolbox website. A lot of those activities are perfect for developing a functional and efficient pencil grasp. The Pencil Grasp Challenge started as I had an idea to create a challenge of fine motor activities to boost the skills kids need for strong and efficient hands, so they can hold and manipulate a pencil without difficulty. I started using #pencilgraspchallenge hashtag on my Instagram posts for those activities, with the intention to start this challenge with all of you.
In fact, go ahead and check out #pencilgraspchallenge on Instagram…you’ll find loads of fun fine motor activities designed specifically to build the skills needed for a better pencil grasp.
Enter the Pencil Grasp Challenge!
Want to join us in helping kids achieve a better, functional pencil grasp that works for them? Enter your email address into the form below!
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.
Did you know you can tear paper to improve fine motor skills using materials you already have in your home? I have an incredibly easy fine motor activity to share: tearing paper! When kids tear paper, they are developing fine motor skills like grasp, hand strength, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, and more. So often, parents are looking for easy ways to help kids develop fine motor skills, and the very material that can improve all of these areas is found right in the home. Let’s break down tearing paper as an amazing fine motor activity for kids.
Did you know that a fine motor activity where a child tears up paper builds hand strength, motor planning, and so much more?
Tearing Paper for Fine Motor Skills
Tearing paper a simple fine motor activity that requires only scrap paper and your hands. In fact, tearing paper actually helps children develop so many essential skills: hand strength, hand eye coordination, precision, refined movements, bilateral coordination…
When a child tears a piece of paper, they improve hand strength and endurance in the small muscles in the hand.
The intrinsic muscles are used to tear up paper and these set of muscles located within the hand are important in so many fine motor skills, including those important to handwriting and coloring, managing buttons and zippers, manipulating pegs, and more.
When paper is torn, the hands assume a great tripod grasp which is effective and a mature grasp for writing and coloring.
To hold the paper, the non-dominant hand is assisting in the tearing and encourages appropriate assistance for tasks like holding the paper while writing, and managing paper while cutting with scissors.
Then, to tear a piece of paper, the dominant hand does the majority of the “work” to tear with precision and force, but also along a “line” while tearing.
Just look at the skills kids develop with a tearing paper activity:
Not only is ripping paper as a fine motor strategy, tearing off pieces of paper can support sensory needs, coordination, and visual motor skills. When you tear a pieces of paper, so many skills are being developed…
Hand dominance- Holding paper with stability using a non-dominant hand to support the paper, and a dominant hand to make refined tears supports development of bilateral coordination skills. Depending on the intricacy of the paper tear line, more refined motor movements are used. This is a strategy to support graded precision skills.
Sensory Processing- To rip paper, strength and coordination is needed. This process offers heavy work through the finger joints, wrist as a stabile joint, and coordination and stability in the shoulder girdle. Heavy work, or proprioception allows us to know where our body is in space. But the benefits of heavy work can be calming and organizing. Ripping paper can be a sensory diet tool for some individuals.
Visual Motor Skills- To tear paper, visual motor integration is a required part of the puzzle. This includes eye-hand coordination, visual tracking, visual attention, and other areas of visual processing.
Tear a piece of paper to build sensory motor skills with an inexpensive therapy tool.
Paper Tearing Activities
In this paper tearing activity, we use recycled artwork to create Torn Paper Art that would look great on any gallery (or family dining room) wall! All you need to do is rip paper to develop skills.
Tearing strips of paper is especially a great fine motor task. To work those fine motor skills, start with some junk mail or recycled paper materials and practice tearing.
Tear paper into strips- To tear a long sheet of paper, you need to grasp the paper with an effective, yet not too strong grasp. Tear too fast, and the paper is torn diagonally and not into strips.
Make slow tears in the paper- Tearing the paper slowly while focusing on strait torn lines really encourages a workout of those intrinsic muscles.
Tear different weights of paper- Paper comes in different thicknesses, or weights. Practicing tearing different thicknesses really hones in on precision skills. We tore an 9×11 piece of painted printer paper into long strips, lengthwise. The thin paper isn’t too difficult to tear, but requires motor control. Thicker paper like cardstock or cardboard requires more strength to grip the paper. The thicker paper also requires a bit more strength to tear with accuracy and precision. Tearing paper that is thicker like cardstock, index cards, or construction paper adds heavy input through the hands. This proprioceptive input can be very calming and allow kids to regulate or focus while adding the sensory input they need.
Tear paper into shapes– Use the paper to create simple shapes like a circle, square, etc. You can make this task easier by drawing pencil lines and ripping paper along the lines. This is a fantastic way to build motor planning skills. Or, work on visual perceptual skills and try ripping paper into shapes without a template.
Vary the texture of the paper– You can add a sensory component and use different textures of paper. Try painted or colored paper. Try printed paper or a rough paper like last year’s paper calendar. Try ripping cardstock or textured crepe paper. Or, use graph paper as a thinner grade to address a different resistance. We cover all the ways to use graph paper in therapy goals and tearing paper is just one idea.
Work on tearing paper fringes- Tearing into the edge of the page, and stopping at a certain point requires refined motor work. It’s easy to tear right across the page, but requires precision and coordination to stop tearing at a certain point. To grade this activity easier, try marking the stopping point with a pencil mark.
Ripping paper has so many benefits! Did you know that when you tear a piece of paper so much work is being done?
Tearing Paper Exercises
There’s more to tearing paper than just making a mess…Occupational therapy practitioners use this fine motor tool as a way to improve hand strength and other underlying skills that we’ve talked about in this blog post.
But once you have the paper torn into pieces, did you know that you can use those torn paper pieces in fine motor work?
Check out our video on tearing paper. In it, we cover what happens when you tear paper (why occupational therapy providers love paper tearing as a fine motor tool), and then you’ll see specific finger strength exercises and finger dexterity activities you can do with the paper pieces.
Types of paper to use in tearing paper activities
There are many benefits to using different textures and types of paper. Let’s take a look at some of the possible types of paper. These are materials that you may already have in your home.
Varying the paper type in torn paper activities can help to grade an activity, or make it easier or more difficult. These are great ways to vary the amount of fine motor strength and precision needed, thereby improving fine motor skills and visual motor skills.
Types of paper to use in tearing paper activities:
Cardboard tubes (toilet paper tubes, paper towel rolls)
Old calendars
Tear up pieces of recycled artwork to create a new art medium.
Torn paper art
This ripped paper art is a craft that is so simple, yet such a fun way to create art while working on fine motor skills.
You’ll need just a few materials for ripped paper art:
Paper (Any type or texture will do…old crafts, kids artwork, or paper that has been painted)
Glue
Paper to cardstock to use as a base
Your hands!
We all have piles of kids’ artwork that is gorgeous…yet abundant. You keep the ones that mean the most, but what do you do with those piles of painted paper, scribbled sheets, and crafty pages? You sure can’t keep it all or your house will become covered in paper, paint, and glitter. We used a great blue page to make our torn paper art.
Making the torn paper art is very simple. It’s a process art activity that will look different no matter how many times you do the activity.
How to create torn paper art:
There is more to this therapy tool than just tearing a piece of paper…Use these tips.
Select a variety of paper colors, materials, and textures.
Tear a sheet into long strips. This will become the sky of our artwork.
Use white paper to create cloud shapes. Tear the paper into shapes.
Use green cardstock or other material to create grass. Tear small strips into the paper but not through to the edge. Create a fringe with the paper.
Glue the torn paper onto the base page in layers.
Use your imagination and have fun!
A few tips for creating torn paper art
Have a variety of paper types, colors, and textures available. Some ideas include using junk mail, recycled artwork, cardstock, construction paper, printer paper, crepe paper, cardboard, cereal boxes, etc.
Use your imagination. You can start with an idea to create or you can go with the flow of the art creation and start without an idea.
If you have trouble coming up with an idea for your torn paper art, try some of these:
Create a torn paper landscape
Create an object from ripped paper textures
Make a torn paper abstract artwork
Copy real life objects and make representational art
Create a ripped paper still life
Use all one color of paper in different textures to make a monochromatic artwork
Make abstract portraits
Tear the paper into shapes to make geometric artwork
Explore art concepts such as size, shape, color, lines, form, space, texture
Explore multimedia: Incorporate printed paper, painted paper, glossy paper, cardboard in different textures, crayon colored paper, etc.
More paper activities
Try making this paper helicopter to work on fine motor skills and visual motor skills.
Fold a paper football and work on eye-hand coordination with sight word practice.
Improve finger isolation, arch development, and hand strength with these folded paper crafts.
We used one of the long strips of green cardstock to create grass by making small tears. Be careful not to tear the whole way across the strip! What a workout this is for those hand muscles.
Next glue the blue strips onto a background piece of paper. Tear white scrap paper into cloud shapes. They can be any shape, just like clouds in the sky!
Grab a piece of yellow cardstock and create a sun. This is another fabulous fine motor workout. Tearing a circle-ish shape and creating small tears really works those muscles in the hands.
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.
