vestibular

DIY Cardboard Car Childhood Must-do

by
Everyone has those childhood memories that just stick with you for a lifetime.  Simple outside play are some of our best memories that us Aunts laugh about anytime we think about our childhood.  Getting messy in dirt, playing with sticks, and cardboard on a hill are just a few of the simple ways that we played as kids.  Recently we brought a little bit of simple outdoor fun to this childhood must-do activity with our own kids.


Add these resources to the ones you can find here under sensory diet vestibular activities to meet the sensory needs of all kids. 

Make your own Cardboard Car:

You might have seen this fun on our Instagram feed.  Are on IG?  Stop by and follow along with us.  We would love to catch up with you there!
All kids should do this in their childhood! Make a cardboard car and "drive" down a cardboard hill.

Cardboard and a hill are ingredients for instant outdoor fun.  Anytime we have spare cardboard in our house, the kids immediately ask to take it to the hill in our backyard.  Recently we had a big old sheet of cardboard and a few small boxes ready for the recycle bin.  Before any recycling happened, we had to play!

make a car for pretend play and outside fun.
We grabbed up a few pieces of sidewalk chalk and start decorating the cardboard boxes.

Use chalk to draw on cardboard.
Little Guy needed a lot of buttons on his “race car”.  Drawing with the chalk on cardboard is a GREAT way to work on handwriting and drawing skills.  The texture of chalk on cardboard is resistive and so requires a bit more strength to motor plan and execute the formation of shapes and letters.  Little Guy practiced his circle formation in a fun way, and didn’t realize he was actually practicing pencil control.
Now to work on that grasp of his 😉

Outside play with a cardboard box.
Baby Girl was really into this.  Anything that big brother likes, she likes.  Plus, cardboard cars are just FUN!  Of course, her buttons and steering wheel had to be “girl colors”.  Her request.

Make a cardboard car for outside fun.
We made numbers, headlights, and wheels on the outside of our cardboard cars.  Soon we were ready to drive!

We had to check for all functioning parts of the cars.

Childhood memories with simple outdoor play.

We took our cars to the hill and put down a big sheet of cardboard.  Usually, the kids love to slide down the hill on their bottoms.  The cardboard makes them slide down and is a great slide.  With the cardboard cars, they SAILED!  Check out the action here.

These two had races until the cars fell apart!

It was SUCH a fun way to play outside and re-use some cardboard!  Have you ever played with cardboard on a hill?  Let us know on our Facebook page.

Word Scavenger Hunt

by
Sight words written in chalk on bricks of a sidewalk. Text reads Multisensory word scavenger hunt

This word scavenger hunt is a hands-on play activity to work on sight words, spelling words, or common words. Use this creative sight word activities for kindergarten and active learning. While we used this activity many years ago to practice sight words, you can definitely use the idea to practice reading words and spelling words. Kids love these sensory word ideas to practice reading words with multisensory learning and gross motor play.

word scavenger hunt

We started practicing sight words.  One day we took them outside for a little movement and learning. 


Word Scavenger Hunt

Setting up a word scavenger hunt is easy. We used bright yellow cards to write the words to make it easier to spot the letter cards, but you could use any type of paper, or even letter rocks to spell out sight words. 

Another idea is to use clothes pins in the scavenger hunt. This is a great adaptation to the activity because you can foster hand strength, too.

I wrote our sight words on the sidewalk and had the kids match them up with our cards. 
 
They jumped on the word as I called it out and then could put the card on top.  This was a good gross motor coordination warm-up for our Scavenger Hunt.

 



Sight Word Scavenger Hunt

 
Big Sister went off and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see (with a little peeking…) and I hid the cards in different places in our yard.
 
Sight Word Scavenger Hunt
 
When all of the cards were hidden, I had her come back to the sidewalk and I would say one of the words.  She ran off and tried to find the word.
 
We had sight words hidden all over!  The kids had so much fun with this.  Even Little Guy, who hasn’t been practicing the sight words, got in to the action.  He loved helping Big Sister hide the words for me to find too.
 
 
 
When it was my turn to find the words, Big Sister would read one of the words on the sidewalk and I had to go find it.  I would ask her, “is this pan…?”  So she could read the word on the card, too.
 
 
 
After the Sidewalk Sight Words and Scavenger Hunt, we put the cards in the water bin with some bird seed for fun sensory play.
 
 
We’ve been doing a bunch of different activities with our sight words.
 
Looking for more ways to practice building words and spelling using letter cards or manipulatives? Grab our Letters Fine Motor Kit.
 
 
 

Want printable handwriting and sensory motor activities to target the visual motor skills needed for letter writing? Grab a copy of our Letters! Fine Motor Kit. The printable PDF contains 100 pages of hands-on letter writing practice for multisensory handwriting!

Letters Fine Motor Kit

Inside the Letters Fine Motor Kit, you’ll find:

  • A-Z Multisensory Writing Pages: Roll a ball of dough letters, ASL sign language letters, gross motor movement, small-scale letter box writing task, finger isolation letter trace, and writing practice area
  • Alphabet Fine Motor Clip Cards– Clip clothespins or paper clips to match letters with various fonts to strengthen the hands and focusing on eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, visual processing skills, and more.
  • Cut and place Fine Motor Mazes– Cut out the letter pieces and trace the maze with a finger to work on eye-hand coordination and finger isolation. Place a small letter on the letter spots to address in-hand manipulation and dexterity skills.
  • A-Z Cotton Swab Cards– Includes upper case and lower case letters. Dot the cards using a cotton swab or laminate the cards and use them over and over again.
  • A-Z Pattern Block Cards– These cards include a section for tracing with a finger tip for separation of the sides of the hand, eye-hand coordination, and finger isolation during letter formation. There is also a space to “finger write” the letter using the fingertip. This multisensory letter formation activity can be a great brain break during handwriting or literacy tasks. Learners can then form the letter using parquetry blocks.
  • Fine Motor Letter Geo-Cards– These geo board cards include A-Z in upper case forms. Users can copy the letter forms in a variety of multi-sensory strategies.
  • A-Z Color and Cut Letter Memory Cards– These upper case and lower case letter cards can be used to color for letter formation. Then use them in fine motor matching tasks or in sensory bins.
  • Color By Size Sheets– Help learners discriminate between tall letters, small letters, and tail letters. This visual perception activity invites learners to color small areas, using hand muscles for strengthening and handwriting endurance.
  • A-Z Building Block Cards– These LEGO block cards invite users to copy the cards to form letters using small building blocks. Users can place the blocks on the cards or copy the letter to address visual shift and visual memory. This activity set comes in upper case and lowercase letter forms.
  • A-Z Play Dough Letter Formation Cards– Print off these cards and laminate them to create play dough mats. Learners can form the letters using the arrows to correctly form letters with play dough while strengthening their hands and visual motor skills. Each card includes a space for practicing the letter formation, using a dry erase marker if the cards are laminated.
  • Graded Lines Box Writing Sheets– Users can trace and form letters in boxes to work on formation of letters, line awareness, starting points, and letter size.
  • Alphabet Roll and Write Sheets– Roll a dice and form the letter associated with the number of dots on the dice. This is a great way to work on letter formation skills using motivation. Which letter will reach the top first? This activity is easily integrated with a rainbow writing task to increase number or repetitions for letter practice.
  • Pencil Control Letter Scan– Use the letter bubble tracks to scan for letters. Users can fill in the letters of the alphabet to work on pencil control skills.
  • Color and Cut Puzzles– Color the pictures to work on hand strength and letter formation skills. Then cut out the puzzles and build visual perceptual skills.

Get your copy of the Letters Fine Motor Kit today!

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.

Driveway Sensory Drawing: Wet Chalk!

by
wet chalk

Drawing with wet chalk on a driveway is such a fun sensory experience for outdoor play and one that develops so many areas of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and visual motor skills through sensory play. Drawing milestones like coloring with chalk is part of childhood but this driveway chalk activity builds many skills!

Wet chalk

Wet Chalk

We played outside one cool morning and discovered something really fun…We had left a couple of pieces of chalk outside during an overnight rainstorm. 

The texture of wet chalk is so cool! It smears on the driveway so easily and is the neatest texture. For children struggling with tactile defensiveness wet chalk is a great sensory experience because you can grade the dryness or the wetness of the chalk texture.

There was only red and blue that were soaked through, but they combined to make a pretty nice rainbow!

How to make wet chalk

There are several ways to make wet chalk to use on a driveway.

  1. Soak driveway chalk in a bucket of water overight or for a few hours.
  2. Draw with chalk on a wet driveway. After a rain works or spray the driveway with water from the hose.
  3. Crush chalk into a powder and mix water into the chalk dust to create a messy, thick chalk paint. This liquid chalk paint recipe explains more on this strategy.

You can select the wet chalk method that works best for you!

Once you have your wet chalk created, you can get started with the chalk art.

Wet Chalk Activities

We’ve created a list of chalk activities here on the website before so any of those ideas would work. But if you want to explore development of other skills, try these wet chalk activities:

  • Make a chalk rainbow
  • Make a driveway obstacle course
  • Create letters and use a wet-dry-try method of writing the letters
  • Mix colors
  • Use the wet chalk for body painting
  • Paint rocks
  • Write names or words
 
 

 

 
 
 
Wet chalk
 
We played with this for a while…the chalk drawing even started to dry on the driveway.
I LOVE this picture!
 
Use wet chalk on the driveway
 
Baby Girl loved this messy play.  She got her hands right in there and covered them with the chalky mess.


Outdoor Sensory Play

What a great sensory experience!  Check out how Baby Girl is on her hands and knees…She’s putting weight through her upper body and down to the hands, and strengthening her shoulder girdle which is so important for fine motor dexterity.  All this while exploring the texture of the chalk, manipulating little pieces of chalk, and having fun with her sister!
 
 
Wet chalk activity for kids
 
We kept tracing over the rainbow lines until the chalk became so small…great for working on that tripod grasp! 
 
Big Sister was really aware of the lines of the rainbow when she was tracing.  This is fun for a new hand writer who is learning to place letters on the lines of paper ((line awareness)).
 
Tracing the big arch of the rainbow allowed her to cross midline on a fun activity.   Why do kids need to cross midline?? One reason is so that hand writers efficiently allow the dominant hand to do the work during handwriting while moving left to right across the page in a smooth manner.
 
Play with wet chalk to make a driveway rainbow
 
And of course, you MUST add raindrops to the rainbow 😉
 
 
Colors Handwriting Kit

Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:

  • Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
  • Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
  • Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
  • Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
  • Colors Roll & Write Page
  • Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
  • Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
  • Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
  • This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.

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

Magnetic Letters on the Garage Door

by
We have a bin of magnetic letters that we’ve been playing with for years.  Packs of these magnetic alphabets are everywhere; You can find them at the dollar store and so many other stores.  I have pulled this bin out so many times for play.  Each child has loved to sort, dump the bin out, place all over the fridge, and more.  The big kids are spelling their name and words.  We’ve used these letters in all kinds of sensory bins…even molded into Jello for messy sensory play!
Last week, we took the bin of letters outside and found the BIGGEST magnetic board EVER!

Big Sister is learning to spell and read some words and found the letters for a few words she knows.  Little Guy is a big fan of spelling “stop” at every stop sign we come to on the road.  So, he found the letters to that word.
((He also has the recent …funny…habit of spelling “YES” or “NO” instead of saying the actual word when you ask him a yes/no question.))  SO funny, and SO him!

Movement and Learning in Letter Identification and Spelling

There is a lot of research out there showing that incorporating movement into learning helps with so many aspects of cognition.  Kathryn at Movement and Learning shares a great collection of research.
We played a little game to sort out the letters to a word that both of them knew really well.  I wanted to encourage self-confidence by starting with a word they know.  I put one of each of the letters of “stop” in different areas of the garage.  Little Guy (who is learning letter identification) looked in the pile of letters on the ground and found an “S” and put it with the rest of the “S’s”.  Then he found a “T” and put it with the rest of the “T’s”.  He found each of the letters in order and went through the word “stop” three times.
Big Sister is learning to read beginner words.  I wrote some “-ar” words on the driveway in chalk (car, jar, far, star) and she would walk from the word to copy the words in magnets on the garage.

Cross Lateral Movement and Learning

I had them try another game to put the letters back into the bin.  I asked them to put the letters away one by one, using alternating hands to reach across their midline to grab the letter.
What is the midline?? Imagine a line going down the middle of your body from the middle of your forehead, and strait down, dividing your body into two symmetrical halves.  Your right and left sides are divided by your midline.
The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body.  Crossing midline forces the two halves of the brain to work together.
It was a little difficult to get them to reach for letters with their non-dominant hand.  It required more verbal cues, physical prompts, and visual cues.  Why was this so tricky?  Because the brain was being asked to do something novel.  Both Big Sister and Little Guy needed the extra prompts and cues to reach across their midline, all the while recalling the letter in order to spell the word.
Pretty Cool!
So, is crossing midline difficult for your child?  Try these play activities:
Crawling in a tunnel, finger painting with both hands, digging in sand to find objects, Pat-a-Cake hand and rhythm games, Simon Says games, playing with ribbon wands or scarves.

Quick Links
Explore
My Account
Sign Up for the OT Toolbox Newsletter

Get the latest tools and resources sent right to your inbox!

Get Connected
Facebook Instagram Pinterest Twitter