Working on visual perceptual skills with kids this summer? This sun visual perception activity is a fun way to build skills needed for handwriting and reading! It’s a free therapy slide deck that builds skills like visual discrimination, form constancy, and visual figure-ground.
Sun Visual Perception Activity
Summertime doesn’t have to mean not working on specific skills that help kids to improve functional hand writing and learning tasks. It also doesn’t mean building visual perceptual skills requires boring worksheets either.
This free visual perceptual activity has a sun and sunshine theme for summer days.
The visual perception sun activities include visual discrimination, form constancy, visual attention, and visual memory tasks.
Kids can work on form constancy as they recognize differences in the various sun images and activities.
You’ll love adding this these other visual perceptual activities too:
There are several visual perceptual activities with the sun theme on the slide decks.
This is also great if kids are heading off to vacation or taking a break from therapy for a while. They can use the activity as a fun way to work on specific visual perceptual skills.
Want to access this free therapy slide deck? Enter your email address into the form below and to receive this 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.
Today I have another exciting resource…all about how to teach coloring skills to kids. So often, children do not have the exposure to crayons and paper that is needed for development of fine motor skills or visual motor skills. Teaching coloring skills is just not something parents think about in many cases! Let’s break down coloring skills by age and address specific tips to teach coloring to children.
Coloring is such an important part of childhood and growing up. There are many benefits to coloring as a tool for building skills. Coloring develops hand strength, visual perceptual skills, and precision skills in grasp. It’s the first time many of us express creativity and produce something we are proud of. It boosts confidence, develops understanding of cause and effect, and increases attention spans.
Coloring is also an important stage of child development, too.
Let’s go into age-appropriate specifics on how to teach coloring skills at each age and stage, from babies, to toddlers, to preschool, to Pre-K, to elementary aged children. Specifically, you’ll want to use age-appropriate crayons for toddlers, based on developmental levels.
How to teach coloring skills
Coloring can be hard for kids. Many times, you see kids that refuse to color. Other times you come across kids that prefer markers over crayons. There are reasons for these difficulties, that make sense developmentally. Let’s take a look at the reasons why kids hate to color.
Coloring is HARD!
It hurts the child’s hands to color
Coloring makes the child’s hands tired
Child prefers markers over crayons
Coloring in the lines is hard
It’s hard to finish a coloring page
All of these reasons why kids hate to color are related…and many times, it comes back to a need for developing hand strength and underlying skills.
Skills needed for coloring
There are several areas, or underlying skills that play an important role in coloring:
Arch development (for endurance to color in the object)
Hand strength to move the crayon against a resistive surface
Pinch and grip
Precision to move the crayon with the fingers instead of the whole arm/wrist
Line awareness/visual perceptual skills
Eye-hand coordination
Pencil grasp (to hold the crayon)
Previous experience with fine motor activities/fine motor skill development
Fine motor skills and coloring- In order to hold a crayon, children need to develop fine motor skills. In order to color in a shape, hand strength is needed. In order to color within the lines, visual motor skills are needed. In order to color a whole shape or figure, distal mobility is needed.
Activities to develop these skills include fine motor play, beading, tweezer use, working on a vertical surface can develop these skills.
Line awareness and coloring– Another aspect of coloring is the line awareness to color within the lines. And, before a child can form letters with ease and fluency, they need to achieve pre-writing lines such as strait lines, squares, triangles, X and diagonals. This resource on line awareness can be a great starting point on this visual perceptual skills needed to color within the lines. Also try these tips to work on line awareness needed for coloring.
Pencil grasp and coloring– In order to teach coloring skills, it is important to progress through the stages listed below, whether at age level or not. Just like the underlying skills needed for pencil grasp development or handwriting, the basic levels need to be achieved. Before a child can hold a pencil with a functional grasp, they need to progress through more primitive grasp patterns such as a pincer grasp, palmer supinate grasp, digital pronate grasp, and quadrupod or static tripod grasp.
All of these underlying skills play an important role in how to teach coloring skills to kids!
Coloring Skills By Age
In this post we will break down the coloring skills you can expect a child to do dependent on age. You will see that we break them down into age ranges – for good reason, too. Every child will develop different skills and different times. Generally, though, there is a developmental path that the majority of children will follow.
If you believe that your child is lagging behind in these skills, talk to your child’s health care team and let them know what you see in your child. They will direct you towards occupational therapy if it is right for your family!
Coloring Skills at BIRTH – 6 MONTHS
Not much coloring going on in this time frame, as you may imagine! Instead, your little one is prepping those little fingers to hold and manipulate objects, that will one day lead to purposeful scribbling!
I always recommend allowing your child to explore coloring as soon as they are able to hold a crayon in their hand and sit up safely in a high chair. Be sure to stay with your baby the whole time you are offering coloring opportunities, as they will likely put their crayons in their mouth.
Support the development of Coloring Skills during infancy:
Babies under six months will typically grasp a small object in the middle or pinky-side of their palm. This grasp pattern is strengthening the building blocks for more refined grasps down the road. Tummy time is a great tool for lengthening the ulnar side of the hand for strengthening so that endurance in fine motor tasks is achievable at older ages. Tummy time also supports arch development even at this young age.
While most parents of new babies will not be thinking of coloring, these activities support the development of MANY motor and cognitive skills, and not just coloring!
Coloring Skills before 1 year
From 6 months to 12 months, babies are certainly not coloring. However, they ARE developing motor and visual skills needed for holding and marking with a crayon in the later years.
Grasping patterns grow a lot during this time! Your baby will start to use their thumbs a little bit more while stacking blocks, be able to pick up their Cheerios with only their thumb and pointer finger (pincer grasp), and can point to objects with one finger. By 12 months old, we should see a pincer grasp while holding small objects. This grasp prepares little fingers for sustained coloring!
Support the development of Coloring Skills during In babies:
Around a year old, your little one may show more interest in scribbling. They will likely make large marks across the paper (and hopefully not the walls!) by using their whole arm to move their crayon. As they develop, you will see that those big movements will get smaller and smaller as fine motor skills are refined.
Grasp: On a coloring utensil, they will use a gross grasp that looks like a fist.
Coloring Skills for Toddlers
The toddler years, for from 12 months to 2 years, is a great window to introduce coloring. It’s during this age that toddlers show interest in coloring and develop skills needed for motor development. This is a great time to explore how to teach coloring skills at an impressionable age!
During the 12 month to two year range, toddlers are building proficiency in coloring skills…and this is a great time to teach coloring!
In this time frame, your toddler will begin to recognize colors and shapes in their environment, and may purposefully choose colors while they are scribbling on paper. They will start to hold their crayon or marker a little more gently, with their pinky down towards the paper, and all fingers wrapped around.
Teach Toddlers to Color:
During the toddler years, exposure is key! You can present many activities and coloring opportunities to color with crayons. Different types of crayons and coloring activities are great exposure, too. Here are tips to teach toddlers to color:
Offer just one crayon at first. Offering too many options can overwhelm the young child.
Try different crayon types. There are different crayon molds that are great for toddlers including egg shaped crayons, rock shaped crayons, or even bath crayons.
Try coloring materials that require less hand strength or resistance, to make a mark. Kwik Stick tempera paints are a great option.
Show toddlers how to color. Color alongside young children for an opportunity to connect with the child and interact. Toddlers love to mimic others and can learn a lot by watching their parent color alongside them.
Offer toddler-friendly coloring pages. A big coloring book with many details can overwhelm a child. Try a printed page with simple shapes in smaller sizes.
Don’t expect perfection. Just putting crayons to the page is a great learning experience that builds hand strength, eye-hand coordination, and coloring experience.
Expect whole-arm movements. Toddlers color with their shoulder and elbow movements, or the proximal movements and won’t color with precise movements of the fingers until an older age. This is normal and to be expected. Coloring for toddlers looks like scribbling and that’s OK!
Encourage coloring and mark-making with coloring games and toys. This post has games and toys for coloring that Toddlers will love.
Work on fine motor hand skills through games involving tweezers, games on the floor, gross motor play, and whole body play activities.
Encourage play with age-appropriate puzzles and blocks.
Your child may start to show more interest in coloring just like you do, trying to copy your marks and paying closer attention to where they are placing their pen to paper. They should be able to copy a vertical line by around age two – this is a key marker for pre-writing skills. Usually around this time they also choose a preferred hand dominance while coloring!
The typical grasp pattern used by toddlers is the Palmar supinate grasp. This is a normal part of development.
Coloring Skills for Preschool (2-3 years)
The early preschool years, or 2- 3 years of age are a prime range for developing beginning coloring skills.
Your young preschool child will start to shift their fingers towards the paper while they hold their coloring utensil by age three. Some children hold their pencil towards the top near the eraser during this stage of development. They should naturally work their fingers down the utensil, closer to the paper, as they get used to this new grasp.
Use these strategies to teach young preschoolers to color:
During the 2-3 year period, you can expect your child to start drawing meaningful images. They will point to a drawing that may look like nothing to you, but then they will tell you that it’s their dog! By age three, your child should be able to do the next pre-writing task: copy a horizontal line and a circle.
Teach Preschoolers to Color (2-3 years old):
For young preschoolers, continued exposure to coloring is necessary. So often, young children skip the needed PLAY that builds fine and gross motor skills. With more and more young children playing primarily on screens versus free play, independent play, and creative fine motor play that builds the necessary hand strength, mobility, dexterity needed for precision, endurance, and progression through typical grasp patterns. Children at the preschool stages need fine motor play, much less screen time exposure, and play experiences.
Another pet peeve of pediatric occupational therapists is the tendency to hand a young child a pencil or pen during the preschool years.
Continue with the suggestions listed above for the baby stage.
Don’t be afraid to use broken crayons. Sounds strange, right? Sometimes a whole crayon is too big for small hands. A broken crayon can be the “just right” size and can be used as a strengthening tool for fine motor skills as well.
Don’t expect perfection. Crayon lines will go over the border of the coloring area and that’s ok!
Offer small coloring spaces with wider borders.
Provide simple shapes for coloring opportunities.
Offer physical boundaries if needed: Use wikki sticks around the coloring area, use your hands to create a small coloring space.
Color small areas on an easel to engage the core as a stabilizer, work against gravity, to place the wrist into extension, to pull the fingers into a tripod type of grasp for dexterity.
Continue easel work and play with lite brite, painting on easels, sticking and peeling tape to the wall, sticking foam pieces to a wet easel surface.
Play with foam sheets on a window. Try this rainbow play activity where preschoolers can stick foam sheets to a wet window. Encourage use of a spray bottle to wet the window and then wipe with a towel to clean up any drips. (It’s a great way to teach colors to preschoolers, too!)
Draw with chalk on a vertical chalk board or on a driveway/side walk.
Try coloring materials that require less hand strength or resistance, to make a mark. Kwik Stick tempera paints are a great option.
Show toddlers how to color. Color alongside young children for an opportunity to connect with the child and interact. Toddlers love to mimic others and can learn a lot by watching their parent color alongside them.
The typical grasp pattern used by young preschool children in the 2-3 year age range is the Digital pronate grasp. Use of this grasp pattern is a typical stage of grasp development.
Coloring Skills in Preschool (4-5 years)
During the later preschool years, at four and five years of age, preschoolers are developing more refined coloring skills as their motor and visual develop integrate.
Around age four is when you can start to see recognizable images appear more regularly in your child’s artwork. Four-year-olds will usually draw people with two, three, or four body parts. For example, the person may have a circle for a head, a rectangle for the body, and two circles for feet.
By the time they are five, they will likely be drawing people with six or more body parts! You will see their drawings becoming more and more life-like, by adding details like fingers, eye color, and buttons on clothing.
By age four, we expect a child to be able to copy a cross – a very tricky visual motor skill! Around age five, we would expect a child to be able to copy a square and color inside the lines fairly well.
Teach Preschoolers to Color (4-5 years old):
For older preschoolers, especially those in Pre-K, it can be common to see preschools and pre-K classrooms where young children are expected to write letters, write their name, or trace letters. This is potentially damaging for the young child and not recommended by pediatric occupational therapists. This premature exposure to writing with pencils, tracing letters, and writing letters isn’t based on child development of motor skills.
It will result in forming letters incorrectly and establishing poor motor plans for letters. It will result in poor pencil grasps that are difficult to change. It will result in forming letters from the bottom or in “chunks”. It is a detriment to children, especially because there is little time in the kindergarten classroom for working on letter formation, pencil grasp instruction beyond the regular curriculum. So changing motor plans and muscle memory that has been poorly established is detrimental for the young child.
What preschool and Pre-K children at 4 and 5 years of age need is play and the opportunity to develop and refine fine motor skills, hand strength, eye-hand coordination, visual motor skills. These skills are strengthened through play.
Try these strategies to teach older preschoolers/Pre-K children to color:
Use all of the strategies previously listed above.
Encourage coloring with interest-based coloring pages (run a Google search for coloring pages, i.e. “unicorn coloring pages”, “superhero coloring pages”, etc. You can generally find free printable coloring pages in most themes.)
Show off art work! Create a space in the home or clinic where coloring projects can be displayed. This is a great motivator for many children.
Encourage smaller coloring areas to improve eye-hand coordination with line use. A smaller coloring space enables children to use their fingers to move the crayon rather than the wrist, elbow, or shoulder.
Use a smaller or broken crayon to promote a developmentally appropriate quadripod or static tripod grasp.
Use simple shapes with curved lines like circles and ovals to promote smooth coloring lines with minimal direction changes and angles to the coloring picture.
If children are complaining of tired hands or tend to switch crayon colors a lot, it can be a sign of weakness in the hands. To strengthen the hands, encourage play with tweezers, tongs, spray bottles, pinch and grip activities, LEGO blocks, play dough, beading activities, peg boards, etc.
If you have a box of crayons with a crayon sharpener on the back, encourage the child to use it to sharpen crayons. The built-in sharpener is great for not only sharpening dull crayons, but also as a hand strengthening device!
The typical grasp pattern in preschool years for 4-5 year olds is the quadrupod or static tripod grasp. Use of either of these grasps is part of typical grasp development.
Coloring Skills at 5-6 years old
Somewhere between ages five and six, we would expect a child to be able to copy multiple shapes, including the ones they would have mastered in the past (i.e. vertical, horizontal, and crossed lines).
Around age five we would like to see what is called a dynamic tripod grasp when a child is writing or coloring. They should have their pencil between their pointer finger and thumb, with the middle finger supporting and the ring and pinky fingers tucked away into the palm. This grasp is “dynamic” if the fingers can move separately from the palm and wrist, allowing for good control of the writing utensil. This growing strength and control is why we see handwriting and coloring skills develop!
By age six, they should be able to copy more complex shapes, like triangles and rhombuses. You could expect them to independently draw some of the more simple shapes as well, like circles and squares.
The dynamic tripod grasp is the most advanced pencil grasp and should continue throughout their life. Typically, whatever grasp a child has habituated by age 6 is the grasp they will likely continue to have.
Teach kids to color at 5-6 years:
Try these strategies to teach children aged 5-6 years old children to color:
Use all of the strategies listed above under preschool, older preschool, etc.
Highlight the line with a marker. A bright color can be a visual cue of where to write. Letters should rest on the line. You can start with a nice thick and brightly colored highlighter like this one and move to a thinner pen like these ones. Sometimes the visual cue of that bright line is enough to keep letters placed correctly.
Another strategy to work on line awareness in coloring is to add bolder coloring shape lines with more contrast by darkening the borders with a black marker. Simply outline the shape with a black marker for a visual prompt.
For kids that show a great deal of difficulty with coloring in a given space, use a stencil made from a thing cardboard like a recycled cereal box. Cut out a rectangle and place it over the given writing space. This will help to remove distractions of the rest of the page and proved a designated space to color within.
Use glue to trace along the outside border of the coloring space. Let the glue dry and then use that tactile border as a physical prompt for coloring lines.
The typical grasp pattern for 5-6 year olds is a tripod/dynamic tripod grasp.
Coloring Skills at SIX YEARS OLD AND BEYOND
Older children can sometimes struggle with coloring and see their peers who seem to have little trouble at all. This can be a stab at their confidence and self-esteem. For older children, coloring often-times is a “sometimes” task in the classroom, so there are limited opportunities for a hands-on fine motor task. Still older students use primarily colored pencils to color in the classroom. Coloring with colored pencils requires even more hand strength, precision, and mobility with the pencil, so this can be a challenge.
Try these strategies for teaching older kids coloring skills:
To teach coloring skills to older children, use all of the methods mentioned under each age level above.
Your elementary-aged child will continue to develop fine motor skills for writing and coloring, as well as manipulating other craft media like clay, papier mache, etc. Creating things with their hands will not only strengthen their muscles but will also benefit their social development, self-esteem, and problem solving skills.
Work on coloring with a variety of crayon types, markers, or paint pens.
Use interest-based coloring books or coloring pages.
A final note on teaching coloring skills
If wondering exactly how to teach coloring skills to children at various ages is something you are looking for developmentally appropriate strategies, this comprehensive resource is for you. Coloring is a child occupation needed for learning, interactive play, and creative play.
Encourage your kids at all stages of development to explore their creativity and the fine motor, visual motor, cognitive and socioemotional skills will follow.
Dosman, C. F., Andrews, D., & Goulden, K. J. (2012). Evidence-based milestone ages as a framework for developmental surveillance. Paediatrics & Child Health,17(10), 561–568. https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/17.10.561
How to Teach Coloring Skills is a collaborative article by Colleen Beck, OTR/L and Sydney Rearick, OTS.
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.
Sydney Thorson, OTR/L, is a new occupational therapist working in school-based therapy. Her background is in Human Development and Family Studies, and she is passionate about providing individualized and meaningful treatment for each child and their family. Sydney is also a children’s author and illustrator and is always working on new and exciting projects.
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.
Below are kindergarten activities that promote development of skills needed during the kindergarten year. These are great activities to use for kindergarten readiness and to help preschool and Pre-K children build the motor skills in order to succeed in their kindergarten year. You’ll find kindergarten letter activities, Kinder math, fine motor skills to build stronger pencil grasps when kindergarteners start to write with a pencil and cut with scissors. You’ll also find kindergarten sight word activities for when that time of the Kinder year comes around. Let’s have some fun with 5-6 year old activities!
What you’ll notice is missing from this massive list of Kindergarten activities, is handwriting, writing letters, and even writing names. (And writing letters in a sensory bin falls into this category too! Before kindergarten, children should not be copying letters into a sensory bin. You’ll see letters formed incorrectly, letters formed from bottom to top, and letters formed in “chunks”. The same rule applies to tracing letters and words and even “multisensory strategies” for writing. It’s just too early. Unfortunately, we see a lot of preschools and standards doing the exact opposite. You’ll even find online sites sharing preschool and Pre-K writing that is just in poor advice.
Here’s why: prior to kindergarten age, kids are not developmentally ready for holding a pencil, writing with a pencil, and writing words. Their muscles are not developed, and asking them to write letters, copy words, and trace with a pencil is setting them up for improper letter formation, poor pencil grasp, and weak hands.
What children aged 5 and under DO need is play! They need exposure to sensory experiences, sensory play, coloring, cutting with scissors (even if it’s just snipping), puzzles, games, beads, blocks, stamps…there are SO many ways to help pre-K kids and preschool children develop the skills they need for kindergarten and beyond.
Kindergarten is such a fun age. Kids in kindergarten strive when they are given the chance to learn through play and hands-on activities. These are our favorite Kindergarten activities that we’ve shared on the site, with Kindergarten math, reading and letter awareness, Kindergarten Crafts, and Kindergarten Play.
Kindergarten Functional Tasks
Kindergarten is the stage when children go off to school for perhaps the first time. That’s why prior to kindergarten, it’s great to “practice” a lot of the functional tasks that children will need to do once they go to kindergarten. Some of these may include:
Now…not all of these functional skills will be established for every kindergarten child…and that’s OK! Kindergarten can be the year to practice these tasks in the school environment.
Kindergarten Letter Activities
Kindergarten is all about letters, upper case and lower case letters, and sounds. They learn how letters go with sounds and work on decodable reading. These letter learning activities will help your kindergarten student with identification, sounds, and beginning reading skills.
Kindergarten students work with manipulating items to discover and explore numbers and patterns. They solve simple addition and subtraction problems, more or less, comparing amounts, and shapes.
These Kindergarten math ideas will be a fun way to discover math ideas with playful learning.
Kindergarten students learn sight words throughout the school year. These sight word activities are fun ways to learn with play while reinforcing sight word skills.
Extending book ideas with crafts and activities are a fun way for Kindergarten students to become engaged with reading. Listening to an adult read is a powerful tool for pre-readers. They learn language, speech, articulation, volume, and tone of voice. These book related activities will extend popular stories and engage your Kindergartner.
Fine motor skills in Kindergarten students are essential for effective pencil control and handwriting, scissor use, and clothing and tool manipulation. Kindergartners may have little experience with tools like scissors, pencils, hole punches, staplers, and pencil sharpeners. In fact, there are MANY fine motor skills needed at school. All of these items require dexterity and strength.
In-Hand manipulation play for fine motor skills: We had so much fun with water beads. This post shares two ideas for improving in-hand manipulation skills which are so important for dexterity in self-care, handwriting, coin manipulation…and so much more!
Finger isolation, tripod grasp, eye-hand coordination, bilateral hand coordination…Fine Motor Play with Crafting Pom Poms has got it all! We even worked on color identification and sorting with this easy fine motor play activity.
What play ideas can you come up with using common tools? These items are GREAT ways to build hand strength and dexterity that will be needed in kindergarten for pencil grasp development and endurance in handwriting.
tweezers
tongs
beads
toothpicks
hole puncher
peg boards
lacing cards
These fine motor activities will engage your student in fine motor skills for effective hand use in functional school tasks.
Play in Kindergarten is essential for so many areas. Kindergartners are young students who need brain breaks from desk work. Not only for that reason, but for turn-taking, language, social interaction, self-confidence, problem-solving, and interaction, play is an important part of your Kindergarten student’s daily lives.
Play builds skills! Check out this post on the incredible power of play. Play helps kids learn and develop cognitive experiences and the neural connections that impact their educational career, beginning right now! Occupational therapists know that play is the primary occupation of children, but what’s more is that play builds the very skills that kids need to learn and develop.
Kindergarteners can gain valuable input through play:
Cognition
Problem Solving
Executive Functioning Skills
Attention
Strength
Balance
Visual Motor Integration
Visual Processing
Sensory Integration
Self Regulation
Language Development
Self-Confidence
Fine Motor Skills
Gross Motor Skills
Social Emotional Development
Stress Relief
Behavior
Imagination
Creativity
Try these play ideas in the classroom or at home for fun learning (through play)!
Crafts in Kindergarten are a great tool for so many areas. Students can work on direction following, order, patterns, task completion, scissor skills, fine motor dexterity, tool use, and more by completing crafts in Kindergarten.
Kindergarten crafts can have one or more of the areas listed here to help and build skills:
Scissor practice (placing on hand and opening/closing the scissors)
Exposure to different textures and art supplies
Practice with using a glue stick and bottle of squeeze glue
Practice cutting strait lines and stopping at point
Practice cutting simple shapes
Practice cutting complex shapes
Coloring
Painting with finger paints and paint brushes
Experience washing hands after crafting
Opportunities for creative expression
Opportunities for rule-following and direction following
Multi-step directions
Experience copying a model for visual motor benefits
Try a few (or all!) of these Kindergarten crafts for fun arts and play with your student.
These tangram activities are designed to develop visual perceptual skills, visual motor skills, and fine motor skills in kids. Tangrams make a great addition to any occupational therapy treatment bag!
Tangram Activities
Tangrams are a great tool for learning and development. The colorful shapes are perfect for building images and working on math skills such as shape identification and patterning.
Tangrams are also an easy way to incorporate visual perceptual skills, fine motor skills, and visual motor integration into play.
Development of visual perceptual skills is essential for tasks like reading, writing, math, movement, self-care, and many other functional tasks. These tangram activities are perfect to improve visual perception in a playful way. You can use tangrams to address visual perception in many more ways, including ideas to help with handwriting.
And check out these cardboard tangrams for developing visual motor integration skills.
This post contains affiliate links.
Visual perception allows us to take in visual information, process it, and use it to interpret information from our environment. There are many parts of visual perception, but today, I’ve got three visual perceptual skills that can be developed using tangrams.
Visual Percepetion and Tangrams
1. Visual Discrimination allows us to determine similarities and differences based on color, shape, etch. This skill allows us to know that a 6 and a 9 are different and that a p and a q are not the same letter.
Use tangrams to work on visual discrimination:
Place tangram shapes on a piece of paper. Ask the child to locate all of the triangles, all of the squares, etc.
Ask the child to find shapes that are the same even if they are different sizes. This tangram set has several different sizes of triangles, making it a great tool for form constancy.
Use two different shapes to discuss what makes the shapes similar and different.
2. Visual Memory allows us to retain visual information. We need visual memory in order to copy written work.
Use tangrams to work on visual memory:
Use the tangrams for a hands-on game of “Simon”. Place shapes on a piece of paper, taking turns to add one new shape at a time. Each player should recall the previous round before adding a new tangram shape.
Place several tangram shapes on a piece of paper. Allow the child to stare at the shapes for a period of time. Then, cover the shapes with a second piece of paper. Ask the child to recall the shapes that they saw.
3. Form Constancy is the ability to recognize shapes and forms no matter what position they are in.
Use tangrams to work on form constancy:
Use tangrams to build form constancy by positioning shapes in different positions. Ask the child to locate all of the squares, quadrilaterals, etc.
Position shapes on one side of a piece of paper. On the other side of the paper, position shapes that can be combined to make the shape on the first side of the paper. Ask the child to match up the two sides.
Position shapes along one side of a piece of paper. Position matching shapes along the right side of the paper, with the shapes slightly rotated. Ask the child to match up the shapes.
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.
Visual Spatial Relations is an important visual perceptual skill that is important for many functional tasks. Spatial relations allows the organization of the body in relation to objects or spatial awareness. This is an important part of spatial awareness in handwriting and many other movement-based activities. An important part of visual spatial relations includes laterality and directionality. In general, these spatial relationship terms refer to left-right body awareness and the ability to perceive left/right relationship of objects.
Spatial Relations is being aware of oneself in space. It involves positioning items in relation to oneself, such as reaching for items without overshooting or missing the object. Most of us realize as we walk through a doorway that we need to space ourselves through the middle of the door.
Some with poor visual spatial skills may walk to closely to the sides and bump the wall. It also involves the fine motor tasks of coordinating handwriting with writing in spaces allowed on paper, placing letters within an area (lines), and forming letters in the correct direction.
What are spatial relations?
Spatial relations, or visual spatial awareness, refers to an organization of visual information and an awareness of position in space so the body can move and perform tasks. Spatial relations are needed for completing physical actions, moving in a crowded space, and even handwriting.
Knowing which shoe to put on which foot. Understanding that a “b” has a bump on the right side. Putting homework on the left side of the take home folder before putting books into a locker beside the gym bag. Visual spatial relations are everywhere!
More examples of spatial relations
Here are more everyday examples of spatial relations at work:
Letter formation and number formation
Writing letters without reversal
Reading letters without reversal
Sports
Completing puzzles
Walking in a crowded hallway without running into others
Visual spatial skills in occupational therapy activities are an important skill.
Visual Spatial Skills and Handwriting
Spatial relations, and the ability to organize physical movements related to visual information impacts handwriting.
You might be thinking: “Movement and handwriting!? What?? I want my kiddo to sit still and copy his homework into his planner without wiggling all over the desk!”
Ok, ok. Here is the thing: We are asking our kids to write way to early. Preschoolers are being given paper with lines and are asked to write their name with correct letter formation. Kids are being thrown into the classroom environment with expectations for legible written work an they are missing the necessary basics.
When kids are not developing the skills they need to hold a pencil, establish visual perceptual skills, and organize themselves, they are going to have struggles in handwriting.
NOTE: There are a few other baseline tools that kids need in order to establish a base for better handwriting. Fine motor experiences, positioning, attention are just a few of these areas.
Here are a few easy hands-on strategies to help with spatial relations in written work:
Spatial Relations Quick Tip: Write a letter on the student’s back using a finger or a pencil eraser. Ask the student guess what letter it is. Then, ask the child to air write the letter. (While holding a pencil, with large motion, whole arm motions AND very small with just the fingers!) Finally have him write the letter on paper.
These activities all require the ability to perceive an object in space. The way they interpret position in space to their body and to other objects in the environment impacts motor skills.
Spacing pieces of a puzzle amongst the others and writing in relation to the lines is one way to work on this skill.
Fine Motor Quick Tip: Encourage pinching activities. So many kids are exposed to screen technology from a young age. Screen interaction uses the pointer finger in isolation or just the thumb. These digits become strong and a dynamic pencil grasp is limited. Promote strengthening of the intrinsic muscles by pinching clay or tearing and crumbling small bits of paper. Read more about intrinsic muscle strengthening here.
Spatial Relations Activities
Try these movement-based spatial relations activities to work on the visual spatial skills needed for writing and completing everyday tasks:
Create a paper obstacle course. Draw obstacles on paper and have your child make his /her pencil go through the obstacles.
Draw circles, holes, mud pits, and mountains for them to draw lines as their pencil “climbs”, “jumps”, “rolls”, and even erases!
Create an obstacle course using couch cushions, chairs, blankets, pillows to teach left/right/over/under.
Write words and letters on graph paper. The lines will work as a guide and also a good spacing activity.
Use stickers placed along the right margin of to cue the student that they are nearing the edge of paper when writing.
Highlight writing lines on worksheets.
Draw boxes for words on worksheets for them to write within.
Practice directions. Draw arrows on a paper pointing up, down, left, and right. Ask your child to point to the direction the arrow is pointing. The child can say the direction the arrows are pointing. Then create actions for each arrow. Up may be jumping. Down may be squatting. The Left arrow might be side sliding to the left, and the Right arrow might be a right high kick. Next, draw more rows of arrows in random order. Ask your child to go through the motions and try to go faster and faster.
Other activities to incorporate spatial relations include:
Today’s free printable shares movement based activities to help kids improve their spatial relations. These are the skills kids need to write legibly. It includes tips and activities to improve spatial relations, that were mentioned above. This free handout is a great resource to add to your occupational therapy toolbox.
You will receive this handout when you join the Handwriting Tips and Tricks series. Each day over the course of 5 days, you’ll receive a free handwriting worksheet to use in addressing common handwriting issues.
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 I have a fun baseball and softball activity to add to your therapy toolbox. This interactive therapy slide deck goes really well with our other baseball activity (perfect for softball themed fun, too!); this baseball matching game.
Baseball and softball activity
This baseball and softball activity is a digital connect four game is a lot like our other more recent digital connect four game with a space thing.
However this online connect four game has a baseball and softball theme that fits perfectly with the interest of many of the kids we work with.
Kids that love baseball or softball will love this Connect 4 game that actually addresses therapy goal areas and functional tasks, such as handwriting, letter formation, number formation, eye-hand coordination, visual scanning, visual memory, working memory, visual attention, and more.
Baseball & Softball Writing Activity
When you use it in Google slides the game is interactive, allowing kids to move the baseball and softball game pieces to play Connect Four.
This is just one of the many free slide decks available here on the site. Be sure to grab them all!
Because users can select the baseball or the softball game pieces, and then move them to cover spaces and play traditional Connect 4 games.
There is also a slide with letters on each space on the board. When players move their piece to cover that letter, they can write the letter focusing on letter formation. Expand the activity to ask kids to write a word that begins with that letter, or to write a sentence containing words that only begin with that letter. The game is very open-ended to meet the needs of all levels of students.
You’ll also find a game board containing numbers. Use this to work on number formation. OR, incorporate gross motor movement, balance, coordination, motor planning, and ask kids to do that number of a specific task, like jumping jacks, hops, skips, etc.
The online connect four game can be played with a therapist or another person and each participant can move the game pieces. Kids that love baseball or softball will love this virtual connect four game!
All of these are fun ways to address letter and number formation with an interactive and engaging activity.
Want to add this baseball themed activity or softball themed activity to your therapy Toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below to receive this interactive slide deck. It can be a great tool for a virtual therapy sessions teletherapy or face-to-face therapy activities. Consider even using this in-home or brain break activities in the classroom or at home.
To receive this free interactive connect four game enter your email address into the form below and it will be delivered to your email address via PDF.
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 Baseball matching game is another free slide deck to use in digital or face to face therapy sessions while working on a variety of occupational therapy skill areas. It’s a fun way to foster visual perceptual skills and social emotional learning through a baseball theme!
Today we have another social emotional resource for teaching emotions and showing children how to match facial expressions to meaning of emotions this baseball emotions game uses the spot it matching strategies to work on social emotional development as well as visual perceptual skills kids can.
This is a free therapy slide deck, so it can be used in teletherapy services or virtual sessions. However, now that more schools are moving to a face to face setting in the fall, this resource is still a great way to outline therapy sessions. Use the slides as activities with a baseball theme in therapy.
Kids can work on social emotional development skills that they need for communication playing with others and social participation by using the game as a tool for social emotional learning skills such as naming facial expressions.
Baseball matching Game
This baseball matching activity is great for a baseball theme or for kids that love all things sports and baseball.
On the slides kids will notice baseball gloves and baseball mitts that have different facial expressions.
When they play the game they can begin with the first slides that ask them to name and label emotions.
Kids can type right into the slide deck and name the emotions on different baseballs.
Then, the slide deck includes a matching component. Users can look at each circle on the slide and look for one matching pair. When they find the match, they can move the baseball bat to cover the matching baseballs.
These visual perceptual and visual motor skills are needed for hand writing and copying materials from a written source such as the chalkboard or dry race board.
If you were looking for baseball themed activities for therapy this slide deck is a great resource.
Access this slide deck in by entering your email into the form below and you can receive a free printable PDF which will lead you to the slide deck. This is a great activity for teletherapy or for using to facilitate face-to-face therapy sessions with children who love all things baseball or sports.
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.
Visual sensory processing may be over-responsive or under-responsive. We explain how these areas appear as a result of sensory challenges in our blog post with a visual graphic sensory processing disorder chart.
Outdoor Sensory Activities for Visual Processing
Today, I’m sharing visual sensory activities that can be done right in the backyard. The visual sensory system is so closely related to the auditory and vestibular systems and is essential for function and independence in skills like reading, writing, and motor planning, balance, eye-hand coordination, among many other areas. The visual sensory system is responsible for visual acuity, oculomotor control of the eyes, and processing of what our eyes take in. When one or more of these areas are a problem, functional skills are affected.
We’ve been sharing creative and easy sensory-based activities that can be done right in the backyard. This is perfect for summer (and the series was intended as a backyard summer series!) but each post in the series can totally be adapted for year-round sensory ideas for backyard play.
Backyard SENSORY ACTIVITIES for Visual Processing:
Grass hide scanning- Use grass clippings to fill a large plastic bin. Tuck small items, coins, or small parts into the bin. Ask kids to scan the area and locate items with just their eyes. Kids can try to remember the order that they found the items in a visual memory game.
Backyard Toy Memory Game- Continue to work on visual memory and scanning visual perceptual skills by spreading out small toys into a plot of backyard. Ask your child to look at the toys and try to remember all of the items. Cover the toys with a blanket and then remove one or two items. Remove the blanket and ask your child to recall the missing item.
Cloud Scan- Lay on the ground with your child as you look up at the clouds on a clear but cloudy day. Watch clouds as they move across the sky. Ask your child to see images in the clouds shapes. Ask them to rotate on the ground so that their head is now where their feet just were. Ask them if they still see the same shape or if it is a new shape. Discovering an outline of a shape in a form uses a visual perceptual skill known as form perception and works along with visual closure and form constancy to allow us to determine that shapes, letters and numbers are the same no matter what their direction.
Figure Ground Hunt- Use rocks and letters to practice visual perception with a sensory bin like we did in this activity.
Catch a ball. Try catching while standing, sitting, swinging, rolling a ball, catching between legs, etc.
Hit a tennis racket at a target. Ideas include bubbles, falling leaves, large balls, small rubber balls, and balloons.
Scavenger hunts-try doing these while crawling.
Catching butterflies in a net. Try catching fire flies, too.
Visual scanning between targets.
Bubble pop- Try popping bubbles with a toe, knee, foot, head, finger, or elbow.
Looking for more backyard sensory ideas for summer?
The Summer Sensory Activity Guide is the place to find everything you need for a summer of sensory input. Use the sensory activities described in the booklet as a guide to meet the individual needs of your child. The activities are not a substitute for therapy. Rather, they are sensory-based summer activities that are designed to address each sensory system through summer play. Activities are described to involve the whole family. Check out the Summer Sensory Activity Guide today!
The guide is included in our Summer OT Bundle:
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 frog emotions game slide deck is a tool for helping kids to identify emotions based on facial expression. It’s a social skills activity for young children that goes perfectly with this frog writing activity and our cute frog crafts. Use all frog games together as frog themed activities that develop skills.
Teaching emotions is an important part of social emotional development. That’s why this emotions game (with a cute frog theme) is so much fun, but also a great way to help kids learn to identify emotions, match up emotions by facial expression, and label different feelings. It’s just one of the many free slides here on the site, and one you’ll want to add to your toolbox.
Frog Emotions
You might be wondering “frog emotions? What does that mean?”
But we are not talking about the emotions of frogs here…we mean that you can use a fun theme like frogs and toads to talk to kids about emotions and emotional expressions! It’s an activity like this that uses frog emotions to help us explain to kids how they feel, how mood and affect impact their overall wellbeing, and how we all (even the cute frogs in this free slide deck activity) have feelings. It’s empathy skills through play!
Working with kids in occupational therapy sessions have shown me one thing…and that’s the fact that if we can make things fun and engaging (like the cute frogs in this activity) that we can help kids build skills!
This emotions game is modeled after several other similar emotions games we have here on the site. You can use all of these in sequence or to fit with different themes in therapy or in the classroom or home. Each emotions game includes a “spot it” type of matching game that allows kids to feel challenged, but also builds essential skills.
These other emotions games might fit with some of your themes you have planned:
The emotions games in these activities and in the one shown below, children can label different facial expressions and give a name to the visual emotions. The important thing here is to note that there is no right answer. Some children might have different names for emotions or the feelings that they experience.
In the frog theme slide deck, there are different facial expressions for each frog’s face. Kids can type right into the slide deck and add a label for those expressions. You can extend this activity in several ways:
Ask kids to mimic the visual facial expression that they see on each frog’s face.
Ask the user to identify a time that they have experienced that particular emotion.
Ask the user to tell about a time that they have seen other’s experiencing that emotion. You can talk about what might lead up to another person experiencing a particular feeling or emotion. This task helps to build empathy for others.
Ask the child to identify ways to reach out to others when they might be feeling particular emotions. How can they help others who are feeling sad or angry? How would they like others to reach out to them when they themselves are feeling a particular feeling?
Ask the child to specify ways that they respond to particular emotions. What do they do when they feel upset, silly, or frustrated?
The next part of the slide deck includes matching activities in a “spot it” type of emotions game. The slide decks are interactive, meaning that kids can move the lily pads to cover the matching emotion on each slide.
Each slide has only one matching facial expression, and the player can look at each image and try to find the matching expression.
Frog Emotions Game
As an occupational therapist, I’ve found that incorporating themed activities like a frog emotions game can be incredibly beneficial for children. This type of activity not only targets emotional regulation skills but also adds an element of fun and engagement to therapy sessions.
Children are often drawn to themed activities because they provide a novel and exciting experience, making therapy feel less intimidating and more enjoyable. The frog theme adds a playful twist, allowing kids to explore and express their emotions in a lighthearted manner. By integrating games like this into therapy sessions, we can create a motivating environment that encourages active participation and enhances the overall effectiveness of treatment.
The frog theme activity is a social emotional learning game that kids can use to build awareness and strategies, too.
After playing the emotions matching on the slide, then focus more on building awareness of emotions and social development. After the child finds the match, they can identify the expression that is depicted on that frog’s face. T
hen, go back to what was covered in the beginning with some of the same questions: how do they think that frog feels? When did they experience that expression? If they felt angry (or frustrated, silly, sad, etc.) in school when they need to complete an assignment? How would they feel if they were playing a game and experienced feelings of frustration?
All of these questions allow the child to think in situational experiences so they can be ready to function. Situational awareness, empathy of others, and social emotional development are all learned skills, and having experience, the words to use, and tools in their back pocket will allow them to function in future tasks or situations.
After you are done playing, just go to the slide deck edit history and click “reset slides” to revert them to their original set-up. You can then play again…just click the lily pads and drag them to cover each matching frog face, and work on labelling emotions again and again!
Free emotions game slide deck
We have a free frog themed emotions activity in slide deck form.
To add this free emotions game to your therapy toolbox, enter your email address into the form below. You’ll receive a printable that you can use in therapy, the home, or the classroom.
NOTE- Email addresses on a school or work server may block the email delivering your file. Consider using a personal email address for better deliverability.
Done for you motor skills activities and FUN frog and toad themes combine in the Frogs and Toads Motor Skills Mini-Pack. Work on grasp, hand strength, eye-hand coordination, handwriting, scissor skills, heavy work, gross motor skills, coordination, and all things fine and gross motor skills in this 43 page printable packet.
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.
