This indoor ice skating activity is an older blog post on The OT Toolbox, but the gross motor benefits are perfect for today! Did you know you can use an indoor balance and coordination activity like paper plate ice skating (and the inside skating task below) to challenge and integrate proprioceptive input, vestibular sensory input, and work on various gross motor skills. This is a fun indoor gross motor activity kids love.
Indoor Ice Skating Activity
Sometimes, you come across a play activity that provides many skill areas and is just plain old fun. These indoor ice skates proprioception and vestibular activity is one of those.
A few years ago, we shared a bunch of winter sensory integration activities. This is on of those movement sensory ideas (that we’re just getting around to sharing this year!)
With this indoor ice skating activity, you can play indoors AND incorporate proprioceptive input, vestibular input, crossing midline, visual scanning, motor planning, among other therapy areas…all with play.
Use the indoor skates to move in circles, curved lines, and move as a real ice skater.
Ask the skater to carry objects from one point to another.
In this skating activity, kids are really challenging strength and balance. The carpeted surface is a slick and slippery surface when sliding with a non-resistant surface when sliding on a paper plate, wax paper, or cardboard. TO slide, you need to move the legs along without lifting along the carpet, using core strength to maintain balance.
To move the feet, kids need to engage muscles of the core help maintain balance without falling or sliding.
Tissue Box Ice Skates
This is an activity that I remember doing as a kid. When the weather is too cold or icy to get outdoors, adding any vestibular or proprioception input can be just what the child with sensory needs craves.
To make your own indoor ice skating activity, all you need is a couple of cardboard tissue boxes and a carpeted floor.
If you don’t have tissue boxes, you can use other materials to make indoor ice skates. Or, try some of these ideas. The options are limitless:
Depending on the material and the user’s motor skills, you may need to strap the cardboard pieces onto shoes with pieces of tape. Other users can slide their feet to move the materials along carpeted surface by sliding their feet.
There are many skills that are developed with this indoor ice skating activity. Let’s cover those therapy skill areas:
Use cardboard boxes to make a pair of indoor “ice skates” that work on a carpet.
Indoor Ice Skating and proprioception
Use empty tissue boxes to create ice skate “boots”. Moving the feet along the carpet requires heavy work, coordination, balance, and awareness of position in space.
Incorporate proprioceptive input by using a blanket and pull your child around a carpeted area. Ask them to squat down to a skater’s ready position as you pull them, too.
Try skating with the tissue boxes as an adult pulls the child along with a blanket or towel. Play tug of war with the blanket, too.
A child can work on vestibular input by skating fast from one target to another. Encourage them to position themselves in different ways as they skate around a carpeted room.
This activity works on crossing midline as the child “skis”. Sometimes you might see children with vestibular difficulties who have difficulty determining proper motor planning in activities. They might have trouble crossing midline in functional tasks as well as difficulties with reading and writing.
A movement activity that challenges the body’s position in space like this one can help with these problem areas.
Incorporate the ice and snow activities in our Penguin Therapy Kit to work on fine motor skills, handwriting, gross motor skills, self-regulation, sensory input, pencil control, and much more.
Use the ice and snow themes in our Snowman Therapy Kit with gross motor, fine motor, self-regulation tasks, sensory diet activities, crafts, and much more.
Snowman Therapy Kit
This print-and-go snowman-themed therapy kit includes no-prep fine motor, gross motor, sensory, visual processing, handwriting, self-regulation, and scissor skill activities to help kids develop essential skills. Includes everything you need for therapy tasks, home therapy sessions, and movement-based learning.
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 paper icicle craft is a fun one for wintertime occupational therapy activities. If you are working on Scissor skills, cutting icicles into paper is a great fine motor task that builds eye-hand coordination, crossing midline, and visual motor skills to cut basic shapes. Be sure to add this paper icicle template for more tools for your winter occupational therapy toolbox.
Take fine motor work a step further by grabbing our new winter crossword puzzle to incorporate a whole winter theme.
Paper Icicle Craft
Do you have a little one who is just learning to master scissors? Scissor Skills for children who have never picked up a pair of scissors before can be very daunting. Frustrations can build and the next thing you know, your little sweetheart is spiking the scissors across the table!
Kids learn all things at different paces. Every developmental milestone and functional activity are achieved at different paces.
Scissor use is no different. Kids as young as two can start to snip paper (and probably with an awkward-two handed grasp on the scissors!) And as their fine motor skills develop, will achieve more and more accuracy with scissor use.
This winter themed Icicle cutting activity is a great beginner project for new scissor users. The strait cuts, bold lines, and even paper type are good modifications for a new little scissor-hands!
Winter Icicle Craft
Preschoolers are just beginning to gain more control over scissors. Preschool activities like this icicle craft at the way to go when it comes to building motor skills.
Strait lines are the perfect way to gain confidence when they are learning to cut…and ensure that they’ll want to pick up the scissors and try another craft again soon! We started out with nice strait lines on these icicles. Little Guy could cut the whole way across the page without needing to rotate the page to cut a curve or angle.
Note: This post contains affiliate links.
How to Modify this Icicle Craft
The smallest icicle could have been a harder task for him to cut, if he turned the whole page around like he started out doing.
We used a few different strategies to scaffold this paper icicle craft:
Cut through the page instead of turning around corners
Adjust the paper weight to a thicker resistance
Thicker cutting lines
Trials with thinner lines to carryover the task with practice
Verbal and visual cues
I prompted him to start one line from the edge of the paper and then instead of rotating the whole page (which would have probably given him a big chopped off icicle point), I showed him how to start the other side from the edge as well. He was much more accurate with the lines and wanted to keep going!
We had two different types of paper for our icicles. The first set was drawn on a sheet of white cardstock.
Cutting from this thicker paper is a great beginning step for new scissor users and a modification often used for kids with fine motor difficulties.
The thicker paper requires slower snips and allows for more accuracy. I also drew the icicles on the cardstock with nice thick lines. This gave Little Guy more room to cut within the lines and allowed for less line deviation.
The second set of icicles were drawn with thinner lines on printer paper. After practicing on the first set, he was game to cut more icicles. The thinner paper and lines requires more control of the scissors and better line awareness, and bilateral hand coordination.
This looked like so much fun, that even Big Sister wanted to get in on the icicle-making action!
We hung our icicles in the window to match the icy conditions outside.
You’ll love these other cut and paste crafts for winter. Use them in winter fine motor ideas for occupational therapy activities
Winter crafts using paper and a variety of textures for sensory play, motor planning, and motor skills.
Paper Icicle Craft is an actual printable template that you can print off and use to work on the scissor skills we covered in this post. It’s a great way to make an icicle craft.
Build a Snowman Craft– Work on scissor skills and fine motor strength to build a paper snowman
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Looking for quick winter craft that builds skills? This paper icicle template is an icicle craft that kids will love! Use it to hang and decorate a window alongside some paper snowflakes for a wintery scene. Inspired by our icicle activity, this template is easy to use for visual motor skill development. Whether you are working on scissor skills or just want an activity to keep the kids busy, this icicle craft is the way to go!
Paper icicle template
Ice Ice Baby!
If you live where it is cold, winter seems here to stay. If you live in one of these frozen territories by choice, fate, obligation, finances, or bad luck, you might as well make the most of it. Use this cold and blustery weather to create another winter themed lesson plan. Let’s talk icicles!
When working with kids, it can be fun to pull out some interesting facts. These make great talking points, but for the students working on handwriting, they can spark a writing prompt idea too.
Icicles can grow at the rate of .39 inches (1 cm) per minute. Once the base is formed, each water droplet drips to the bottom of the cone where it freezes. Icicles can be lovely to look at, or be dangerous. From a homeowner perspective, the icicle can form because of a blockage in the gutter preventing water runoff. Did you see that scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas where the icicle rockets off the roof into the neighbor’s house? Funny/not funny.
The icicle gurus have created and entire Atlas cataloging icicles, saving images, and gathering all of the fun facts surrounding them:
Lucky for you, the OT Toolbox has designed a safe alternative to live icicles falling off of a building impaling someone or something. How about this icicle craft activity printable template for creating a multitude of fantastic activities for learners of all ages?
While there are endless possibilities for using this icicle template, the best one of course is GLITTER!! This project screams for glitter. Who doesn’t love glitter? (custodians, that’s who).
Beyond just using fabulous glitter, there are many skills that can be engaged using this icicle template:
Scissor skills: this can be graded up or down depending on the level of your learners.
Small toddler scissors are just right for tiny hands.
Thicker lines are easier to cut on than thinner ones
Larger shapes are easier than their smaller counterparts
Stiff paper is easier for cutting and holding than regular copy paper
Self opening or loop scissors are another way to make cutting easier for those learning to cut, or lacking the intrinsic hand muscles to open and close scissors.
Did you know left handed people cut in a clockwise direction while their right handed friends cut counter-clockwise? This allows the helper hand to support the paper adequately while cutting.
Kinesthetic awareness – This means learning by doing.
Hand strength and dexterity – staying on the lines builds hand muscles and develops muscle control.
Coloring and decorating: can incorporate copying from a model, creating an original design, following a pattern, creating a sensory experience, accuracy, neatness, and following directions
Visual motor skills –Combining what is seen visually and what is written motorically. This takes coordination to be able to translate information from visual input to motor output. Coloring, drawing, counting, cutting, and tracing are some visual motor skills.
Visual Perception – Developing figure ground to see where the lines are for drawing and/or cutting. Many young learners do not notice the black line as a border for cutting and coloring. Try highlighting this in different colors to help it stand out from the background.
Strength – Core strength needed for sitting, shoulder/elbow/wrist stability, finger strength, and head control all play their role in visual motor tasks.
Bilateral Coordination – Be sure your learner uses their helper hand for stabilizing the paper while using their dominant hand for writing/coloring/cutting.
Social/Executive Function – Following directions, turn taking, task completion, orienting to details, neatness, multi-tasking, attending to task, and impulse control can be addressed using this paper icicle template
The beauty of being able to modify and adapt this and all activities, is they can be made appropriate for many levels of learners from basic to more advanced. You do not have to reinvent the wheel for every learner on your caseload. With its adaptability, you can quickly make changes if your learner is functioning at a different level than you expected. This is critical as many treatment plans do not go as expected.
Other ideas for modifying this icicle template craft printable:
Cut the items out ahead of time for younger learners who are focusing on coloring and gluing
Laminate a few triangles to use as tracing patterns. Tracing around an object builds bilateral coordination.
Create patterns for your learners to follow
String together to make an icicle garland, working on lacing/hole punching/sequencing, and following directions
Make into a matching activity once several icicles are made. They can be matched by size, color, or design
Pin onto a bulletin board or wall to work on coloring on a vertical surface.
Work on the floor while learners are lying in prone
Add a gross motor element of having to find all of the triangles and bring them to the table
Make this a social activity by having learners share materials
Add large pom poms or scrunched up paper on the top of the icicles for a 3d effect
Add glitter and sparkles to the icicles for added sparkle and sensory experience
Paint the icicles with brushes, water colors, or finger paints
Drippy wet glue is preferred as it will stick better. The added benefit is the sensory input from white glue, as well as the fine motor strengthening from squeezing the bottle
The possibilities are virtually endless
When documenting any of these activities, the activity does not matter as much as the skills being addressed. Therefore the focus of documenting this icicle template craft will be on the skills such as cutting, coloring, executive function, behavior, strength, etc. rather than giving a lot of specifics about the craft itself.
Clinical observations during the icicle printable craft:
How well does your learner sit at the table? Are they stable, wiggly, do they fall or get out of the chair?
Does your learner use both hands for creating this icicle craft? Do they have a dominant and a helper hand, or switch back and forth?
How close to the line does your learner cut?
How much physical and verbal assistance does your learner need?
What is their grasping pattern on the scissors, crayons, markers?
What is their sensory response to glue, glitter, noise in the room, visual distractions?
What social and executive skills is your learner using and lacking? Cooperation, turn taking, following directions, attention to detail?
What behavior reactions are you noticing? Crying, poor frustration tolerance, seeking, avoiding behaviors?
In order to be well rounded in any treatment plans, it will be important to use more than one task to measure objectives and goals. Here is a great article on fine motor skills written by Colleen Beck, that includes background information on fine motor skills, activities, and resources.
Free Paper Icicle Template
It is no secret, I am not a fan of winter, however I do remember the wonder of looking up at the icicles formed on buildings, street signs, and monuments. I remember munching on an icicle or two as if it was a candy cane. We did not worry about acid rain, runoff, and other germs back in the 70s. Try and take a moment, slow down, and breathe in the wonder of nature.
I ate dirty icicles!
Victoria Wood, OTR/L
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
Today we have a fun fine motor paper snowman craft. It’s a “build a snowman printable” that you can print out and use to work on so many therapy skills. There is just something about making a snowman during the winter months, right? Today’s free fine motor snowman activity that kids will LOVE. So, do you want to build a snowman?
Build a Snowman Printable
Heck yes! Wait, not if I have to go outside. With this great fine motor snowman printable activity, you can build a paper snowman from the comfort of your own house, in your pajamas, with a cup of cocoa if you like…and work on fine motor skills, scissor skills, sequencing, bilateral coordination, and more!
It’s no secret I love crafts. You could pretend for half a second to like the cold and wet winter outside your door, or make this adorable snowman inside where it is warm. Build this into a lesson plan about winter by talking about what winter is like in different parts of the world, For learners who have never experienced snow, provide pictures or videos for reference. Talk about what they think snow feels like.
Snow comes in many different varieties. While it is all cold (except the plastic snow variety), some snow is wet and soggy, while other is dry and fluffy. There is also icy snow that creates this lovely sheen across it, and is very fun to smash and crash through! Each type of snow has its uses and benefits. Wet snow is better for building and packing. Dry and fluffy is better to keep you from getting soaked. Icy snow is just pretty to admire. For those with tactile defensiveness that impact touching wet, mushy snow this can be a good discussion.
Use this snowman printable as a jumping off point to the rest of your treatment sessions.
As always I love the versatility of this printable paper snowman craft. With one snowman printable, you can address skills like fine motor, visual motor, turn taking, finger strengthening, and following instructions all wrapped up into one cute snowman.
It would be a great interactive snowman activity for kindergarten, preschool, and all ages, depending on how you adjust the activity.
How to Use this Build a Snowman Printable
What you will need for this task:
Snowman printable
Ruler or laminated strip of cardstock
Clothespins
Glue (drippy glue is best)
Dice
Instructions: Color the snowman or print out the pre-colored sheet. Have students cut out snowballs and glue to the clothespins. Roll the dice and clip the corresponding number of clothespins to your ruler or strip of cardstock.
Explore all of the ways to use adapt and modify this free snowman printable:
Laminate the snowballs to make them more durable
Laminate the snowman head to make it reusable and durable
Change the ruler for a stiff piece of cardstock or cardboard
Print the snowman in color, or black and white so your learners can personalize theirs
Add large pom poms or scrunched up paper on the top of the snowballs for a 3d effect
Add glitter and sparkles to the snowballs for added sparkle and sensory experience
Paint the clothespins or dip in glitter to make them fancier
Drippy wet glue is preferred as it will stick better. The added benefit is the sensory input from white glue, as well as the fine motor strengthening from squeezing the bottle
Pre-cut and glue all of the pieces ahead of time if the emphasis is on playing the game
Split this into two sessions, the first being the craft, the second working on the game
Incorporate gross motor work: Scatter the snowball clips around the room and ask the user to gather the snowballs to build their snowman. Add hops, kicks, jumps, and animal walks to gather the snowballs.
What is your focus? What goals do you want to focus on while using this activity? You can use on or all of them:
Fine motor strengthening, hand development, and grasping pattern
Following directions, attention to detail, turn taking, waiting, social skills, compliance, behavior, and work tolerance
Cutting on the line ( if you choose to add this step), within half inch of lines, in the direction of lines
Pasting using glue stick or drippy glue with accuracy
Bilateral coordination – remembering to use their “helper hand” to hold the paper while cutting. Using one hand for a dominant hand instead of switching back and forth is encouraged once a child is in grade school or demonstrates a significant strength in one or the other.
Strength – core strength, shoulder and wrist stability, head control, balance, and hand strength are all needed for upright sitting posture and fine motor tasks.
If you have not totally burned out on the movie Frozen and all of the theme work that goes with it…like this Frozen sensory dough, this will be a great addition. This build a snowman activity can be creating Olaf from the movie. If you are super creative, you could switch out the head of the snowman for an Olaf printable.
What else can I add to this paper snowman craft?
Have learners write the stages to building a snowman
Higher level learners can write down the directions to the game
More advanced learners can work on social skills by teaching beginners to play
Learners can explore other games they could make using this snowman (perhaps hiding the snowballs around the room and having learners run around collecting them)
Write a report about snowmen, types of snow, the history of snowmen, different snow celebrations or activities
Turn it into a gross motor task, sensory activity, following directions, or combination of all of these
Add glitter! Glitter makes everything wonderful
More snowman activities
Incorporate more snowman themed activities along with this build a snowman printable for a full snowman theme.
Snowman crafts (tons of great snowman crafts and activities listed here)
And you can always head outdoors! Use this how to paint snow activity for more skill-building.
What creative ways have you made snowmen? I believe there was a little spray paint used instead of coal last winter, and I think the dog snatched the carrot before we had time to use it. We have had snowmen families, lady snowmen, and grass covered snowmen when there really wasn’t enough snow to make one.
If there is a dusting of snow in Charleston this winter, you better believe we will be out there rolling whatever snow falls down, creating our snowman. Until then, I will just have to enjoy the sand instead.
Free Build a Snowman Printable
Want to add this paper snowman printable to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below. This resource is also available in The OT Toolbox Member’s Club. Members can head to the dashboard and download the resources right there.
Keep those snowballs rolling!
Victoria Wood, OTR/L
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
The Snowman Therapy Kit is a winter-themed therapy kit designed to develop motor skills, self-regulation, handwriting, and scissor skills. Over 75 pages of therapy activities to develop fine motor strength, dexterity, core strength, regulation, functional grasp, and endurance.
When school is cancelled for a snow day, it can be fun to think of things to do in the snow. For parents or therapists, sometimes kids need things to do on a day at home so they stay off the video games and screens. Here, you will find therapist-approved winter family activities, things to do in the snow, and a special printable handwriting worksheet with snow writing prompts…perfect for a home therapy task that helps kids build skills through motor skills, PLAY, and even motivating and functional handwriting.
Things to do on a snow day
Whether you live in the snow, are dreaming about wintery conditions, or are happy to never have to see it again, there is a lot to be said about a winter day. Check out these snow and ice activities, for snowy fun that doesn’t involve all of the cold, ice, and snowflakes!
Snow days represent different things to different people. Does it represent winter family activities? As a child in Connecticut, winter and snowy days were great! There were endless things to do outside in the cold. These winter days meant bundling up layers and layers of clothing to head outside, building forts, rolling a snowman, shoveling sidewalks, climbing snow drifts, making snow angels, creating paths of footprints across the fresh, untouched snow, walking across a frozen pond, sledding down a huge hill, or skiing.
Some of my fondest childhood memories were made on winter days. During the blizzard of 1978, the snow was piled up over our heads. We walked on top of huge piles over ten feet tall. We had a sheepdog for many winters, it was funny to see his fur covered in snowballs from jumping in the wet snow. Not so funny having to take them all off after coming inside.
Snow days can also mean NO SCHOOL! We watched and waited for the announcement that there would be no school. While parents dread this news, kids everywhere cheer for a day off.
A day or two of fresh snowfall can mean some indoor cozy fun also. If the power went off, we had a rare chance for pizza from the little town. I think the neighbor had a snowmobile to trek down and collect it. It also meant hot cocoa and home baked cookies. In the 70’s and early 80’s TV was not really for kids, except Saturday mornings. School cancellations did not mean lazy days by the TV or playing electronics. Out came the board games, the Easy Bake Oven, puzzles, Legos, coloring books, and all of the other things we never seemed to find enough time for.
What does a winter snow day mean to you? Did you grow up with cold winters, or just read about it? Did you long for just one flurry during a southern winter? Winter days feel different to me now, than as a child. Today I would treat a winter day as a cuddle up under a blanket with hot cocoa, cookies, a good book, and a dog.
Snow days are now virtual school days?
What does a snow day mean to your learners? It could mean 100 different things. This is a great snow writing prompt for digging up memories, stories, shared ideas, and working on critical handwriting skills.
But, in many cases, a school cancellation means parents who still need to work while the kids are at home. There can be more screen time, video games, and YouTube watching than normal. Sometimes parents need a quick list of things to keep the kids busy and OFF screens.
Even more recently, in many areas, a school cancellation day is no longer a day off from school. Snowy conditions and ice or other weather conditions that may have previously meant a day off from school now may mean a virtual learning day. This change for many kids, is a change that may not go away now that many schools have virtual learning opportunities in place. In these cases, kids attend virtual school, but then they are finished early or have breaks during the school day. The last thing parents want their kids doing during a break from virtual learning is hopping onto another device!
That’s where a quick list of things to do on a snow day comes in handy.
In these cases, therapists who may be seeing students virtually can offer therapeutic activities that actually develop the very skills that the students on their caseload are working on.
Therapists may need a quick activity or task list that specifically addresses the skills their kids are working on, so the child can have an action list of activities to do outside in the winter.
These snow day activities can even be followed-up on and used as writing prompts in a later session to address executive functioning skills, handwriting, memory, and other skill areas.
That’s where the snow day activities worksheet available below comes into play. Print off the worksheet and use it to identify winter ideas. Then, when students do have a day off from school, they can use it as a winter bucket list. It’s also a great family activity list for winter days. Or, just use the worksheet in virtual or face to face learning to work on handwriting skills and executive functioning skills.
Things to do in snow Worksheet
This winter printable helps learners create a list of Things to do on a Snow Day.
Each person will have a different experience to write about. Encourage your learners to explore all different aspects of winter days, whether they have experienced them, or just read about it. Learners will write something to do in the snow in each snowball.
This activity can be modified for all levels of learners:
Lowest level learners can dictate what they would like written in the snow balls
This printable can be projected onto the board to work as a group task
Pictures of activities can be printed separately, cut and glued onto the snow balls. Use this Snow Day bingo game board to cut out ideas or play snowy bingo
The snowballs can be cut and glued onto a separate sheet of paper to add cutting and gluing to the task
Middle level learners can write one or two words in each ball.
Higher level learners can write an idea in each ball, then create a story or memory out of each idea. This turns into a multilevel activity to use during many sessions.
Skills addressed? As always, therapy or teaching is more than just fun and games. There are goals and objectives to be addressed. This Things to do in the Snow printable, while being fun and relevant, also works on key skills
Handwriting – Work on letter formation, letter size, spacing, word and letter placement
Letter formation – correctly forming the letters top to bottom
Letter sizing – correctly fitting the letters into the size boxes
Copying – copying words from a model, transferring the letters from one place to another
Fine motor strengthening, hand development, and grasping pattern
Sequencing – will your learner do the words in order? Will they go in a haphazard pattern all over the page?
Following directions, attention to detail, turn taking, waiting, social skills, compliance, behavior, and work tolerance
Cutting on the line ( if you choose to add this step), within half inch of lines, in the direction of lines
Pasting using glue stick or drippy glue with accuracy
Bilateral coordination – remembering to use their “helper hand” to hold the paper while writing. Using one hand for a dominant hand instead of switching back and forth is encouraged once a child is in grade school or demonstrates a significant strength in one or the other.
Strength – core strength, shoulder and wrist stability, head control, balance, and hand strength are all needed for upright sitting posture and writing tasks.
Remember, you can address all of these skills at once, or focus on one or two. Some skills above will be addressed without your conscious knowledge, while other skills will be directly worked on.
Documentation in Therapy with this Worksheet
Use this snow day worksheet to document and track skills for data collection. Take note of these areas to collect data for documentation:
the percentage of correct letters,
how many letters are formed correctly/directionality/legibility
size of letters in relation to the boxes
grasping pattern, hand dominance
attention to detail, following directions, prompts and reminders needed, level of assistance given
Therapist-recommended Winter Activities
If kids are filling out the worksheet and need some ideas to fill in the spaces, try these ideas. You can even fill out a worksheet to have as a copying activity for some student’s skill needs.
These things to do in snow are perfect for a day off of school or winter family activities:
What would you add to this list? Do any of these look like winter family activities that you would like to do on your next snow day?
Free Snow Day Worksheet
Make this snow writing prompt just part of your winter lesson plan. Print off this worksheet and get started with winter activities for the whole family! This winter worksheet is also available in the OT Toolbox Member’s Club. Members can log in and download this resource along with hundreds of other resources and tools to help kids thrive.
Gotta go get my cocoa and marshmallows!
Victoria Wood, OTR/L
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
Grab the Snowman Therapy Kit for more things to do on a snow day, or just in winter, whether you are on a snow day, or don’t even live in an area with snow!
Today, we have a fun handwriting resource for you. Grab your mittens because this snowball alphabet worksheet PDF is a free download that builds many skill areas. It may look like a snowball themed tracing worksheet, but this snowball letters PDF builds many skill areas. Let’s take a look at various ways to incorporate Winter Snowball letters into therapy and the classroom or home!
And, grab our mitten printable too in order to support fine motor skills, pencil control, and eye-hand coordination.
Snowball Letters
The OT Toolbox is continuing with its winter theme this month by offering another wonderful free printable. If you have to live/vacation/endure somewhere with snow, you might as well make the best of it. Everyone loves making snowballs. That is why they have snow making machines pumping out fake snow here in the south, so we don’t miss out on all of the fun. I have to say it is kind of strange sledding and throwing snowballs while wearing a short sleeved shirt.
Before we get to the snowball letters activities, check out these snowball sensory ideas. Use real snow brought indoors (or use the items outside!). Kids will LOVE to use these snowball tools with our fake snow recipe. Plus, when kids are involved in making the fake snow, there are more therapy goals to address like executive functioning, bilateral control, and even tactile defensiveness.
Snowball Maker- The beauty of making snowballs? It has evolved! No longer do you need to have cold wet mittens while scooping up layers and layers of snow. They have a tool for that! This (amazon affiliate link) snowball scooper is perfect for creating the perfect snowball.
Before you scoff and say you would rather do it the old fashioned way, you need to check this thing out! I made the most perfect fake balls of snow with this contraption. Now all I need is a launcher like they make for tennis balls, and some better aim. Are you intrigued by this wonderful tool?
Snowball Mold Set– Wait, there is more! Kind of makes me want to have a snow day to try all of this cool stuff out. You no longer have to roll snowmen, create handmade blocks for igloos, or scoop the snow with your hands. Tired of circle snowballs? They have a solution for that! This snow mold set comes with penguin and heart shapes. Need to be more efficient when creating these fluffy white bundles of fun? They have a tool that will make FIVE snowballs at once! They have just ramped being out in the snow to a whole new level.
Now that we have filled your shopping cart with such wonderful things to do in the snow, what about the days when your learners have to be in school, or it is too awful to stay outside all day? A winter skills treatment or lesson plan is just what you need.
Snowball Alphabet PDF
The OT toolbox is showcasing winter activities and PDF sheets all month long. Today’s cute design is an alphabet letter worksheet full of winter snowballs to practice letter formation.
As always I love the versatility of each of these pdf activities and printables. This design comes with two different ways to change the activity for different skill levels. Tracing inside snowballs or working on letter formation with blank winter snowballs.
When working with any learners, it is important to be able to adapt or grade your activity for multiple learning levels. What does it mean to grade an activity? To make it easier or harder for your whole caseload of learners or adapt the task for a specific learner. Suppose you get started with the blank snowballs and realize your learner has no clue what the letters look like. You would grade this down to either tracing, or copying letters from a model. You could grade it further down to matching letters or identifying them. You can grade up to writing lowercase and uppercase letters in the winter snowballs.
Snowball Letter Tracing Sheet
Since the first page is a tracing task, let’s talk about tracing. I am not a fan of tracing unless it is used correctly, or the objective is understood.
Tracing is not going to teach number/letter formation if the learner does not know what those figures are. To a learner who does not know these symbols, they will be tracing lines, not numbers or letters
Know your audience. If your learner does not know the letters or numbers, use the activity as a fine motor task to develop dexterity
Kinesthetic awareness. This long word means to learn by doing. Theoretically if a person writes the number 5 enough times, the body will start to recognize this pattern and commit it to memory. This only works if the learner understands what is being traced
Tracing for dexterity. This is the type of tracing I like best. Tracing for dexterity works on staying on the lines, fine motor control, building hand muscles, scanning and so much more.
What else does tracing and writing alphabet letters work on?
Handwriting – this is obvious as you are building letter formation
Fine motor control – holding a pencil, developing intrinsic muscle control to improve written expression, dexterity to stay on the lines on the tracing section
Letter formation – correctly forming the letters top to bottom
Letter sizing – correctly fitting the letters into the size boxes
Copying – copying letters from a model if you have graded it to include one
Working memory – remembering what letters have already been written, and what comes next. See if your learner can recall the next letter without going back to letter A each time
Sequencing – will your learner do the letters in order? Will they go in a haphazard pattern all over the page?
Bilateral coordination – remembering to use their “helper hand” to hold the paper while writing. Using one hand for a dominant hand instead of switching back and forth is encouraged once a child is in grade school or demonstrates a significant strength in one or the other.
Strength – core strength, shoulder and wrist stability, head control, balance, and hand strength are all needed for upright sitting posture and writing tasks.
Executive function skills – attention, frustration tolerance, task completion and initiation, self regulation, working independently
To learn more about executive function, type this into the search bar on the OT Toolbox to see dozens of posts on this topic. Here is a general post on executive function by Colleen Beck, owner of the OT Toolbox:
More ways to use the SNOWBALL ALPHABET WRITING PRACTICE SHEETS PDF
There are many otherways to adapt or grade the snowball alphabet sheet:
Laminate the page for using markers and wipes. This can be useful for reusability, as well as the enjoyment markers bring.
Place craft pom poms or mini erasers on the letters.
Cut out the snowballs and use them to match letters.
Use the snowballs for letter BINGO. Call out letters and ask kids to find the letter in the alphabet.
Call out a letter and have a student place a mini eraser or marker on the letter. Then they can form the letter onto paper or onto the blank snowballs.
Different colored paper may make it more or less challenging for your learner
Enlarging the font may be necessary to beginning handwriting students who need bigger space to write.
Create another page with all of the alphabet letters for copying or reference
Have students cut out letters from another page and glue to the snowballs – this adds a cutting and gluing element
Velcro the back of the snowballs, after laminating and cutting it, to create a matching game
Make changes to the type of writing utensil, paper used, or level of difficulty
Have students write on a slant board, lying prone on the floor with the page in front to build shoulder stability, or supine with the page taped under the table
Project this page onto a smart board for students to come to the board and write in big letters.
More or less prompting may be needed to grade e activity to make it easier or harder
Make this part of a larger lesson plan including gross motor, sensory, social, executive function, or other fine motor skills
How to document this activity:
First determine what goals and skills you are addressing. Are you looking strictly at letter formation, tracing, and alphabet recall? Or something else entirely such as executive function and behavior?
Focus your observations on the skills you are addressing. It is alright to address one or ten skills at once, just be sure to watch for those skills during the activity. This can take practice to watch everything all at once. Newer clinicians often videotape sessions to go back and review clinical observations they may have missed.
Use data to back up your documentation. Avoid or limit phrases such as min assist, fair, good, some, many, etc. They are vague and do not contain the numbers and data critical to proficient documentation. Instead use percentages, number of trials, number of errors, exact sizing, how many letters were written incorrectly, number of reversals, number of prompts, minutes of attention. You get the idea.
This type of documentation may feel foreign at first if this is not what you are used to, however insurance and governing agencies are becoming more strict on accurate documentation.
In addition to this great winter snowballs alphabet PDF worksheet, the OT Toolbox has entire winter themed lesson plans available as well as a Snowman Lesson Plan Kit that covers all aspects of therapy sessions.
These winter printables, including this Snowball Alphabet Worksheet will be highlighted all month long to help create amazing therapy sessions. I have to say I am kind of excited about the snowball making contraption for those of you who live in the frozen north.
Free SNOWBALL ALPHABET WRITING PRACTICE SHEETS PDF
Want to grab a copy of this Snowball Alphabet Worksheet PDF for your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below and the PDF will be delivered to your inbox. OT Toolbox Member’s Club members can access this writing practice sheet along with many others with one click to download, inside the dashboard.
I’d rather throw sand than snowballs any day!
Victoria Wood, OTR/L
Victoria Wood, OTR/L is a contributor to The OT Toolbox and has been providing Occupational Therapy treatment in pediatrics for more than 25 years. She has practiced in hospital settings (inpatient, outpatient, NICU, PICU), school systems, and outpatient clinics in several states. She has treated hundreds of children with various sensory processing dysfunction in the areas of behavior, gross/fine motor skills, social skills and self-care. Ms. Wood has also been a featured speaker at seminars, webinars, and school staff development training. She is the author of Seeing your Home and Community with Sensory Eyes.
Click here to read more about the Snowman Therapy Kit and to grab your copy while it’s on sale.
Need Winter Brain Breaks for the kids? Here, you will find energizing brain breaks are gross motor activities that can break up the school day or be added to the classroom schedule. Mix some of these movement breaks into the classroom to help kids focus and stay on task while getting a chance to get a short mental break from the class schedule. With more online time and increased screen time than ever before, and the added piece of wintery weather, brain breaks are needed more now than ever.
Winter Brain Breaks
I love that these movement breaks can give kids a chance to weave activity right into learning. Whether you are looking for stretches or specifics like activities that fit your curriculum, most of these brain break ideas can be modified to meet your classroom needs!
For more winter activities, try using these ideas to help kids develop specific skill areas:
Winter Fine Motor Activities – Use winter crafts, activities, snowflake crafts, and even paper icicles to work on fine motor skill work.
Indoor Recess Activities– These indoor recess activities get kids moving when it’s too cold to go outside.
This mitten printable is a great fine motor brain break that kids love. These are perfect for a fine motor and visual motor version of brain breaks.
And, you’ll want to check out our new Winter Fine Motor Kit. It’s an amazing resource of 100 pages designed to help kids move and build the skills they need. While focused on the fine motor aspect, this kit includes play dough mats, toothpick art, lacing cards, crumble art, I Spy pages, and more, all which can be used in indoor brain break types of activities.
Now, on to the winter brain breaks! Check out these Winter Brain Breaks for movement-based activity in the clinic, classroom, virtual therapy session, or home!
1. Build a snowman- This winter brain break requires imagination and some large motor skills! Students may need verbal cues and maybe a visual model when first doing this snowman brain break. Here’s what Pretend to roll a ball of snow. Then another big snowball. Ask students to place their pretend snowballs on the first one to build the snowman. Next, pick up a carrot and some “rocks” from the ground. Press them into the snowman’s head. Next, look on the “ground” to find some sticks for arms. Press them into the sides of the sides of the snowman. Add any additional details like a scarf, hat, or boots.
2. Winter Toothpick Art– Use the Winter Fine Motor Kit materials to get kids moving with the toothpick art activities. These can be used on cardboard or a carpeted area to help kids build fine motor strength and tripod grasp.
3. Penguin Freeze Dance- This winter brain break activity is a great addition to an arctic theme in the classroom! Take 5 minutes to move and groove, penguin-style! Turn on some music and the students can waddle like penguins! Then suddenly stop the music and all of the classroom penguins need to FREEZE! Play for about 5 minutes and then get back to learning.
4. Dice Roll- Write numbers 1-6 on the chalkboard. Assign each number to an action movement like hop up and down, touch the ground, stand on one leg, do a funny dance, jumping jacks, etc. Then roll the dice and everyone needs to do the action. Keep rolling and moving for 3-5 minutes. Some more action ideas include: turn in two circles, do a burpee, do a push-up, and sit on the floor then stand up very quickly.
5. Winter Crumble Art- This is another fun fine motor activity for indoor recess. Use bits of tissue paper or crumbled up construction paper to create a winter picture. These sheets are in the Winter Fine Motor Kit, too.
6. Winter Yoga- Add movement breaks to the classroom with some calming yoga moves. Winter themed yoga stretches can be a nice break in the classroom schedule when it’s too cold to go outdoors.
7. Winter Play Dough Mats– While not a traditional brain break, the winter play dough mats in our new Winter Fine Motor Kit allow kids a chance to move and gain essential proprioceptive input through their hands.
8. Snowman Says- Play a quick game of Simon Says with a snowman theme! Imagine you are part of a classroom full of snowmen who are moving their snowman parts. Use your imagination and stretch, move, and move that snow body! Use these printable Simon Says commands for specific skill-building.
9. Polar Bear Brain Breaks- This polar bear gross motor slide deck is wintery fun! We’ve shared a bear brain breaks free printable sheet here on The OT Toolbox. Use it with a polar bear theme! Hint: Do the same brain break activities and call it a polar bear move 🙂
10. Winter Brain Break YouTube Videos- There are some great break break ideas that are movement and activity videos on YouTube to get the kids up and moving so they are ready to learn. The YouTube brain break videos add movement and gross motor work. The ones listed below are winter themed.
11. Winter crossword puzzle– Brain breaks don’t need to be gross motor tasks. Use this printable to target fine motor skills and visual motor skills while taking a break from other activities as a self-regulation strategy.
I hope these ideas are helpful in creating opportunities for movement and activity during these indoor recess months at school!
WINTER FINE MOTOR WORKSHEETS
To end out the Winter Week here on The OT Toolbox, I wanted to create a fine motor worksheets that are a true resource during the winter months. The Winter Fine Motor Kit contains fine motor worksheets that cover a variety of different fine motor abilities:
These reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much more.
Play Dough Roll Mats- We’ve shared some free play dough mats before. They are perfect for developing fine motor skills and hand strength needed for tasks like coloring with endurance, manipulating small items, and holding a pencil. Kids can roll small balls of play dough with just their fingertips to strengthen the intrinsic muscles. The Winter Fine Motor Kit contains 6 winter play dough mats that can be used all winter long!
Pinch and Grip Strength Activities- Includes: glue skills page, tong/tweezer activities, lacing cards, finger puppets, 1-10 counting clip cards, 10 toothpick art pages, find & color page, 5 crumble art pages. TARGET SKILLS: Precision, pinch and grip hand strength, tripod grasp, arch development, bilateral coordination, open thumb web-space.
Pencil Control Worksheets- Connect the arctic animals or winter items and stay on the pencil path lines while mastering pencil control. Some of the lines are small and are a great way to strengthen the hands, too.
Arctic Animal Cutting Strips and Scissor Skills Sheets- Work on scissor skills to cut along lines to reach the arctic animal friends or snowflakes, snowmen, and mittens. This is a great way to strengthen the motor and visual skills needed for cutting with scissors. Also included are 7 scissor skills strips with graded precision designed for data collection and accuracy development, 2 color & cut memory cards, 4 pages simple cutting shapes in small/med/large sizes, 3 pages complex cutting shapes in small/med/large sizes, 2 small and 2 large cutting skills puzzles. These worksheets help kids develop graded scissor skill accuracy and precision, visual perceptual skills, eye-hand coordination, crossing midline, bilateral coordination.
Handwriting Sensory Bin Materials- You and the kiddos will love these A-Z uppercase and lowercase tracing cards with directional arrows, 1-10 tracing cards with directional arrows, 1-10 counting cards. Using the sensory bin materials can develop tactile handwriting, letter and number formation, finger isolation, crossing midline, sensory challenges. These materials in the Winter Fine Motor Kit are a great brain break idea for kids.
“I Spy” Modified Paper- Includes: Color and find objects in two themes: winter items and arctic animals; 3 styles of modified paper for each theme: single rule bold lines, double rule bold lines, highlighted double rule. Use these pages to develop handwriting, pencil control, line and spatial awareness, legibility, visual perceptual skills, visual memory.
Fine Motor Handwriting Sheets- Try the 4 Find/Color/Copy pages in different styles of modified paper, rainbow writing pages in 3 styles of modified paper. These handwriting worksheets use the winter theme to help with handwriting, visual perception, pencil control, visual memory, visual attention, precision, pencil control, functional handwriting.
Write the Room Activities- Using a winter theme, these Write the Room cards includes: 5 lowercase copy cards, 5 uppercase copy cards, 5 lowercase tracing cards, 5 uppercase copy cards, 6 cursive writing copy cards, 2 styles of writing pages. TARGET SKILLS: Letter formation, pencil control, visual motor skills, visual attention, visual memory, line placement, functional handwriting at all levels and stages.
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 an update on a very old blog post for a specific reason. This fake snow messy sensory play activity is a valuable tool in addressing tactile defensiveness, or tactile sensitivity. In general descriptions, this simply means an over-sensitivity to touch, or over-responsiveness to touch sensations. For kids with sensory issues, this can be a very big deal. Tactile defensiveness can mean poor tolerance to certain clothing, textures, food sensitivities, closeness of others, wearing socks or the feel of seams or clothing. Sensitivity to these touch sensations can look like many different things! Today we are discussing all about tactile sensitivity, what that looks like in children, and a sensory challenge that can be used for tactile sensitivity.
I briefly explained the meaning of tactile defensiveness above, but let’s break this down further.
The tactile system is one of our 8 sensory systems: touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, proprioception, vestibular, and interoception. The sense of touch is a very big piece of the whole picture.
The Tactile Sensory System is one of the earliest developed senses of the body, with studies telling us this sensory system begins to develop at around 8 weeks in utero. The sense of touch completes its development at around 30 weeks in utero when pain, temperature, and pressure sensations are developed.
Types of touch
The skin performs unique duties for the body, based on different types of touch input, and tactile sensitivity can be considered to occur in the various aspects of touch. These types of touch include: light touch, pressure, discrimitive touch, pain, temperature.
Most importantly for our ancient ancestors, especially, the skin protects and alerts us to danger and discriminates sensation with regard to location and identification. This is important because touch sensations alerts us to both discrimination and danger. These two levels of sensation work together yet are distinctively important. And furthermore, the skin is the largest and the most prevalent organ.
Touch discrimination- Discrimination of touch allows us to sense where on our body and what is touching us. With discrimination, we are able to discern a fly that lands on our arm. We are able to sense and use our fingertips in fine motor tasks. We are able to touch and discern temperatures, vibrations, mount of pressure, and textures and shapes of objects.
Danger perception– The second level of the tactile system alerts us to danger. It allows us to jump in response to the “fight or flight” response when we perceive a spider crawling on our arm. With this aspect of touch, we are able to discern temperature to ensure skin isn’t too hot or cold. We can quickly identify this temperature or sharpness of an object and quickly move away to avoid burning, freezing, or sharp objects.
When either of these levels of sensation are disrupted, tactile dysfunction can result. This presents in many ways, including hypersensitivity to tags in clothing, a dislike of messy play, difficulty with fine motor tasks, a fear of being touched by someone without seeing that touch, a high tolerance of pain, or a need to touch everything and everyone.
Sensitivity to touch can mean over responding to touch input in the form of textures, temperatures, or pressure. Touch sensitivities mean that the body perceives input as “too much” in a dangerous way. The touch receptors that perceive input are prioritized because the brain believes we are in danger. The body moves into a state of defensiveness, or safe-mode in order to stay safe from this perceived danger. This is tactile defensiveness.
What does Tactile Defensiveness looks like?
Hyper-responsiveness of the tactile sense may include a variety of things:
Overly sensitivity to temperature including air, food, water, or
objects
Withdrawing when touched
Avoids certain food clothing textures or fabrics
Dislikes wearing pants or restrictive clothing around the legs
Avoidance to messy play or getting one’s hands dirty
Avoidance of finger painting, dirt, sand, bare feet on grass, etc.
Avoids touching certain textures
Clothing preferences and avoidances such as resisting shoes
Resistance to nail clipping, face washing
Resists haircuts, hair brushing
Dislikes or resists teeth brushing
Overreacts to accidental or surprising light touches from
others
Avoids affectionate touch such as hugs
Dislikes closeness of other people
As a result of this avoidance, development in certain areas can be delayed, in a way that functional performance of daily tasks is impacted. What you see in as a result of a poorly integrated tactile sensory system:
Delayed fine motor skills
Rigid clothing preferences
Behavioral responses to tasks such as putting on shoes or coat
More information on sensory processing of each of the sensory systems and how that impacts daily life can be found in The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook. You’ll also find practical strategies for integrating sensory diets into each part of every day life, in motivating and meaningful ways. Check out The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook for moving from sensory dysfunction to sensory function!
How to help with tactile sensitivity
There are ways to help address these areas, so that the child is safe and can function and perform tasks in their daily life. While addressing tactile sensitivities doesn’t mean changing the child’s preferences, it can mean understanding what is going on, what the child does and does not prefer in the way of sensory processing, and it can mean providing tools and resources to help the child.
This should involve an occupational therapist who can take a look at sensory processing and integration and make specific recommendations.
Some strategies that can impact tactile sensitivity include:
Understanding the child’s sensory systems, and integration in the daily life of the child. Grab the Sensory Lifestyle Handbook to read more on sensory diets that are meaningful and motivating. These are sensory activities that can be integrated right into tasks like baths, tooth brushing, hair brushing, dentist visits, clothing changes, etc.
Take a look at clothing sensitivity red flags for areas of sensitivity to clothing that stand out for the individual child.
Read more on proprioception and the connection of heavy work input as a calming and regulatory tool for sensitivities.
Work on touch discrimination with activities at the level of the child.
Provide verbal input to warn the child prior to light touch
Provide visual cues and schedules for tasks that must be completed such as tooth brushing or hair brushing.
Trial tactile experiences at a graded level, introducing various sensory experiences in a “safe space” at a just right level for the child.
Tactile Defensiveness Sensory Activity
That’s where this messy sensory play activity comes in. By taking out the “messy” part of this sensory experience, children who dislike messy play or touching certain textures can explore the sensory activity and challenge tactile exposure. In this way, they are experiencing a new and novel texture (temperature and squishy, messy experiences), but at a safe level, or “just right” level for them.
This snow sensory play activity has the opportunity for tactile challenges, but it uses a plastic bag to contain the actual mess, allowing for a mess-free sensory experience, at different grades of texture exposure.
Fake Snow Recipe
We made fake snow one recent weekend, when we had a big cousin sleep over. There were six kids aged five and under staying overnight at our house. I had this activity planned for us to do together, (because I procrastinated ) and had to get it together to take to a Winter Festival at our church the next day. It was a fun messy play idea for indoor snow.
We’ve made this fake snow before and I have the recipe listed on our Messy Play Day post.
This fake snow is easy, because it includes only 2 ingredients:
Toilet paper
Ivory soap
With these two ingredients, there are many opportunities for tactile sensitivity challenges, and each child can experience sensory exploration at a level that suits their preferences. Some children may enjoy experiencing the dry texture of the toilet paper. (See the kids below…they sure enjoyed this texture.)
Other children may prefer (or avoid) the tactile experience of touching and manipulating the squishy, warm soap texture.
Others may tolerate mixing the two textures together.
Still others, may prefer none of these textures. In this case, move to the last level of this tactile experience, which is placing the fake snow into the plastic baggie. Then, they can squeeze and touch the sensory fake snow with a barrier in place. they will still experience the warm temperature and firm, heavy work of squeezing through their hands, but they will experience this sensory input in a “safe” level with that plastic bag barrier.
Fake Snow Dry sensory Bin
Step 1: Tear the toilet paper into shreds. Keep this in a bin or large container. We used an under-the bed storage bin because I was making a large quantity of fake snow for our Winter Festival.
We shredded the toilet paper and the kids had a BLAST! It started out so neat and kind. Tearing the toilet paper is a fantastic fine motor activity for those hands, too. It offers heavy work input through the hands which can have a regulating, calming impact on the joints of the hands. This can be a nice “warm up” exercise for the tactile challenge of exploring and manipulating the dry toilet paper texture.
For kids with tactile sensitivities, this might be “too much” for them to handle. Try using tongs and ask them to explore the toilet paper shredding sensory bin to find hidden items. Some of the paper cards and winter words in our Winter Fine Motor Kit are great additions to this sensory bin.
And then turned in to this.
And this.
Slightly off-course in our sensory bin, but of course it did. Why wouldn’t it when you have 6 cousins together? ((Ok, that part of this post was NOT mess-free…the end result is mess-free. I promise.)) So, then we popped the Ivory soap into the microwave…
Fake Snow Wet Sensory Experience
Step 2 in the tactile sensory experience is the wet fake snow portion. Following the fake snow recipe, we popped a bar of ivory soap into the microwave and ended up with a cloud of sensory material.
Children can touch and explore this sensory material for a warm, sensory experience.
Step 3 in the tactile challenge is mixing the dry material with the wet material. This can definitely be a challenge for those with tactile defensiveness or touch sensitivities.
If it is too much of a sensory challenge, invite the child to mix with a large spoon or to touch with a finger tip.
Other children may enjoy this part of making fake snow. The melted soap can be mixed with the toilet paper…to make fake snow!
Fake Snow Sensory Play for Tactile Sensitivities
THIS is the mess-free part that many children with tactile defensiveness may enjoy. 🙂
Simply place some of the fake snow material into a zip top plastic bag. You can tape the top shut to keep the material in the bag.
By manipulating the fake snow in a safe sensory manner, kids get exposure to a calming warm temperature. This is one low-level challenge to the tactile system. The warm temperature is a calming, regulating aspect that can be powerful in self-regulation.
Children can also squeeze, manipulate, pound, and spread the fake snow within the plastic baggie. This offers heavy work input through the hands and upper body in a way that is calming and regulating.
By placing the fake snow into a bag for sensory play, kids are exposed to tactile experinces in a way that may help with tactile discrimination by incorporating the proprioceptive sense.
Challenge motor skills further by adding items such as foam snowflake stickers, glass gems, and glitter. This was so much fun for my crew of kids and nieces and nephews and I hope it’s a tactile experience you get to play with as well!
Products mentioned in this post:
The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook– The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook is your strategy guide for turning sensory diets and sensory activities into a sensory lifestyle.
A Sensory Diet Strategy Guide The Sensory Lifestyle Handbook is a strategy guide for sensory processing needs. With valuable insight to the sensory system and the whole child, the book details how sensory diets can be incorporated into a lifestyle of sensory success. The thoughtful tools in this book provide intervention strategies to support and challenge the sensory systems through meaningful and authentic sensory diet tactics based on the environment, interests, and sensory needs of each individual child.
This print-and-go winter fine motor kit includes no-prep fine motor activities to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. This 100 page no-prep packet includes everything you need to guide fine motor skills in face-to-face AND virtual learning. Includes winter themed activities for hand strength, pinch and grip, dexterity, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, endurance, finger isolation, 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.
We live in an area with cold winters and lots of snow. With the wintery weather comes ice, salt, and snow plows. We’ve been watching many salt trucks rumble down our road, scattering salt and plowing snow. My kids love to see the salt truck come and every time the see one when we’re out and about, they shout, “SNOW PLOW” from the back of the minivan. We had to make an Easy Shapes Salt Truck craft to join our other truck crafts.
Other trucks and cars crafts that work on scissor skills with simple geomteric shapes include:
If working on scissor skills is a must, then this salt truck craft is the way to go. Kiddos that love all things trucks and vehicles will love it for the vehicle theme, but as a therapist, I see the geometric shapes, making it perfect for working on early scissor skills.
Salt Truck Craft
This post contains affiliate links.
To make the craft, you’ll need just a few materials:
Scissors
Yellow paper
Red paper
Black paper
White paper
Green paper
Glue
Other colors of paper can certainly be used! These are the colors we used, and I’ll describe the shapes you need for this truck craft here so you can use the salt truck as a template.
About paper type- Different types of paper provides different amounts of feedback for young scissor users. We love crafting with card stock or thicker paper, because it’s easy to hold with the assisting hand and the paper doesn’t easily bend or move when cutting through it with scissors. Cardstock paper is great for younger kids or those just learning to snip and cut with smooth lines as well as just starting with turning the scissors around a corner of simple shapes.. Its brightly colors make great crafting material and the thickness is perfect for new scissor users. You can find more information on types of paper for scissor skill development in our scissor skills crash course.
You’ll need to draw the following shapes:
Yellow Rectangle- for the body of the truck
Yellow Square- for the cab of the truck
White Smaller Square- for the window of the truck
Large Green triangle- for the truck’s Salt bed
Long Green rectangle- for the top of the salt truck’s bed
2 Black larger circles- for the wheels
2 Smaller white circles- for inside the wheels
Red Half Circle- for the plow
Small Red Square- for the plow attachment
Draw the shapes onto the paper and then start cutting. Cut shapes as pictured above to build the salt truck craft.
Snow Plow Puzzle
Constructing this snow plow puzzle is part of the fun! Kids can work on visual memory by building the truck from memory or by looking at an example picture and then back to their project.
You can build the salt truck with them and then deconstruct the truck. Ask your child to recreate the truck from memory, using their mind’s eye to recall the placement of the shapes. This memory is visual memory and an important skill for copying work when handwriting.
There are other visual perceptual skills at work, too.
Looking for specific pieces that are placed on the table surface is a challenge in visual scanning, visual discrimination, figure-ground, and form constancy.
Remembering the position of the shapes is part of visual discrimination, a skill needed when children need to remember subtle differences in a picture or written work. Difficulty with visual discrimination will be apparent when a child has difficulty discerning between b, d, p, or q.
Early scissor skills fine motor
For more ways to work on scissor skills, along with all of the fine motor skills needed for scissor use and handwriting, try the Winter Fine Motor Kit. It’s loaded with cutting activities, lacing cards, coloring, clip activities, fine motor art, and fun ways to help children develop pre-writing hand strength, dexterity, and motor skills.
Use the fine motor activities, lacing cards, toothpick art, and crafts in the Winter Fine Motor Kit. It’s a 100 page packet with all winter themes, and you’ll find penguins there!
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.
