Are you a seasoned therapist who is new to occupational therapy teletherapy? Are you looking for teletherapy resources to streamline your OT interventions and serve kids digitally so they can achieve their functional goals?
Does any of this sound familiar…
- You were thrown into the world of teletherapy, and don’t have time to reinvent the wheel…
- You’re trying to figure out technology AND serve the kids on your caseload AND find ideas for each session…
- The kids you’re working with don’t have materials at home to work on their OT goals…
Therapists everywhere are struggling with these same issues.
Teletherapy Resources
With all of the recent changes of this year, OT professionals have been thrown into the virtual world and are striving to understand teletherapy. Many are brand new to teletherapy treatment or are seeking resources to use in telehealth. This is that resource center. Here, you will find occupational therapy teletherapy tools to work with kids online, whether that be in the school-based setting, or as part of outpatient OT services. Here, you will find OT activities as well as all of the information you need to flourish in online OT!
Below, you will find information, tips, and tools related to the following topics: What is teletherapy? Occupational therapy teletherapy activities, free teletherapy slide decks, resources for telehealth, and more.
What is Teletherapy?
Occupational therapists strive to help individuals achieve, maintain, or develop meaningful activities…or occupations. We help people across the lifespan to do the things they want and need to do. Through the use of daily activities, or functional tasks, OTs help people achieve and perform those very tasks. Occupational therapy practitioners help people of all ages live a full life, despite injury, illness, or disability.
Teletherapy is just one platform for OTs to help people achieve meaningful goals. On telehealth virtual sessions, occupational therapists perform individualized assessments of a person’s functioning and goals. We create a personalized plan of action to help clients perform daily occupations and reach their goals. And, we intervene with functional activities in order to help them reach those goals.
Virtual therapy sessions occur on a teletherapy platform or via an online meeting space, such as Zoom. Other therapy assignments can occur on a Google classroom or through email. Occupational therapy home programs can be used to supplement virtual OT sessions.
Here on The OT Toolbox, therapists have the opportunity to create blog posts that can be used as a tool in offering resources and therapy activities to their client families or caseload. Read more about getting started with The OT Toolbox home program feature.
Be sure to check out these tools listed above:
- Understanding teletherapy-What is teletherapy and explaining telehealth to kids
- Choosing a telehealth platform– Read more on this if you are starting off on creating your own independent telehealth practice, if you are adding teletherapy to your practice, or you need options for hosting telehealth sessions.
- Incorporating home programs into telehealth-Use these ideas to get buy-in from parents seeking to help their kids achieve goals, and carry-over of therapy activities to the home.
Free Teletherapy Planner
Maybe you have a full schedule of teletherapy clients, or maybe you are dealing with just one or two clients that need treated virtually. No matter what your caseload looks like, you need a plan in place to make your life easier.
That’s why I created this free teletherapy planner.
Download this free planer and start each week off knowing what specific activities you need, the theme you are working with, and what materials you need for your week ahead.
Teletherapy Activities
Once you have a plan in place, it’s important to find specific resources to do with your clients in each therapy session. Having a plan makes things so much easier when you open your laptop on Monday morning. (…and then again the next day, and the day after, and…you get the idea!)
You can use this plan to fill your therapy planner so you are all set and prepared with themes for the week.
If you are participating in our teletherapy mini-course, you’ll find that using themes and filling in activities that fit with each client’s needs is the way to go. Plan out one theme of crafts, gross motor activities, fine motor activities, etc. and adapt or modify the activities based on that individual’s specific needs. We cover more about this in the teletherpay mini-course.
Want to join the teletherapy mini-course? I would love to talk teletherapy with you! It’s a free 5 day email course that directs you to all of the resources available on The OT Toolbox so you are organized, planned out, and ready to go with your teletherapy treatment sessions.
Enter your email address in the form at the bottom of this post to join in on the Teletherapy Mini-Course.
Some of the OT resources available here on the site include the ones listed below.
Be sure to join the OT Teletherapy mini course if you haven’t already, because I’ll share more specific telehealth activities in the coming days in that series.
- Check out these occupational therapy teletherapy activities for specific strategies to address functional tasks.
2. Other activities like crafts to build fine motor skills or sensory coping tools can be easily adapted into the telehealth model of delivery.
3. These are specific ways to work on fine motor skills in teletherapy.
4. Creative interventions for online therapy with kids needs just an out-of-the-box perspective. How can you take these handwriting activities and use them to meet the needs of kids?
5. Use executive functioning activities in a coaching model to work on areas like impulsivity, focus, prioritization, planning.
6. What about reading a book together and using it as a theme for an activity that build fine motor skills, emotional development, or visual motor skills? These books to use in therapy are perfect for working on different occupational therapy areas in telehealth.
7. These books are ways to work on emotional regulation and social development as well as sensory coping strategies to use in regulation.
8. Use these OT home program activities in designing specific recommendations for children.
Free teletherapy slide decks
These are just SOME of the teletherapy slide decks available on The OT Toolbox, but they are perfect for getting started with using Google slide decks in your teletherapy sessions.
Each slide deck follows a theme, and can be used with any age level to work on specific skills, depending on the client’s needs.
You will need to enter your email address in each blog post form so that the slide decks can be delivered to you.
To use the slide decks, you will need a Google gmail email account. When you open the slide decks, you will be prompted to make a copy of the slide deck. This slide deck will then be yours to share with those on your occupational therapy caseload.
Back-to-School Activity Slide Deck (visual perceptual skills)
Teach Letters Alphabet Move and Write Slide Deck
Movement Activities Monster Theme Slide Deck
Letter Formation Slide Deck of Teletherapy
Animal Theme Visual Perception Slide Deck
Strait Line Letters Teletherapy Slide Deck
Self-Awareness Activities Slide Deck
Want more help and resources to drive your teletherapy practice on autopilot? Join the Teletherapy Mini-Course 5 Day Email Series for tools and resources to make your life virtually simple!
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.
