Today, I’m excited to bring you another free Google slide deck, this one is a way to get kids moving and working on motor planning skills. It’s a Valentine’s Day gross motor activity that challenges bilateral coordination, crossing midline, movement challenges, and motor planning skills. Kids can follow along with this therapy slide deck and use the heart theme therapy activity to work on so many movement skills. Let’s get those kiddos moving in occupational therapy, physical therapy, in the classroom, or at home!
Valentine’s Day Gross Motor Activity
If hands-on activities that are used by many different children are possible, sensory-based tactile activities like this bilateral coordination activity with heart drawing is the way to go for building motor planning and coordinated use of both hands.
However, if you’re working with many children or in virtual therapy situations, a guided slide deck can be helpful in encouraging kids to build specific skills like motor planning, coordination, and strengthening.
That’s where this Valentine’s Day gross motor activity comes in.
This slide deck is a tool for helping kids develop skills in a variety of areas:
- Balance
- Coordination
- Motor planning
- Crossing midline
- Movement changes
- Sequencing
The heart theme is a fun way to encourage movement of these gross motor skills.
Kids can copy each slide in the deck and work on motor planning skills.
There are different upper body movement activities that can be used based on the needs of each individual child.
Working on balance? Go through the slides while standing on one foot and then the other.
Working on motor planning? Go through several slides and ask the child to recall the sequence of the movements as they complete the arm positioning with their eyes closed or without the visual prompt of the slides. Or, challenge the child to go through the movements as fast as they can.
Need a brain break activity? Combine heavy work like animal walks, wall push-ups, burpees, push-ups, or chair push-ups between each arm positioning.
Working on listening skills or direction-following? Use the slide deck in a “Simon Says” activity.
Valentine’s Day Gross Motor Slide Deck
Want to add this slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below.
Enter your email address below and you will receive a PDF containing a link to copy the slide deck onto your Google drive. Next, save that PDF file, because you can come back to it again and again and send it to the kids on your caseload (or classroom) so they can make their own copy on their Google drive.
Please use the copy of the slide deck and do not change the url.
Want to add more Valentine’s Day activities and movement tools to your skill-building?
The Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit is here! This printable kit is 25 pages of hands-on activity sheets designed to build skills in pinch and grasp strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, precision, dexterity, pencil control, handwriting, scissor skills, coloring, and more.
When you grab the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit now, you’ll get a free BONUS activity: 1-10 clip cards so you can challenge hand strength and endurance with a counting eye-hand coordination activity.
Click here to grab your copy of the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit.
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.
