Activities

#1: Pinch Me

Use clothespins, tweezers, or tongs to pick up small objects such as pompoms, cotton balls, or beans and drop them into a container. To make it more competitive you can draw a line on the container as a “goal” for how far to fill it. This game encourages your child to learn to isolate his thumb, index and middle fingers as well as improve hand strength!

#3: Mom’s Helper

Have your child engage in heavy work proprioceptive play by “helping” with household chores. This can include tasks such as carrying heavy grocery bags (laundry detergent is a great choice!), moving wet laundry from the washer to the dryer, carrying laundry down up and down stairs, pushing a vacuum, and cleaning up their toys by pushing an empty laundry basket to each toy and placing it inside – pushing the basket to the correct spot when they are done.

On index cards, draw or place a picture of an animal from a magazine with a corresponding animal walk on them (i.e. waddle like a penguin, hop like a bunny, fly like a bird, slither like a snake, crawl like a crab, walk like a bear). Have the child pick a card and replicate the animal movement for 1-3 minutes or have a race together to the finish line.

Take plastic eggs and draw different emotion faces (eyes on the top half and mouth on the bottom half). Have the child create different emotions with the eggs by matching a top with bottom half. Together talk about that emotion and practice imitating the expressions on the eggs.

Using a party blower, create a frog face out of construction paper. Place a piece of double-sided tape on the end of the party blower. Cut out little flies and scatter them on the table. Have your child use the party blower to pick up the flies and see how many flies the frog can eat.

Place 10 cupcake liners with numbers 1-10 written in them in an arch in front of your child. Have the child use tongs, chip clip, clothespin, or any other grabbing device to place the appropriate number of pom poms in each cupcake liner. Cotton balls can be substituted for pom poms.

Have your child lay in the center of a a fuzzy or heavy blanket. Roll them up tightly in a blank to make the “taco”. Ask them what toppings they would like on their taco and use firm pressure to pretend to add cheese, salsa, lettuce and so on. To add vestibular input, with another person pick up the blanket and swing the blanket gently. You can also pretend to make burritos, hot dogs and other foods.

Scatter some “islands” or “boats” across the floor (use pillows, stuffed animals, books, etc.) and have the child jump from one island or boat to the next without falling into the “water.”

Use the different characters of the movie “Inside Out” to help identify what your child is feeling. Laminating them and placing them on a keyring is an easy way for them to keep the cards close by.

Place cubes of ice with pictures of penguins on top of each one in the middle of a baking sheet or flat surface that can get wet. Using marshmallows have them help you make an igloo for the penguins. Using a straw take turns blowing the ice penguin to its home.

Use broken or small crayons to encourage a crayon grasp. Coloring on a vertical surface such as an easel or paper taped to the fridge also encourages more mature grasps. Try coloring over different textures such as bumpy concrete or sandpaper to provide additional sensory feedback.

Different smells and flavor can be either alerting or calming. For example, mint, menthol, pine, citrus and eucalyptus are all alerting smells. Need to calm down? Rosemary, lavender, jasmine and vanilla are all calming scents. Put a drop of essential oil on a cotton ball and place inside an empty prescription bottle or have your child smell actual citrus or herbs.

Using painters tape, create different shapes on the floor 5-8 inches apart from each other. Have the child animal crawl or jump to the different shapes on the floor. To make things more interesting, use a spinner or puzzle shapes in a bag to tell them what shape they have to go to next.

This activity helps children understand what triggers their anger and what they can do to calm themselves. Create a cloud on a white piece of paper, have the child say or write something that makes them angry or upset. Make raindrops around the cloud listing what activities make them calmer and lightning bolts listing things that could make them angry.

Make a caterpillar out of construction paper circles with the first circle being the head. For fun you can add eyes and pipe cleaner antennas. With your child make a list of foods they already like to eat, writing each one on a circle and making the caterpillar grow. Each time they add a new food to their diet the caterpillar gets to grow again.