Here is another developmental baby toy that I highly recommend. This musical baby pop-up toy is fairly inexpensive, and it promotes a variety of skills, including problem solving, understanding cause-and-effect, and eye-hand coordination.
Sensory Bottle: Use an empty water bottle with the label removed. Add water, vegetable oil, glitter, and food coloring. You can also drop an Alka-Seltzer tablet in to create bubbles!
Cloud Dough: Mix together 1/3 cup of lotion, 2/3 cup of cornstarch, and a couple of drops of food coloring.
Salt Dough: Mix together1 cup of all-purpose flour, ½ cup salt, ½ cup of cold water, and a drop or two of food coloring.
Moon Sand: Mix 1 cup of flour, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, and several drops of food coloring.
This project was completed by a Master of Occupational Therapy student at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center and posted with permission.
A kinetic sand sensory bin is great for sensory exploration and learning. It is a wonderful way to stimulate multiple senses at once, and children can also learn how to tolerate new and different textures when playing and exploring in the sensory bin.
Supplies Needed:
A medium to large plastic bin
Kinetic sand
Large buttons
Pom-poms
Large marbles
Blocks
LEGO pieces
Plastic animals or insects
Plastic letters, shapes, and/or numbers
Tools such as tongs, large tweezers, a plastic spoon, or a small plastic shovel can be used to dig, stir, scoop, and pull pieces out. or the child can just explore with their hands. If the child resists touching the kinetic sand, start by having them explore using one of the tools listed above.
Sensory bin play is also a great way to work one naming colors, shapes, animals, letters, numbers and concepts such as up, down, inside, beside, soft, and hard.
So please consider putting together a sensory bin that is age appropriate for your child!
Note: Provide direct supervision for children who might put the sand or objects in their mouth.
This project was completed by a Master of Occupational Therapy student at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center and posted with permission.
Here are a couple of shape matching worksheets that can be used to learn the properties of different shapes. This activity is fun for children who are working on recognizing, naming, and remembering shapes! Your child can color the matching shapes the same color. This is a great way to practice coloring within the lines. They can also simply draw a line to connect the matching shapes.
Sometimes children don’t use enough pressure when coloring or writing. This may be because of weakness in the hand muscles or because they don’t have a good “feel” for. The writing utensil in their hand. Here are some suggestions to help a child use more pressure when writing.
"Feed the Car" is a fun and easy DIY in-hand manipulation activity and game for children. Playing this game is a great way to work on counting, pincer grasp, in-hand manipulation skills, bilateral skills, and crossing midline
Materials Needed:
Wrap the toilet paper rolls in construction paper and glue or tape in place. Print some fun animated car images, cut them out, and laminate them. Cut out an area that will serve as the "mouth" on each car, and and glue the image to each toilet paper roll. Be sure that the "mouth" lines up with the top hole of the toilet paper roll so that the beads or pom poms will drop into the roll when they are place in the "mouth" of the car. Have fun!!!
Have the child roll the dice and pick up the number of small items (pom poms & beads) that the dice lands on. Next have the child hold the small objects in one hand & bring them out to the fingertips and place a small objects in the cars mouth one at a time. This activity could be adapted by having the child use the tweezers to pick up the items & "feed" the car.
This project was completed by a Master of Occupational Therapy student at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center and posted with permission.
