Sunday, August 21, 2011

Play Therapy Games for Children with Developmental Delays

When I work on specific skills for students with developmental delays, I always incorporate play therapy. Whether we are working on fine motor, gross motor, or perceptual skills, I make sure that the activities are fun for the child.



Working as a pediatric occupational therapist is a fun and challenging experience. I see children with a variety of diagnoses and I incorporate play therapy into my treatment on a daily basis. Because children learn as they play I carefully assess their areas of challenge as they play and work on those skill areas during play activities. The skills that I address include fine motor, gross motor, social, cognitive, and sometimes speech and language skills (usually working closely with a speech pathologist).


It can be fun, yet challenging to come up with play activities to address each of the skill areas listed above. A child may not have weaknesses in every area, but I typically incorporate all areas into a play therapy session just for skill practice.

 Here are some suggestions of play activities to work on each skill area:


Fine Motor Skills:

-        Legos

-        Play Dough

-        Magnadoodle

-        Bead Stringing

-        Block Stacking

Gross Motor Skills

-        Hokey Pokey

-        Simon Says

-        Hop Scotch

-        Rover-Rover

-        Obstacle Courses

-        Jump Rope

Social Skills

-        Social Stories

-        Board Games

-        Bingo

-        Card Games

Cognitive Skills

-        Puzzles

-        Mazes

-        Hidden Pictures

-        Concept Games

-        Concentration Card Game

Speech/Language 

-        Which one Doesn’t Belong?

-        I Spy Game

-        What color is the…?

-        Matching Games





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4 comments:

  1. I love your recent article on Pediastaff, good job! Hey, can you write a review of my new book on your site?
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    Thanks,
    Barbara

    ReplyDelete
  2. IMHO, there is nothing better than Playdoh! Just the smell of it zooms me back to my own childhood. It is, hands down, my favorite therapeutic tool for play therapy!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for the wonderful suggestions! I have a 2 1/2 year old who has a severe delay- I'm always looking for more suggestions for play! THANK YOU!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank You for sharing nice article about of play therapy. I very liked this post.

    ReplyDelete