🖍️ Coloring Occupation: Learning Occupational Therapy by Doing

 By: Emily J. Balog, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, FNAP

I have never experienced art and occupational therapy as entirely separate parts of my life. I am an occupational therapist, scientist, professor, artist, and U.S. Air Force veteran. Over the years, art has become one of the ways I explore experiences, communicate ideas, and make complex concepts more accessible to others. In 2022, that intersection was featured in the Open Journal of Occupational Therapy’s Occupation and the Artist series through The Anatomy of Human Occupation. My watercolor, The Knitting Brain, was also selected as cover art for the journal. Read “The Anatomy of Human Occupation” in the Open Journal of Occupational Therapy'

 

That collection explored connections among the human body, occupation, identity, trauma, and healing. It also reinforced something that has become increasingly important across my work: there are many ways to communicate knowledge.

 

Several years later, I found myself thinking about that idea again, this time from my perspective as a professor. How could I make learning the foundations of occupational therapy more engaging and fun? The answer seemed particularly appropriate for OT: learn by doing.

From Teaching Occupation to Doing Occupation 

As occupational therapists, we do not simply tell our clients what to do and expect meaningful change to follow. We engage people in the process. We use activity, experience, interests, creativity, and the occupations that matter to them. Why shouldn't learning occupational therapy be engaging in the same way?

 

I initially envisioned The Occupational Therapy Coloring Book for OT and OTA students learning the foundations of the profession. The areas of occupation are fundamental to how we understand human participation, but memorizing a list of definitions is very different from learning to recognize occupation in the world around us. I wanted students to interact with the concepts. And coloring gave me a way to do that.

 

The book begins with my original hand-drawn illustrations, which were digitally refined and adapted for publication. Companion educational pages extend the artwork into an interactive learning experience.

Readers explore the nine areas of occupation:

 

🚽 Activities of Daily Living (ADLs)  
💵 Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs)   
💊 Health Management
💤   Rest and Sleep
📚   Education
💼   Work
🛝   Play
 🧶   Leisure
   🏘️ Social Participation

Each section introduces an area of occupation using approachable explanations, examples, and imagery, followed by a corresponding coloring page based on my original artwork. But coloring is only part of the experience.

🔎 Look Closely 

Occupation-specific images are incorporated throughout the coloring pages, creating a search-and-find experience. Readers aren't simply given a definition. They have to look at the artwork, find examples of occupation, recognize what they are seeing, and make connections to what they just learned. 
     For students, that can lead to much richer questions. What makes an activity play rather than leisure? How is taking medication an occupation? Where does caring for another person fit? How can the same activity serve different purposes or have completely different meanings for two people? Those are the questions I want my students asking because they move us beyond memorizing terminology and toward thinking occupationally. There is also another layer that I particularly enjoy: coloring itself is an occupation. The learner is exploring occupation by participating in occupation.

 

Play demonstrates this idea particularly well. We can teach students the definition of play. We can discuss its characteristics and place within the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework. But we can also invite someone to look at images of movement, games, imagination, social interaction, performance, outdoor activity, and play across the lifespan and ask: Where is the play? What makes this play? What does play look like for you?

 

For pediatric occupational therapy, these questions are especially familiar. Play is not simply something children do when the “real work” is finished. It is a meaningful occupation and an important context through which children explore, interact, develop skills, build relationships, and participate in their worlds. And, of course, play is not limited to childhood. Approaching the concept visually gives learners another way to think about what play can look like across people, contexts, and stages of life.

Beyond the Classroom

As I developed the book, I realized the same features that could engage my students might also have applications in practice. A practitioner could open a page with a client and ask:
Which of these activities are part of your life?
Which matter most to you?
Which have become difficult?
What would you like to do again?

 

The images can become conversation starters for discussing routines, interests, roles, challenges, goals, and occupational identity. For practitioners working with children and families, pages exploring 🛝 play, 📚 education, 🏘️ social participation, 🚽 ADLs, and 💤 rest and sleep may offer particularly familiar ways to begin those conversations. The book is not an assessment or prescribed intervention. It is a flexible resource that educators and practitioners can use creatively when it fits the person, purpose, and context.

Making Occupational Therapy Easier to See 

There is another audience I had not fully appreciated when I started drawing: people who simply want to understand occupational therapy. Within our profession, we know that occupation means much more than employment. Outside OT, that is not always obvious.

 

Sometimes seeing occupation makes the concept easier to understand. A shower. A grocery cart. A textbook. A swing. A medication bottle. A ball of yarn. A bed. People spending time together. These are ordinary parts of life. That is precisely the point. Occupation is all around us. Occupational therapy asks us to look more closely at what people need and want to do, what those activities mean to them, what supports their participation, and what may be getting in the way.

🎨 Continuing My Own Occupational Story 

In many ways, The Occupational Therapy Coloring Book continues the ideas I explored through The Anatomy of Human Occupation, but with an important difference. This time, I don't finish the artwork. The reader does.

 

My original drawings provide the creative foundation, but someone else chooses the colors. They search the images, make connections, and consider the occupations represented through the lens of their own experiences. There is something very OT about that, too. The creator can provide the structure and possibilities, but ultimately the experience belongs to the person engaging in it.

 

The book is created through em's fine art, my woman- and veteran-owned sole proprietorship. It brings together parts of my occupational identity as an occupational therapist, scientist, professor, veteran, and artist. Across those roles, I keep returning to the same question: once we have knowledge, what do we do with it?

 

For me, knowledge dissemination does not have to occur only through journal articles, lectures, or presentations. It can also happen through experiences that make people curious enough to look more closely, ask questions, and apply what they are learning. That idea is reflected in the phrase I use across my work:

 

Turning knowledge into action, and action into impact. 

The Occupational Therapy Coloring Book is one creative way of putting that philosophy into practice. Color. Learn. Reflect. Discover occupation.

🎁 Try It Yourself: A Free Play Sampler 

Because Anne's blog focuses on pediatric occupational therapy, I wanted readers here to have an opportunity to experience the book rather than simply read about it. I've created a free sampler from The Occupational Therapy Coloring Book that includes the book cover, an About the Author page, a Meet the “Artist” in the Making activity, the educational companion page for 🛝 Play, and the corresponding Play coloring and search-and-find page. Use it with students. Explore it with a client. Color it yourself. See what you find and what conversations it creates. And if you see the value, consider purchasing the full coloring book for just $4.99 by clicking HERE. After all, learning by doing is something occupational therapy understands particularly well.

Emily J. Balog, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, FNAP
, Author & Illustrator, The Occupational Therapy Coloring Book
, em's fine art
#emsfineart #occupationaltherapy #veteranart