At-home occupational therapy activities for your child

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When I first began working at home with Sophie to help her get past her developmental delays, I was pretty stumped on some OT activities.  Speech seemed easier to figure out for me.  Sophie had poor hand strength and needed to learn to cut.  I could never get her to color – she just wouldn’t – so I just had to strap her in that booster seat and make her.  So we had to start from the beginning with writing, drawing, and coloring.  Here are some activities that are great to do with your child if he or she has weakness in those areas.

1) Cut with a purpose – cutting lines will get very boring, very fast.  Look online for free printable cutting worksheets that make it a little more fun. Just do a Google search, there are tons out there.  Or, get a workbook or two specifically for cutting. My very favorite are the Kumon workbooks (they also have plenty other types, not just cutting – they are all great.)

2) Salt time – It helps kids learn to write letters, shapes, etc. if they can feel the patterns with their fingers.  To help them get the idea, just fill a shallow dish with salt, so that the bottom of the dish is completely covered.  Then, simply have the child make a circle, a letter, whatever you are trying to teach them, in the salt with their index finger.  You may have to show them first with your own finger, or hold their hand and guide them, but soon enough they will be able to do it on their own.  Sophie always LOVED “salt time” and one of her favorite things to do was draw faces in the salt.

3) Lacing cards – these are great for fine motor planning – helping your kiddo learn to plan the steps they need to take in a process, as well as for finger agility.  To help Sophie when we first started, I numbered the holes in the cards and had her complete them in the right order, otherwise she was just kind of putting the string into the holes at random.  I also had to tie off the string with a knot about 1/3 of the way in – it was overkill to have her do ALL the holes in a lacing card, and the extra string got in the way.  Doing those things helped her get a hang of the activity more quickly and cut down on frustration.

Well, there are three simple activities to do with your child, whether they need OT help or not! Again, I want to stress that I am not a professional, but these are things that worked for me when I was working with Sophie on OT goals.

Check out all my posts on helping your child overcome developmental delays here.

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Review: Play-doh Twirl N Top Pizza Shop

We looooove Play-Doh in our house,  and it’s a great activity for building hand strength and dexterity, which Sophie works on in occupational therapy. So I was all about reviewing this latest play-doh set, the Twirl N Top Pizza Shop. I must say, it’s probably my favorite Play-Doh set ever!  Why?  Because it’s fun, it’s creative, and it’s simple – very few parts.  We have some other sets that are great fun, very creative, and have 50 million parts that are hard to keep track of!  Not so with the pizza shop!  You can make a crust, cheese, and toppings all in one very compact set.  Both my big kids have had a blast with it!  Here’s Sophie demonstrating how fun this set is:

Baking her crust...
Crust is ready to be topped!
Ta-da! (She wanted red cheese. Whaddya do?)

If you love Play-Doh (and why wouldn’t you?), this is a great set!

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Hasbro sent me this set to review. All opinions about it are my own.

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Dealing with Delays

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Eleven months ago, I was 7 months pregnant, my grandfather had just died, and I’d just been bowled over by the fact that Sophie’s developmental delays were more significant than I realized.  The first week of October, 2010, was pretty much the worst week of my life.

I’ve never written about this in detail, and I have my reasons, which you’ll just have to trust.  I am comfortable talking about it now is because we’ve come almost all the way through it – eleven months later, Sophie is pretty much caught up – she is still getting both speech and occupational therapy but I expect she’ll be all done with that within the year.

Back in October 2010, I knew that Sophie had a speech delay, but I thought it was more expressive – what she couldn’t say, rather than receptive, what she understood.  Then some test results showed I was WAY wrong, and that her delay was more receptive.  At the same time, Sophie’s preschool teacher shared some concerns with me about how she was doing in class , and based on those two things, I decided we needed to change some things and take action to get her on track.

I started working intensely with Sophie at home, got her signed up for occupational therapy as well as speech, and took steps to get her into a preschool class where there were other kids with delays, and where she could also receive speech and OT at school.

And as I said, it’s all gone wonderfully.  Sophie is doing amazing and as you saw a couple weeks ago, she’s even reading already at age 4!

But through this whole process I’ve learned a TON, and now I want to share it with you.  So, I am going to start a series here about overcoming developmental delays, playing with your child in an educational way, and just giving tips and ideas about how to target certain problem areas.  You’ll find these posts in the categories “developmental delays”, “speech therapy”, and “occupational therapy”.   I’ll be covering strategies, games, activities, and supplies that are helpful in working with your kids in an intentional way – whether for fun, or if you have a specific goal in mind.

So stay tuned, I hope I can help some readers and maybe we’ll all learn something together!

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