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Theraplay Activities

Play and art are wonderful mediums for working on fine and gross motor development while having fun. Our goal was to find fun ways to accomplish goals like 'increase hand strength' or 'learn to jump' that were outlined by our therapists and Early Intervention programs. This is a collection of our favorites and those that worked particularly well to help accomplish Nick's therapeutic goals. Some of these ideas were great for when he was 3 months old and others weren't appropriate until he was 3. 

Bubbles are highly motivating for babies/children and can be used to encourage a huge range of developmental exercises. Reaching for them, clapping to pop them, isolating the pointer finger to pop them, rolling or crawling to pop the bubbles that have landed on the floor, being showered with them while doing therapy ball exercises, popping them while swinging for vestibular input, jumping to reach high bubbles....the activities are endless and can really help turn 'therapy' into play!

Touch and Texture: Tactile (touch) input is very stimulating for the brain. Mom and dad provide the best tactile input possible through holding and playing but there are additional steps we can take to stimulate those little minds. Watch for any signs of distress or 'tactile defensiveness' during touch and texture play and consult your doctor and OT regarding Sensory Integration issues if you feel there is a problem.

*Vary the textures of blankets that your little one plays on during floor time. Satin, fleece, flannel, knits....these provide different sensations for even the littlest angel.

*Build a bath scrubby collection. From soft washcloths to gauzy loofas and textured bath gloves, the bath is an excellent time to play around with these different sensations. Also explore gooey liquid soaps, bar soap, foamy soap and soaps with loofa or oatmeal bits in them for variety during baths.

*Dough...whether you like commercial or homemade dough, playing with them is calming, fun and tactilely stimulating...knead in sand for a fine grain feel or instant coffee for a larger grain and intense smell. Play-doh is now making a line of scented dough.

*Dough is also great for hand strength. Squeezing, rolling and pressing is natural hand and finger exercise. To encourage further play, try rolling a plastic animal up in the dough and encourage your child to press and pull the dough away to uncover the animal.

"Theraputty" for hand strength is a product that comes in resistance levels from XX-Soft to X-firm so children can work up to manipulating firmer putty.

                              
Cameron (4) Squishin' That Dough!            Oscar Painting Away!                         Nick and brother Jacob at Play!

Painting, Painting and More Painting! What a great sensory experience for all young children. Skip the brushes for awhile and let your child enjoy how it feels on their fingers and hands. 2 tips for not loosing your mind over toddlers/preschoolers and paint...

1. Paint in the bathtub. Make sure its a washable paint and that your child understands to sit at all times or not put any paint on the bottom of the bathtub to make it slippery. Use the tub walls as your canvas and then easily hose down the tub and the child when they are done.

2. For .99 cents at the drug store you can buy rolls of plain brown or white wrapping paper. Let your children paint on these rolls and when dry roll them back up and store them in the closet for the next time you need to wrap a present. It minimizes the waste of paper and is such a nice way to send a present!

*My hands down favorite paint is "Foam Paint" from discount school supply (www.discountschoolsupply.com ) This paint squirts out like shaving cream and comes in lots of colors.

*Try squirting good old liquid dish soap onto your child's high chair tray. This ooey gooey sensory experience is quite slippery and you don't have to plan ahead for supplies.

*Finger paints are cool and smooth. Mix things up by adding sand into your finger paint 1/2 way through the painting session.

*Corn Cobs make for a funny feeling paint roller!. Wash eaten corn cobs and let dry over night. The dry corn cob will create a textured design on the paper when they are used as 'paint rollers' and give an interesting feel as the children roll their hands over them.

*Glue bottle painting is a good hand squeezing activity. Either buy colored/glittered glues from discount school supply or add food coloring to your own bottles of glue. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze to create designs on paper. The glue bottles get harder to squeeze the more glue that is used up, so this activity gets progressively harder for each picture. Black construction paper looks especially cool for this project and be sure to place wax paper under your creation so the glue doesn't soak through a glue it to the table as it dries.

*Get moving with marble painting (only for those children who are way passed putting marbles in their mouth!). Put a circle of tape on the back of a piece of paper and tape it into the bottom of a thin box (Priority Mail box from P.O. is a size that works well). Dip marbles in various colors of paint and drop them into the box. Close the box up, secure is with some tape and turn on the music. Shake, dance, hold it high, hold it low...open the box and see what's been created on your paper.

*The long rolls of wrapping paper provide a big canvas which requires lots of movement during painting. Try using matchbox cars as paintbrushes...run the cars wheels through paint and then run them up and down the length of paper for lots of tracks, lots of crawling and lots of bending. Also try footprint painting by dipping those little feet in paint and walking across the paper.

*Salad Spinner Painting: Place a piece of paper (cut to fit) in the bottom of your salad spinner basket. Let the child squeeze some drips of paint all over the paper in the spinner. Then put the lid on and spin away. Salad spinners that you pump up and down to spin (excellent arm and shoulder work out, crank a knob around to spin or pull a string out multiple times to spin will all require 'work' for this project. By placing the blank note cards from a craft store in the bottom of our spinner, Nick 'spun' all his own thank you cards at 2.5years old and got a great work out.

Encourage blowing (speech skill) by squeezing drops of tempera paint onto a shiny sheet of finger paint paper and then blow the paint around the paper using a straw.

Building arm and shoulder strength becomes child's play when you encourage your young one to color/paint inside a large box with the bottom cut out to form a tunnel.  Crawling inside the tunnel and to decorate the floor, walls and ceiling requires all sorts of stretching and reaching and you get a colorful tunnel great for crawling or hiding games in the end! If you have a wild animal fan like I do, call it a bear cave and get busy cave painting!

Michael Angelo painted ceilings and what better way for our preschoolers to have fun while developing shoulder strength than to play Michael Angelo for the afternoon. Tape paper under a child's height table and encourage your little one to lay under there and paint the 'ceiling'. Be sure to use foam paint (mentioned further down) on this project so you don't get drips. I had to stop before Nick did...it's a workout!

Spray bottle painting: Buy a spray bottle marked 'easy squeeze trigger' for preschoolers to start with. Fill with watercolor paint. Let the child find some leaves and tape the leaves down to a white piece of paper. Then use the spray bottle to coat the leaves and paper with paint. Lift the leaves off the paper.

Yarn Painting: cut some lengths of yarn and pour a bowl or two of tempera paint. Dip the yarn into the paint and drag it back and forth across paper to 'paint'. If the child wants to leave the yarn on the paper, that is fine...the paint will act as glue and adhere the yarn to the picture. Use a thick yarn at first and progress to smaller yarn widths as the child's pincer grasp gets better.

Bleeding Art Tissue Paper from discount school supply is a great way for a preschooler to experiment with cold and warm. First, lay a piece of the bleeding tissue paper on top of a white piece of paper. Either give your child a melting ice cube to 'draw' with or a bowl of ice water to dip their fingertips in. As they touch the tissue paper with the wet ice cube or fingers, the color will transfer onto the white paper beneath. Set out a bowl with warm water to dip their fingers in as well for a hands on lesson about warm and cold that exercises those fine motor skills. (Can't help but include our favorite rainy day activity here...tear up pieces of different colors of the tissue paper and lay them on the white paper. Now set the paper outside for a few minutes in the rain. The drops of water will have transferred the color to the white paper making a rainy day rainbow!)

Pom-Pom packages: Craft stores sell bags of pom-poms in all different sizes and colors. In Discount School Supply you can find glitter pom-poms, animal fur print pom-poms and multicolored 'marble' poms. Wrap birthday presents, etc in white butcher paper and then let the child decorate the gift with poms by picking up each pom, dipping it in glue and then sticking it to the top of the package. As the pincer grasp gets more refined you can add smaller and smaller poms into the choices.