As an occupational therapist working with children, you play an important role in helping improve their skills of daily living, play, self-care and schooling.
When it comes to occupational therapy activities for children, there are a wide variety of options available.
Activity areas include:
- Fine motor activities
- Scissor skills activities
- Hand dominance activities
- Gross motor activities
- Handwriting activities
- Crossing the midline activities
- Visual perception activities
Below you will find a range of links to some great resources from around the web. Best of all, most of these resources are free and often come with downloadable, printable instructions you can use to apply to therapy.
Occupational Therapy Activities For Children
Tools to Grow, a site created by two pediatric occupational therapists provides a huge list of free resources and activities. Beyond activities, they also have holiday and seasons themes, checklists, screening tools and caseload management resources, and great info on working with caregivers and team collaborators.
Dr. Anne Zachry, a pediatric occupational therapist of 24 years, offers tips and information across a wide range of activities and adds new ideas to her blog every month.
Miss Mancy’s blog is very helpful and she also provides over 1000 resources on her Pinterest boards ranging from motor skills, to kids apps, crafts, picky eaters, activities for certain events – Valentines, Thanksgiving and so forth.
OTPlan has a range of fun and colorful activities for play that develop skills at the same time.
OT Mom Learning Activities has a range of free pdf downloads with tips and activity ideas.
This Pinterest board collection links to a large range of over 1000 activity ideas from all over the web.
Therapy Street for Kids has a range of activities to enhance school-based OT programs. All their resources are free and they have easy to follow lists of ideas across multiple skill areas, for instance, fine motor strength, crossing midline, eye-hand coordination, and so forth.
Therapy Fun Zone has more than 100 fun activities for fine motor skills.
Mama OT has 25 fine motor skill activities using common household items.
The Royal Children’s Hospital has developed some great pdf downloads for occupational therapists. The downloads contain activities and pictures to guide you on correct technique. The resources range from babies through to adolescent activities. And they also have exercise sheets to assist with common hand and wrist injuries.
For children with autism, you can use a range of the resources posted above or below, or you can find some sensory, behavioral and social skills activities on Pinterest specifically for children with autism.
This interesting article provides 21 Chrome extensions for struggling students and special needs children.
Therapy Shoppe sells a book with 1001 ideas for $64.99. They also have kits, CDs, and a range of other resources for purchase.
YouTube Channels with Occupational Therapy Activities For Children
If you need some visual cues to help inspire your activities, check out the following YouTube channels.
- The Play Project HQ
- Autism Therapies
- Your Therapy Source
- Unique Prints Therapy
- Ask the OT
- Seven Senses
- Pathways Awareness
- Pediatric TV
1 Comment
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