These scissor maze cutting worksheets for kids are the perfect way for kids to practice cutting out shapes! Once kids have practiced these creative cutting ideas, they’re ready to move on to beginner cutting activities and eventually cutting on lines. Finally, it’s time to start learning how to cut out shapes! We decided that we needed to come up with a fun, colorful, and engaging way to help kids practice this new skill. This fun (and FREE!) pack of cutting worksheets [Continue Reading]
FREE Fine Motor Skills Worksheets: Tape Collages!
Tape is such a fun and simple way to create engaging activities for kids. Check out these awesome tape collage fine motor skills worksheets! If you’ve been following along with us at The Inspired Treehouse for awhile, you know about our love of tape as a therapy tool. It’s one of our favorite props for activities because you can use it for both fine motor skill development (grasp, dexterity, hand strength) and gross motor skill development (jumping, balance, coordination). Tape [Continue Reading]
Fun and Simple DIY Fidgets for Halloween
This simple and squishy DIY fidget for Halloween is fun to make and even more fun to squish and squeeze! If you’re looking for a fun and easy Halloween activity with a final product that will keep little hands happy and busy – this is the activity for you! This DIY fidget is super cute and can be made in lots of different ways for different effects. This is a perfect activity for a kids Halloween party! What you’ll need: [Continue Reading]
Hands on Math Activities: Math Cutting Cards
Add these printable cards to your list of favorite hands on math activities for kids! Hands On Math Activities: Printable Math Fact Cutting Cards Here at The Treehouse we’ve always been suckers for hands-on learning activities. We love when we can introduce or reinforce learning concepts through hands-on, play-based activities! That’s what today’s activity is all about! So many kids (including my own) need extra practice with math facts and this printable pack is the perfect way to provide that [Continue Reading]
Printable Pumpkin Activities for Kids
Looking for fun pumpkin activities for kids? This fun activity is great for building fine motor skills with a fun fall theme! This post contains affiliate links. Read more. Pumpkin Activities: Pick a Pumpkin! Lately I’ve been looking around for new pumpkin activities to try with my kids at school to work on developing their fine motor skills. So many of the kids I see for occupational therapy struggle with fine motor coordination, grasping skills, and in hand manipulation skills, [Continue Reading]
Pencil Grasp Development Coloring Pages: The Dynamic Tripod
This simple idea is a great way to promote pencil grasp development, particularly when working toward dynamic movement in the tripod grasp. *This post contains affiliate links. Read more. Pencil Grasp Development Pencil grasp development is something we OTs look closely at as kids make their way from toddlerhood to preschool and then to school age. The reason it’s so important is that a solid grasp pattern is the foundation for efficient handwriting and drawing as kids get older. A [Continue Reading]
Put In Task Box Ideas
Want to learn more about how a put in task box can promote not only fine motor skills, but also attention, positive behavior, and engagement? Read on! *This post contains affiliate links. Read more. Want to know one of our best kept secrets (aka one of the most commonly used tools in our therapy practice and during our play groups at The Treehouse)? Is it some magic sensory trick or a complicated method of addressing challenging behaviors? Nope. It’s much [Continue Reading]
Positive Discipline: 10 Ways to Stop Taking Recess Away
Today, we’re here to make the case for recess! Learn 10 positive discipline strategies that are alternatives to removing recess as punishment for negative behavior. By now, most of you know that we’re big advocates of free play, movement, and sensory motor exploration here at The Inspired Treehouse. Sometimes it’s disheartening to see how infrequently kids are able to get up and move during the school day when our training and experience as therapists tells us that movement and sensory [Continue Reading]
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY: BEST APPS FOR KIDS
You probably already know how we feel about free play, recess, and the importance of unstructured motor experiences and sensory exploration for kids. So it might come as a bit of a surprise that I’m about write a post about screen time. But I can’t help sharing some of the the best apps for kids that I use to promote fine motor and visual motor skills and more! While we will always be huge advocates for active, unstructured play for kids, there is [Continue Reading]