If there is one thing we love, it’s play dough. Another thing we love is creative learning. Today we’re sharing creative math ideas using our favorite sensory and fine motor medium: Play Dough! These 9 play dough activities have one thing in common, and that is creative ways to practice math skills and concepts. Kids ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
This free space play dough mat is a powerful tool to help kids strengthen fine motor skills or coordination for pencil grasp and handwriting.| The OT Toolbox
There are so many fine motor skills needed at school! This guide outlines fine motor tasks which may impact learning and what to do to help.| The OT Toolbox
One aspect of the Activities of Daily Living we complete each day is fastening clothing fasteners. In this blog post we are covering the skills needed for managing clothing fasteners. Lets go over one aspect of sensory issues with clothing: clothing fasteners like buttons, snaps, zippers, and shoe ties. Sensory processing affects everything we do. ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
Crayon salt dough is such a fun salt dough recipe to make and it uses old crayons to dye the salt dough! Kids love this.| The OT Toolbox
Oh, how we love play dough! This month on the 12 months of Sensory Dough series is scented dough. I can’t wait to see what the other bloggers joining us have to share for scented sensory dough you can make at home. The olfactory sense is a very powerful one. Scents can be calming or alerting to children (and ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
A thumb wrap grasp can look awkward and lead to slow handwriting. But is it functional? Here's what you need to know.| The OT Toolbox
This play dough recipe is a spin on the classic salt dough recipe. Add a few broken crayons and you’ve got a crayon salt dough recipe that is sure to be a hit with the kids! It’s just one of our crayon play dough recipes that are fun in so many ways! Memorial Day, Fourth ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
This salt dough recipe is a spin on the classic play dough made with salt. It’s got a unique coloring agent that adds a bit of “stick” to the dough, making is an awesome sensory material for challenging the tactile sensory system while encouraging fine motor skills. If you love creative and fun dough recipes, ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
Make frozen play dough using this candy play dough recipe...or any dough...to strengthen the hands with a resistive dough.| The OT Toolbox
This month’s sensory dough is Fizzy Dough! This was a fun one for us, because we combined one of our favorite doughs (baking soda dough!) with sensory science AND cursive handwriting….Whaaaa? Yep! We got them all in here on this post for you, and it was a fizzy blast! This is a great hands-on activity that can help with ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
I realized we have a TON of crayon play dough recipes on the blog. Other play dough recipes, too actually… But, over the years, we’ve had more than a few broken crayons. When there are four kids in the house, I guess broken crayons are a given! They end up under the couch cushions, in ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
Self control: types, impulse control, resources, and ways to improve self regulation are all included in this article| The OT Toolbox
These organization handouts are a powerful tool to add to your therapy toolbox to help with teaching organization strategies.| The OT Toolbox
These organization activities include tips for organization in kids and students so they can learn and complete tasks.| The OT Toolbox
Print off this letter to future self printable for a growth mindset writing prompt. Great for anyone writing a message to future me.| The OT Toolbox
This activity is a craft and activity to teach positive self talk for kids. Kids can wear the bracelet and recall self-talk strategies.| The OT Toolbox
Support Executive Functioning Skill Development by targeting meaningful motivations.| www.theottoolbox.com
These executive functioning resources support kids and teens with cognitive skills needed for learning and every day tasks.| The OT Toolbox
After a long day at school, many children come home and seem to fall apart. You might see them come home and begin crying, yelling, shutting down, or refusing to do anything. This after-school meltdown (or sensory breakdown) isn’t just about being tired or hungry. For many kids, especially those with sensory processing challenges or ... Read more The post After School Meltdowns: Why Kids Fall Apart at Home and How to Help appeared first on The OT Toolbox.| The OT Toolbox
These separation anxiety activities are great tools for preschool or kindergarten separation anxiety. Occupational therapy approved!| The OT Toolbox
These self care strategies for therapists can help with burnout or to address current needs with working from home while addressing emotional care.| The OT Toolbox
Love Our Printables But Hate Having to Enter Your Email for Every Single One? Save hours of time with an organized collection of high quality, easy-prep occupational therapy resources right at your fingertips! Need information and NOW but tired of weeding through the ads on this website? Access the entire OT Toolbox website without the distraction of ads! But it doesn’t have to take over your nights and weekends. There is a way to make therapy planning work for you and help you help kids...| The OT Toolbox
Easy, actionable, and functional Occupational Therapy activities and interventions. OT resources and information to help kids thrive.| The OT Toolbox
The school based-Occupational Therapist is getting ready to head back into the school year this Fall. Getting organized can be one of the hardest parts of school-based OT. These tips and tricks are some that I’ve used during my years as an Occupational Therapist working in the schools. Getting Organized for Back-to-School as a ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
Today we are looking at Grasp Patterns, or the aspect of fine motor skills that involves the physical placement of the fingers on items we use to complete daily tasks. We will explore the types of grasp patterns (lateral key, hook, cylindrical, pincer, etc.) and offer activities to support development of each grasp pattern. These various ... Read more The post Grasp Patterns appeared first on The OT Toolbox.| The OT Toolbox
A child with food texture issues can have a lot going on beneath the surface. What looks like extremely picky eating can be texture aversions that impact nutritional intake and participation in meals. Let’s explore specifically food texture sensitivity and what to do about this aspect of “picky eating”. This may be a complicated topic, ... Read more The post Food Texture Issues appeared first on The OT Toolbox.| The OT Toolbox
Tips to help sensory issues with hair brushing, eliminate nightmares of brushing hair, find great resources| The OT Toolbox
Let’s talk body awareness activities using proprioception, or heavy work to bring awareness to where the body is, how the body moves, and awareness of self. Proprioception is one of the senses that is involved with everything we do. This sensory system plays a major role in body awareness. Below you’ll find body awareness occupational ... Read more The post Body Awareness Activities Using Proprioception appeared first on The OT Toolbox.| The OT Toolbox
Did you know the important role that heavy work activities play in our ability to learn, focus, attend, and participate in everyday tasks? It’s true. We all need calming and organizing sensory input in the form of heavy work tasks that provide proprioceptive input through the muscles and joints. Here, we’ll cover what heavy work ... Read more The post Heavy Work Activities appeared first on The OT Toolbox.| The OT Toolbox
Calm down corner, providing strategies, resources, and information on vestibular and proprioceptive systems to help self regulation| The OT Toolbox
This article covers visual impairment and how occupational therapy can help to support life skills and functional independence.| The OT Toolbox
This feelings check in activity is a hands-on way to support emotional regulation in children, while learning about feelings and empathy.| The OT Toolbox
This toy theme play dough mat is a free play dough mat printable activity for kids to develop and strengthen fine motor skills.| The OT Toolbox
This free play dough mat is an intrinsic hand strengthening exercise to build strong grasp and pinch strength through play.| The OT Toolbox
Use this play dough hand strength activity using a free astronaut play dought mat. Kids can build strength with play dough.| The OT Toolbox
This is a play dough city themed playdough mat to help kids strengthen fine motor skills and coordination.| The OT Toolbox
Finger strength exercises power precision, dexterity, coordination in functional tasks like coloring, writing, & buttoning.| The OT Toolbox
This resource covers playdough activities for fine motor skills, including specific activities to do with play dough to develop precision.| The OT Toolbox
What a fun play dough bird activity for kids to strengthen hands and fine motor skills. This free bird theme play dough mat is a hit.| The OT Toolbox
Playdough is an iconic toy. There are many benefits to play dough including fine motor, sensory, bilateral coordination, and more.| The OT Toolbox
Exploring Books Through Play is a guide to teach kids empathy, learn about compassion and friendship and other social emotional skills with books.| The OT Toolbox
This explains self monitoring strategies as well as self-monitoring examples to help kids with learning and function. Includes free handouts.| The OT Toolbox
These space activities for kids are great for a DIY summer camp or an occupational therapy home program. Use the space theme for building skills.| The OT Toolbox
These bilateral coordination activities are bilateral movement strategies to help kids demonstrate bimanual coordination skills.| The OT Toolbox
Support Executive Functioning Skill Development by targeting meaningful motivations.| www.theottoolbox.com
Use these social emotional learning activities to help children develop positive relationships, behaving ethically, and handle challenging situations.| The OT Toolbox
These friendship activities are social emotional skill activities to help kids develop friendships, turn taking, sharing, problem solving.| The OT Toolbox
Sensory based coping skills is an effective way to help kids deal with feelings of anxiety. There is a reason that most of us deal with an uncomfortable situation by cracking our knuckles or cope with anger by punching a pillow. Sensory based anxiety coping strategies can help kids deal with stress and feelings of ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
This resource defines affect modulation and offers strategies and tips to target expressive feelings and social emotional development.| The OT Toolbox
These attention activities cover various types of attention: divided attention, sustained attention, selective attention and more.| The OT Toolbox
This polar bear self regulation activity is a deep breathing exwercise with a polar bear theme to help kids stay calm and pay attention.| The OT Toolbox
This cute penguin worksheet is a penguin deep breathing exercise that kids can use as a coping tool or a self-regulation strategy.| The OT Toolbox
Ahhh…taking a deep breath with mindful breathing is such an easy way to add coping skills to a child’s repertoire of sensory diet activities. Deep breathing as part of mindfulness adds a moment of whole-body relief. With all that is going on in the world with the impact of COVID-19, children and families can feel ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
This ice cream play dough mat is a free printable for kids to work on fine motor strength with an ice cream theme.| The OT Toolbox
These ice cream bean bags are the perfect way to sneak in a little proprioceptive input this summer with an ice cream theme. We’ve shared the proprioception benefits of bean bags before and this summer activity is great for kids craving heavy work input of needing a bit of upper extremity strengthening. Today, I’m sharing how to ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
These free slides are Google slide themes for occupational therapy teletherapy and physical therapy virtual interventions.| The OT Toolbox
Kids can help to make this color snack as part of a color hunt to teach colors. This goes well with book, Bear Sees Colors.| The OT Toolbox
As therapists, we focus a lot on goals. We write goals that are measurable, meaningful, and obtainable. They are short-term and they have quantifiable. Goals need to be finite and clear and assessable by measurable data. Therapists deal with and monitor goals every day! Related to the topic of goals is this breaking down goals ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
Executive functioning skills develop over time. This resource details executive function in kids through adults.| The OT Toolbox
How to teach planning and prioritization to kids. These executive functioning skills impact learning, play, and function.| The OT Toolbox
Breaking down goals is the first step to achieving SMART goals! When you break down a goal, use this free activity sheet.| The OT Toolbox
Motoric hand separation refers to the motor dexterity needed to separate the two sides of the hand in fine motor tasks. Use these activities.| The OT Toolbox
Kids require a lot of skills to write with a pencil, button a coat, zipper a shirt, and manage a handful of coins. Today we’re sharing ideas to help your child with in-hand manipulation. This skill is important for moving that pencil, erasing mistakes, and fine motor tasks like managing buttons and zippers, coins, small ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
This massive collection of fine motor activities includes everything you need to know about fine motor skills in kids.| The OT Toolbox
These pinch exercises are prehension activities to build strength and endurance in lateral pinch, tip-to-tip grasp, and other pinch patterns.| The OT Toolbox
Fine motor activities can help improve your child's grasp and pinch strength, coordination, and hand strength. This article shares open thumb web space activities.| The OT Toolbox
We all need fun mindfulness activities! These strateies for mindfulness impact impulse control, regulation, emotions, and much more.| The OT Toolbox
Help kids develop social emotional skills with this free printable social emotional learning worksheet that kids can use in emotional growth.| The OT Toolbox
Help kids learn impulse control skills using these practical strategies to support development of executive functioning.| The OT Toolbox
These are the cutest play dough flowers using paper clips and paper flowers. And, it's a great fine motor activity for kids!| The OT Toolbox
Help children with social emotional development using book activities to make abstract concepts of empathy, awareness, and emotions more concrete.| The OT Toolbox
These breathing exercises for kids cover themes for a whole year. Use these deep breathing activities as self-regulation strategies.| The OT Toolbox
What is breath control and how to use this deep breathing exercise as a self-regulation strategy for achieving a calm alert state?| The OT Toolbox
Kids struggling with impulse control? The Impulse Control Journal is your ticket to helping kids manage their impulses, strategize ways to "shift gears", and learn valuable lessons in self-regulation. UPDATED 12-2022: The new version of The Impulse Control Journal is now in printer-friendly and using The Impulse Control Journal is a self-regulation tool that will help: Children who have boundary issues Kids learning about self-control or who struggle with carryover of skills learned during on...| The OT Toolbox
Working in high school occupational therapy? Occupational therapy for teenager populations has many considerations.| The OT Toolbox
This resource on middle school occupational therapy covers insight on how OT professionals support middle school students.| The OT Toolbox
This Ice Cream Writing activity works on handwriting skills with a fun ice cream theme. Also spell ice cream words with sign language!| The OT Toolbox
Use these handwriting activities to help kids work on and imporve handwriting legibility with fun ways to work on letter formation, line use, and placement.| The OT Toolbox
Did you know a goal ladder can help kids (and teens, or adults!) accomplish goals by breaking down a larger task into accomplishable steps?| The OT Toolbox
Work on letter formation and writing the alphabet with kids based on child development. Includes the best order to teach letters.| The OT Toolbox
Use these paper clip activities and games with paper clips to help kids with precision, dexterity, in-hand manipulation, and more!| The OT Toolbox
Welcome to the OT Toolbox Hi, I’m Colleen! From an OT making $3/hour to an online OT serving millions around the world… After working in the occupational therapy field for many years, I had started a family. By the time my third baby was born (I now have four kids!), I was looking for childcare ... Read more| The OT Toolbox
These social and emotional development milestones show the progression of emotional development skills in preschool children.| The OT Toolbox
Self awareness is important to leadership, reflection, decision making, social skills, friendships, emotional regulation and more| The OT Toolbox
Hand strengthening is an important part of fine motor skills. This resource covers everything you need to know about hand strength.| The OT Toolbox
These Zones of Regulation activities and strategies are beneficial to kids struggling with self-regulation and emotional control through coping strategies.| The OT Toolbox
Interoception- Use these interoception strategies to Impact the 8th sense, needed for self awareness, regulation, homeostasis, mindfulness.| The OT Toolbox
Understanding sensory dysregulation is key to getting a handle on all things sensory processing and meltdowns. Use these tips and supports.| The OT Toolbox
The limbic system plays an essential role in function, including behavioral response, emotional regulation, play, learning, and social skills.| The OT Toolbox
These social skills activities are social skill interventions that help kids develop self awareness and awareness of others, empathy, kindness, and more.| The OT Toolbox
This massive list of Simon Says Commands is perfect for OT, PT, or building motor skill development (and self-regulation!) Free printable too!| The OT Toolbox
This massive sensory processing disorder checklist breaks down sensory behaviors as over-reactions or under-reactions to sensory input.| The OT Toolbox
These self reflection activities are tools for developing a growth mindset in achieving personal goals. Self development goals for all ages.| The OT Toolbox
Relaxation breathing is a powerful calming tool for self-regulation and coping. Try these 3 effective relaxation breath strategies.| The OT Toolbox
These empathy activities for kids foster empathy as a social emotional skill in children. Use the empathy beads to build this skill.| The OT Toolbox
Mindfulness in kids and the whole family is so important for self regulation, emotions, behaviors, and health. Here are mindfulness tools!| The OT Toolbox
These middle school journal prompts target writing skills and support social and emotional needs of teenagers.| The OT Toolbox
Emotional regulation and executive function are connected in more ways than one. Emotions, self-awareness and self-monitoring skills impact function.| The OT Toolbox
Co-regulation leads to self-regulation. This great article includes the definition of coregulation, strategies, and links to other resources.| The OT Toolbox
