Back to school! I decided that as the school year goes on I am going to post some of the treatment activities that I do with my little ones at school. Lacing is one of my favorite activities to do with my O.T. students! Lacing is an activity that promotes the development of many fine motor and visual motor skills needed to perform functional tasks; such as bilateral coordination, hand-eye coordination, grip strength, finger dexterity, spatial awareness, sequencing steps, and accuracy. I will try to post pictures of my lacing activities with templates as the school year progresses. My student's are definitely more eager to practice lacing when they know they are creating something fun! Back-to-school apples, Halloween pumpkins, Thanksgiving turkeys, Valentine's hearts, Winter Wonderland penguins, lucky shamrocks, and Easter eggs are a few of my lacing ideas so far:)
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| Apple lacing and cutting activity |
Supplies:
- Apple, stem and leaf template
- construction paper (red, green, brown)
- yarn
- hole punch
- newspaper or tissue paper
- tape
- glue stick
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| Apple, stem and leaf template |
I am having difficulty in uploading the apple, stem and leaf template I created so I posted it as a picture to give a better idea of the patterns I traced to create the pieces. I will be sure to update this post as soon as I figure it out... so stay tuned!
Preparation: My best practice is to prepare for all of my treatment themes ahead of time and I usually prep a few extra just in case of any mix-ups. I am usually tracing, cutting and laminating in front of my favorite television shows. For my lacing projects, each student's gets two templates identically hole punched and tied together through one of the holes with a piece of yarn long enough to lace in a front-to-back pattern along the template. For example, if you are preparing this activity for 20 students, you will need 40 paper apples and 20 pieces of yarn cut to fit.
After the apples are cut, hole punched and tied, add a small piece of tape to the end of each yarn piece so it will be easier to manage and to thread through the holes. Then cut an apple stem and leaf for each apple using the brown and green construction paper. I try to incorporate cutting practice into most treatment activities so for this project I decided to cut the apple stems and then trace the leaf shape on to small green squares for the students to cut out themselves. I also used the school dye cut machine to cut out small upper case letters so the students could work on sequencing their first names on to their apples.
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| Name Sequencing |
Intervention: The students begin by lacing their apples. It is important that the student's focus on lacing each hole, sequencing one-at-a-time in a clockwise (or counter clockwise) pattern and remembering to pull the string fully through each hole so there is enough yarn to lace the whole pattern. I usually cue my students to continue lacing along the pattern until there are only about 3 open holes toward the top. Then give each student a piece of newspaper to tear into small pieces, crumble and stuff into the apple. I love this part of the activity because it really targets bilateral coordination and motor planning skills and the kids really love tearing the paper and stuffing the apple to look delicious and juicy! After stuffing the apple, lace the remaining holes, secure with a knot or bow and trim away excess yarn. Have the students use scissors to cut out the leaf and stem shapes and use a glue stick to glue the stem and then leaf on top; working on spatial awareness and sequencing. "The stem goes at the top, the stem goes at the top, hi ho did you know, the stem goes at the top..."
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| Apple Lacing |
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| Red Delicious Apples! |
A few of my favorite apple songs:
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One Little, Two Little, Three Little Apples!
(sing to the tune 'One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians')
One little, two little, three little apples!
Four little, five little, six little apples!
Seven little, eight little, nine little apples!
Ten little apples growing on the tree!
Apples, apples, apples!
Apples, Apples, Apples
Apples on a tree
Apples, apples, apples
Red, yellow, green!
Apples, apples, apples
grow so way up high
Apples, apples, apples
we bake them in a pie!
Apples, apples, apples
taste so good to me
Apples, apples, apples
good for you and me!
APPLE Song
(sing to the tune 'BINGO')
There is a fruit that grows on trees
and apple is its' name-o!
A-P-P-L-E
A-P-P-L-E
A-P-P-L-E
and apple is its' name-o!
It is a fruit that good to eat
and apple is its' name-o!
A-P-P-L-E
A-P-P-L-E
A-P-P-L-E
and apple is its' name-o!
It can be sweet, it can be tart
and apple is its' name-o!
A-P-P-L-E
A-P-P-L-E
A-P-P-L-E
and apple is its' name-o!
Ten Red Apples
Ten red apples grow on a tree
Five for you, and five for me
Let us shake the tree just so
and all ten apples will fall below!
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10!
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| Apple Matching from www.filefolderfun.com |
Since my area of practice is school-based, specifically early childhood, I also try to incorporate alot of therapeutic activities that focus on visual-motor integration skills into my treatment sessions. Matching games are a great way to work on not only visual-motor skills but also hand-eye coordination, visual-scanning and discrimination skills and fine motor control. I have created many matching games to tie into alot of my intervention plans. There are alot of great resources on the web that offer many printables according to theme and grade level. All you need to do is print (remember to print two copies; one for the matching board and one to match on top), laminate, cut and Velcro and you have an instant matching game. Depending on the skill level, you can printables focusing on matching according to color, shape, pattern or theme. Matching boards are definitely a student favorite!
Here are a few of my favorite resources:
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| Apple Paintings |
For my younger Pre-Kindergarten and severe and profound students, alot of treatment interventions focus on sensorimotor and sensory processing therapeutic activities. I love to plan activities that focus on motor planning, tactile exploration and functional use of art supplies. Painting and pasting activities are perfect for incorporating these skills. It is important for these little ones to learning how to functionally engage within their learning environment and simple painting activities focus on learning functional use art supplies (using the paint and brush effectively) and sequencing steps (dipping the brush into the paint and apply the paint while targeting within large boundaries). For this apple activity, I cut out large apple shapes from white construction paper and had the students paint them bright red using a mixture of tempera paint and shaving cream. I find it helpful to add a few drops of dish soap to the paint mixture for easy clean-up and to minimize stains. As you can see for the picture above, my students are little Pablo Picasso's:) To add to the experience, I purchased apple scented products and apple sauce so the children could explore and experience apples using their other senses (olfactory and tactile).
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| Apple Picking Race |
Apples have definitely been the theme for O.T. throughout the first few weeks of school. By the end of the theme, I am usually dreaming and singing of red, yellow and green apples:) Being resourceful, I used some green and brown felt material I found amongst my O.T. supplies and I cut out two large green circles and two large brown rectangles to create trees. I clipped the trees onto my movable easel stand (one on each side) and used Velcro dots to attach red and green balls to create an apple trees. My students loved participating in apple picking race. The student's had to pick the apples at midline and sort according to color into barrels. Not only does this activity focus on motor planning, hand-eye coordination, sequencing, spatial awareness, visual discrimination skills but it also incorporates turn taking, team work, endurance and crossing midline. After sorting and counting their apples, the student's then had to tally on the board the number of red and green apples they picked. This is a fun warm-up activity and can be modified depending on skill level and physical abilities. For my higher functioning students needing to work on balance and body awareness, I have them stand on a balance board or disc.
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| Apple Matching |
Modification: Since I have students functioning at different developmental and skill levels I decided to adapt the apple picking race to make it a little more challenging. I created a large tree similar to the felt tree using bulletin board paper (I laminated it so I can use it again next school year). I used Velcro dots to attach the apples from the apple matching boards I made and I hung the tree on a tall movable cart. This type of activity is great for working on visual scanning skills, hand-eye coordination and motor planning. Picking the apples from the tree and then matching the apples on the board was not only fun for the kids but a purposeful activity.
Darling apples have beautified our therapy gym! What a tasty way to Fall back into school!
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| Apples! |
Lauren
