“Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations Spring is a season of new life and an array of blooms in the garden. Whilst our spring seems to be on hold this week with unseasonal thunderstorms...this cutting and rolling craft is a perfect indoor activity for your kids learning to use scissors! What do you need to do? There are 2 different flowers in the vase above. 1) To make the spiky variety, you can draw the fringe on the edge of the paper ready for cutting. 2) Cut along the lines to make a fringe. 3) Stick the chopstick to one end of the fringe. 4) Roll the paper up as tightly as possible. 5) Stick down the end of the paper. 6) Holding the chopstick, peel down the fringe (turning the chopstick as you go) to make the flower. 1) To make the curled variety, you can draw a spiral shape. 2) Cut along the lines of the spiral. 3) Stick the chopstick onto the outer end of the spiral with the stick pointing towards the centre of the spiral. 4) Roll the paper up as tightly as possible. 5) Allow the spiral to unravel a little to get nice flower shape. 6) Stick down the end of the paper. Mr 4 had a great time making these flowers. Each step required Mr 4 to use both his hands at the same time (bilateral coordination). He has always loved cutting and this activity allowed Mr 4 to practise his eye-hand coordination skills in staying on the line and manipulation skills when turning the paper around during cutting. The flowers will of course look better if you draw your lines in pencil rather than a thick texta as I have done here. Some children will require a thick dark line to provide a strong visual guide for cutting. Mr 4 needed some help when rolling the paper (especially when we were trying to figure out the best way to roll the spiral). This photo shows you one he did independently! Miss almost-8 came home after school and on finding the vase of flowers wanted to make some too. She made the flowers using patterned craft paper which look great. I have seen "grown ups" do this craft on several sites on the net with some stunning affects in a variety of paper. I especially loved one I saw using vintage paper which was amazing. This craft is not about a perfect stunning posy... but rather an opportunity for your kids to get busy with their hands and have an end result. Can you make a "bunch of flowers" to give to a grandparent or teacher this weekend? You may also like to try...
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UPDATED 2023:VERSION 2 OF THE SCHOOL READINESS CHECKLIST NOW AVAILABLE!
As we begin term 4 of the Australian School term, some of you may be thinking about school readiness for 2015. Is my child ready for school? Is school ready for my child?
Whilst there are certain expectations for children beginning school, there is also a wide-range-of-normal! Children learn at their own pace and may begin school with various "school readiness" skills. School readiness may include social skills, language skills, emotional skills, concentration skills, visual-motor skills, pre-writing skills, self-care skills, fine and gross motor skills. If your child has difficulty with one or more of these areas of skill development, it does not mean that they are not ready for school. It may mean that they need some help ... including Occupational Therapy. I suggest looking at the overall picture of your child's development and speaking with your child's educator (if they attend preschool or child care). The following school readiness checklist is based on those "red flags" where referral to Occupational Therapy may assist your child in these months leading up to starting school. The questions here are based on various standardised assessments OTs use including The Miller Function & Participation Scales, The Peabody Developmental Motor Scales and the Beery VMI (Visual-Motor Integration). The checklist is not exhaustive and was developed to provide a snapshot of where you child is currently performing and what they may need help with completing.
You can find a FREE printable copy of this checklist in the Your Kids OT shop. You are welcome to distribute it to parents and educational settings. OTs, please do not copy the content for professional use (ie. don't use the content and add your own logo).
If you complete this checklist and have concerns about your child's development, contact an Occupational Therapist for a comprehensive assessment. If you live or your child attends an educational setting in the Ryde LGA (Local Government Area), please contact me at cindy@yourkidsot.com or via the contacts pagehere for further information about direct therapy services. Do you have a child starting school in 2015? Felties Compendium Travel Set contains over 300 pre-cut shapes of felt in an assortment of colours. Googly eyes are included too! The travel set has a neat sturdy case that folds up to store these shapes, perfect as the name suggests for taking with you. A great size to pop into a handbag or therapy bag. Kids will love making pictures with these felt pieces! They may copy a small booklet of designs or make up their own. The case is long enough for 2 children to play with this together. There are certainly enough shapes to be shared. Put away the scissors as you will not need to cut out any extra shapes! This is a great therapy tool to take along to therapy sessions. The Felties Compendium Travel Set allows you to work on colour, shapes and visual-motor skills. Can your child copy a pattern? Can they identify a sequence to complete the picture? Can they scan the vast number of shapes to find the ones needed? Can they colour match? Can they use directional language (eg. next to, in front, behind, on top, below, etc)? The Felties Compendium Travel Set may also be used for story telling and pretend play. A scene may be built with characters introduced and objects made as a story unfolds. Whilst Mr 4 and Miss 7 enjoy playing with this at home, I have added it to my therapy bag. It is compact and there is such a range of skills that can be worked on using these shapes! The Felties Compendium Travel Set is available from Finlee and Me in a choice of 2 colours. Have your kids played with felt shapes before? Note: I received no remuneration for this post. I was gifted the Felties Compendium Travel Set by Finlee and Me. All comments, opinions and photographs are my own.
You may also enjoy reading these articles: Beautiful coloured salt art ... the perfect homemade craft for your kids these school holidays! You probably have what you need to create this in your house already! What do you need to do? This was a fun activity that produced a lovely result. Mr 4 and Miss 7 worked together to do this activity (as I only had one bottle). They both admire it now each time that walk by and are proud of what they have made together. I gave Mr 4 smaller quantities of the salt than Miss 7. They both did well to keep the salt on the kitchen bench top but you may want to consider using a tray during colouring if you are concerned about more salt ending up on the floor than in the bottle. Here are some of the fine motor benefits of this activity:- * bilateral coordination with folding and pressing the paper, * hand strength with colouring in, * eye/hand coordination with colouring in and pouring the salt, and * grasp and manipulation of the chalk. This was a really easy activity to set up and do together (appealing to both my school-age child and my preschool-age child). Of course you don't have to put your salt into a bottle. You could pour it into a tray for rainbow sensory play... although I would recommend it for kids over 3 years of age as you wouldn't want your kids to consume this salt! Have you tried salt art? Special Note: Thank you for your support of Your Kids OT since I began just 8 months ago in February 2014! I have been producing new content three times a week during these 8 months. I use my own photographs and write/produce/edit all the work done on this website. I have decided to reduce the number of articles I produce to twice a week and will review this again in the coming months.
Please continue to follow Your Kids OT on Facebook and Pinterest as I love to share content by other fantastic bloggers as well as other insights I find along the way. I also love to hear from you! So comment below or on FB and let me know what you like about Your Kids OT! Which days of the week do you like to read this blog? Thanks again! Have you tried adding spices to your playdough? Our sense of smell can be so strong, guiding whether you like something or not. Adding spices to your playdough can really create a great multi-sensory experience for you and your child. My original {FREE} playdough recipe that I published here a few months ago has been downloaded more than 100 times on "Teachers Pay Teachers". You can also get it from the YKOT Shop here. It uses boiling water rather than cooking the playdough and it works! Instead of adding food colouring this time we added spices (add a generous amount). Mr 4 and I chose smoked praprika and cinnamon. Mr Potato Head came to play when the playdough was made. Mr 4 loves this activity and it is a fun way to use your spiced playdough. For more playdough activity ideas refer to this article. Have you made spiced playdough? Let me know if you do!
SO...when you need some colour in your life it is time to colour pasta {do you think someone could turn that into a song?}. It wasn't as difficult or time consuming as I thought it might be. Start by picking a warm day...it helps the pasta to dry faster! What do you need to do? How do you use this?
WARNING - any necklaces or bracelets made must be worn by parent or therapist (or other) of child who has taken the trouble to make it! Have you coloured pasta before? How do your kids like to play with coloured pasta? Note: I am now on holidays and may be slow to respond to emails. I'm hoping to post articles whilst I'm away but sometimes these things don't always work. Thanks for your patience. Don't forget to check out the archives at www.yourkidsot.com. You can find articles grouped into categories for easy access! Thanks for your support!
Dexteria Jr is one in a series of apps by Binlary Labs Inc, designed in collaboration with Occupational Therapists. Dexteria Jr. includes hand and finger exercises that are designed to help develop fine motor skills and handwriting readiness. Dexteria Jr is designed with children 2-6 year olds in mind (ie. preschoolers), however I have found it great for older kids who are continuing to work on pre-writing skills such asfluency and pencil control. Dexteria Jr contains 3 main activities which contain various levels within each activity. These activities are "Squish the Squash", "Trace and Erase" and "Pinch the Pepper".
Trace and Erase is a series of paths that require fluent motion of the finger to draw. There are 29 levels with a progression from straight lines, diagonals, zig zags to more complicated paths with multiple turns. At each level, the user needs to start at the green arrow and draw along the path to the star (ie. trace). The next step is to drag the eraser along the previously drawn path to reveal the ipad screen underneath (ie. erase). When all the lines or paths have been erased then it is time to pull a funny face and have your photo taken. Each time the photo is "distorted" like looking at those funny mirrors at amusement parks. Kids really love this aspect of the app and it is a motivating factor in finishing the paths. I like to encourage the use of a stylus with this app as I think you can achieve even more goals in a therapy session. You can encourage a dynamic pencil grasp, pencil control, eye-hand coordination and visual perceptual skills.
I would highly recommend this app for parents, teachers and therapists. It targets fine motor and pre-writing skill development. With the additional use of a stylus this app can be used well beyond the pre-school years that it was designed for. I have found that I use this app the most often, in relation to the other Dexteria apps available. Whilst they have merit, this app has the fun, variety and skill focus that is of the most use to me as therapist. Here is a video demonstrating the use of the app produced by the developers. If you are receiving this post via email, you may need to click on the title of this post (which will take you to a live web page) before being able to view the video. Have you tried Dexteria Jr.? What do your kids think of it? Note: This app is not currently available for Android. I noticed that the original Dexteria app is available for Android. Please contact the developer for information about this app becoming available for Android users.
This article contains affiliate links. I have not received remuneration for this article and all opinions are my own. A big thank you to everyone who participated in the YKOT Lego Challenge. It has been fun! Also a big oops from me as I forgot that I will be going on holidays next week {How could I forget, you ask? Well it has been a busy season here!}..... so I won't be able to run the fourth week of the Lego Challenge! I'm hoping to still post whilst I'm away but I won't be able to collate any photos and access my email. Keep reading because you can continue the Lego Challenge at home any time you want to! Let's see the fabulous and creative entries this week... inspired by books.. If your kids enjoyed the challenge and would like to keep building, download more free Lego Challenges here! You could play as a family and challenge each other or add a timer to make things more interesting! You could even use the challenges at a Lego-inspired birthday party! Feel free to send through any photographs of you and your children building these Lego Challenges anytime! I would love to seen them (cindy@yourkidsot.com). Thanks again to everyone who played along! Watch this space for more Lego-inspired activities!
YKOT Lego Challenge #3Just in case you haven't been playing along. Here is how it will work for the final 2 challenges. Here is how it will work: For the next 2 Fridays, I will select a "Lego Challenge". Encourage your children to build this during the week and take a photograph. Send in the photograph with a brief description {eg. George, age 6, hovercraft or if you prefer Mr 6, hovercraft} by Thursday 5pm (Sydney time). I will collate the photographs so your child can see their own creation and have a look at what others have made too. Rules:
This week's challenge is ... |
Hands up if you are a fan of Lego? Did you play as a child? There are only a few of my childhood toys that have lasted the test of time to be passed onto my own children. My "Cabbage Patch Kid" {Karen Crescenda}, board games, books and a bucketful of LEGO. Now Karen was completely unappreciated by either of my children but the LEGO is well loved. A common complaint I hear among my friends {other parents} is about LEGO sets. Once built, the sets stay built and not played with or broken up and never put back together again. Is this your experience? |
Before I go into the details, I have to let you know that I was inspired to do this after reading about LEGO quest (found on Pinterest). In 2010, a series of quests were given where readers would build and photograph their achievements. I wish we could have been a part of this quest but my kids would have been too young.
So here it is....
YKOT Lego Challenge!
Each Friday for the next 4 weeks, I will select a "Lego Challenge". Encourage your children to build this during the week and take a photograph. Send in the photograph with a brief description {eg. George, age 6, hovercraft or if you prefer Mr 6, hovercraft} by Thursday 5pm (Sydney time). I will collate the photographs so your child can see their own creation and have a look at what others have made too.
Rules:
- Open to children of all ages. {This is not a school assignment so it is not about parental help for the best looking creation but parents can help if they want to! Parents you can build your own if you want to but please label as such. If no-one submits a photograph you might just get lots of my creations. LOL}
- Children can submit more than one photograph per challenge if they want to.
- Children may use any "brick-like-Lego" to complete the challenges including Duplo, Megabloks, etc.
- Photographs submitted will become the property of Your Kids OT and may be published on the website, FB and Pinterest. Thanks!
- This is non-competitive challenge and is designed for encouraging imagination and creativity! Sorry no prizes and no winner.
- Email your photo/s to cindy@yourkidsot.com
- Tell your friends about the challenge!
- Have fun!!!
This can be any bricks that you select.
Are you {and your kids} up for the challenge? The Lego challenge?
Author
Hi, I'm Cindy and I am an Occupational Therapist. I enjoy working creatively with children to see them reach their potential. Read more about me here.
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