Chatterbox Time!

8/11/2015

Chatterbox Time! Kids all love to make and play with chatterboxes! I remember making them when I was a child, did you? Last week, I made these with some of the kids I see for therapy and it was the perfect activity to work on a range of skills.

If you haven't made one for a while, this is how you fold your chatterbox. Start with an A4 size piece of paper and make sure you press down each fold neatly. The neater the folding the better the chatterbox will work in the end.

1. Start with an A4 piece of paper. (You could also start with a square piece of paper and skip to step 4.)
2. Fold down one corner so your triangle lines up with the side.
3. Cut off the section under the triangle.
4. Open out your triangle so you can see your square.
5. Fold down another corner creating a triangle.
6. Open out your square so you can see the two folded diagonal lines.
7. Bring each corner into the middle, pressing down on the fold.
8. Flip over your square.
9. Bring each new corner into the middle, pressing down on the fold.
10. Almost there!
11. Fold along the horizontal middle line, open and fold along the vertical middle line, open. (This will held with the movement of the chatterbox when playing.)
12. Put your fingers in the "open square" parts of each quarter. Your chatterbox is now ready to decorate!
13. Add a coloured dot to each square. (We also wrote the colour name for those kids who needed a reference to spell the colours when playing.)
14. Flip over your square and write a number in each triangle section. Try to have odd/even numbers to help later with playing.
15. Open out each double triangle to write a question/joke. Write the answer in the bottom half. (If your child has small legible writing you may be able to fit in a question/joke in each small triangle.)
16 and 17. Ready to play. Use your thumb and index fingers on both hands to open and close the chatterbox.

We had a great time making these in OT last week. Here are some of the skills we worked on:

Folding - A difficult fine motor and bilateral coordination exercise for some kids. Accuracy was the key and sometimes a little help to notice cues like the edge of the page or the centre point. You could also draw in a line to provide a visual prompt for kids to know exactly where a fold should be made.
Cutting - A straight line to cut.
Following multiple step instructions - This task was really motivating even though there were so many steps to follow.
Number writing - An opportunity to practise writing numbers.
Letter formation - An opportunity for pencil control when writing jokes. I drew extra lines so that there was a visual prompt as to where to write the joke and where to write the answer. As the space to write was quite small, kids had to work hard to reduce their letter sizes so that the jokes would fit in the space provided.
Visual Copying and memory - Copying the joke from a piece of paper meant that kids had to look up at the prompt, visually memory letters or words then write them down. Some kids had difficulty keeping track of where they were up to and copying the appropriate letters.
Motor Planning - Placing fingers into the chatterbox to open and shut it was a bit tricky for some of the kids I see. We had to work on pinching the paper, planning the actions to move thumbs together and then apart.