Make Your OWN Oral Motor Toy!

Breathing can help children {and adults} to regulate their bodies. Breath may affect posture and and behaviour will always be exhibited when a child has difficulty breathing.  Some children benefit from quiet, resistive suck and blow activities such as blowing bubbles in slime, sucking up soup through a straw and blowing balloons.  Some children benefit from easy-to-blow big noise toys.  Other children benefit from oral motor toys which encourage breath to be graded such as a harmonica.**

My favourite oral-motor toy are these animal eye-poppers you see below.  Children need to grade their breath so that the eye balls hover just above the eye sockets.  This appeals on so many levels to kids {and big kids too}! 

Animal Eye Poppers available from Sensory Tools

The dilemma as a therapist is not being able to use oral motor toys easily between children.  Obviously there are hygiene considerations!  It is too expensive to buy one for each child I see. 

When I saw the idea to make your own oral motor toy on Pinterest, I couldn't wait to make it with my OT kids!  I have made a few adjustments to the original instructions to encourage some fine motor and visual motor skills in making the toy.

What do you need?
* Patty pan (cupcake liner)
* Bendy Straw
* Scissors
* Aluminium foil (approx 6cm x 10cm)
* Sticky Tape

What do you need to do?
1. Cut the small section of the bendy straw in half.
2. Cut the "cut off" piece of straw in half.
3. Place the two small pieces of straw on the foil.
4. Scrunch up the foil, covering the straw pieces, into a small ball.

{The small pieces of straw add volume, however keep the ball light}.

5.  Fold the patty pan in half and press down the fold.
6. Fold the patty pan in half again and press down the fold.
7. Open up the patty pan and cut along one fold stopping at the centre.
8. Make a funnel shape with your patty pan and secure with sticky tape. 

9. Make a small cut a the bottom of the funnel shape (enough for the straw to poke through).
10. Place the small section of the straw through the hole in the patty pan.  Try to have a minimal amount of straw poking through.  
11. Secure the straw with sticky tape.
12. Stretch out the "bendy" section of the straw and you are ready to blow!

I have been doing this activity with my 1st and 2nd graders at school.  I bring the supplies in a small zip lock bag and encourage them to follow the steps.  Most of them have needed help with creating the funnel and securing the straw. They have all enjoyed blowing into the straw attempting to grade their breath to keep the ball floating.  It takes practise!

Mr L shows you in this video how it is done!  {If you are reading this in an email, you may need to press the title of this article and view it in an online browser}

We can use respiration as a tool to regulate our heart rate and to support attention and focus.** This oral motor toy encourages an aligned postural position to facilitate controlled breathing.  As children attempt to float the ball above the straw, their breath is graded and controlled.

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What is your favourite oral motor toy?  Have you made one?

Note: This article does NOT contain affiliate links.  All opinions expressed about products in this article are my own.  I have not received any remuneration for this article.

** Gen Jereb's "The Traffic Jam in My Brain" presented 10th April, 2015.

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