Favorite OT Things!

Social networking sites have been so helpful in finding new treatment ideas for the children I work with at school, home, and in the sensory-clinic.  There are so many amazing “tweets” and “shares” offering a variety of creative play ideas and craft activities.  Recently on Twitter, Parenthood.com (@ParenthoodCom) suggested homemade gift ideas for the holidays, one being collages.  My OT spin on this idea was to have children create a collage of all the things they like to do in their occupational therapy sessions.  I asked them to look through old therapy catalogs and pick the items that make them stronger or helped them write better, to find equipment they would put in their ideal obstacle course, and find their favorite games that we have played throughout the year.  If they could not find their favorites in the catalogs they were able to access Google to search for pictures of them.  It was a great way to work on ideation, visual perceptual skills, sequencing of a multi-step task, and obviously….fine motor skills.

The children all loved this activity and were excited to bring home their collages to show their parents.  Now their parents will see the specific therapeutic tools used in OT and have functional gift ideas for their children as they finish up their holiday shopping!

Check out these fantastic collages:

I wanted to make one too!

Here are some of my favorites: