Meaningful Movement OT

05/03/2023

Revamped website up and running. Check it out!

I am an experienced occupational therapist who uses creative methods focused on evidence-based practice to improve access to meaningful occupations whether for a child, young adult, or professional through 1:1 therapy.

10/31/2022

Wicked witch of the west. Make 10 vertical lines across the width of a paper. Color them for the hair, legs, arms, and broomstick. Make two circles one large and one medium. Color the medium sized one the same color as the arms and legs for the face. Make a triangle and a smaller and wider rectangle for the hat. Make shoes by drawing 2 ovals with a small square on one side. Color the large circle for the clothes, hat, and shoes the same color. Draw a face onto the medium circle. Cut out all shapes. Cut thin snips at one end of the broom. Use dots of glue to put together. You can glue the witch down onto a paper or leave the body parts dangling. Work on fine motor skills, visual-perception, cutting shapes, and shape recognition.

10/30/2022

Make a ghost. You decide, is he friendly or not! Draw a half circle and zig zag, cut out design. Squeeze a dot of glue for each cotton ball, cut out circles and a moon for a mouth and glue on. Work on fine and visual motor skills, grip strength, and tactile sensory input.

09/02/2022

Are you or your child holding a writing implement like this first picture? Or is your thumb squished closed?
A pen/pencil should be resting in an open web space between the thumb and pointer finger. This allows for increased dynamic movement and precision with the fingers and decreased need for wrist action. A quick and temporary fix to guide the hand into the right position is placing a hair band or rubber band over the wrist and sliding the pencil in the loop by the web space this pulls the pencil into the right position with less effort. Confirm the positioning with the picture on the right. Having a better grasp and stronger muscles will allow for neater and faster handwriting, increased success with ADL’s, and in-hand manipulation tasks. Work on hand and finger strengthening and developing an open web space by improving arches of the palm development through using tongs/tweezers to transfer materials, string beads, make play doh designs, play games like Operation, play games that require shaking dice/jacks, tearing and crumpling paper, or popping bubble wrap.

08/31/2022

If you are already working on fine motor skills and you are not seeing progress make sure you back up and check on core strength and shoulder stability. The importance of working from the biggest muscle groups to the smallest can’t be ignored. Children should be running, jumping, crawling, climbing, swinging, and squeezing before they need to focus on writing and other precision tasks. If you have not started the fine motor tasks think about starting with a physical warm up activity such as throwing a large ball/therapy ball over head, playing zoom ball, animal walk races, scooter on the stomach, or even doing the fine motor task while in tall kneel positioning.

08/17/2022

Make paper flowers! Color white paper in a large rectangle block and color a different color in a small circle. Cut out four strips the length of the paper from the colored rectangle and cut out the circle. Using tape or glue, fold the edge of the strip to the middle on both sides to make two petals. Place a petal pair up and down on the paper and the opposite petal pair perpendicular to make a cross, then repeat with the other two strips to make an X. Connect the four strips to have a follower head. Place the circle in the middle, use crayons or markers to draw a stem and leaves. Grade up: use tape rolls to connect the different sections, Grade down: use colored paper instead of needing to color before cutting and color in a center circle instead of cutting out circles. Bilateral coordination, Scissor skills, Coloring, Fine Motor skills, Visual Motor skills, Sequencing

08/15/2022

Need a quick and easy activity to entertain your child and work on great skills? Grab a can and a stack of rubber bands. Have your child use a pincer grasp (thumb and pointer finger) with both hands to stretch and pull a rubber band over the can. They can use their other fingers to hold the can steady if needed like shown in the picture. Grade up: use a smaller or thicker rubber band for more resistance. Grade down: use looser and thinner rubber bands, smaller cans, narrow bottles. Bilateral coordination, pincer grasp, intrinsic hand strength, grading force, visual motor skills, thenar muscle strength ~Meaningful Movement OT

08/08/2022

Working on cutting, broad stroke coloring, and letter formation? Make a sun. Using white paper have your child draw a half circle or full circle if they have a long name, and draw a triangle for each letter of their name. Use broad stroked side to side to color in the white space. Write/copy/trace the letters of their name into each triangle. Cut out the shapes, tape or glue together around the circle making sure to have correct name spelling, formation, and directionality. Grade up: have the letters out of order and have the child sequence the spelling of their name. Grade down: have the shapes pre-drawn and use colored paper to only work on cutting skills. Fine Motor Skills, Visual Motor Skills, Handwriting, Cutting, Sequencing, Bilateral Coordination - Meaningful Movement OT

08/03/2022

Toilet paper roll puppet characters. Utilizing basic tools create your own puppets. The final design shown is the graded down activity. Color the background of a white paper, practice measuring paper against the tube, cutting straight lines, using a tape dispenser properly, and wrapping the tube in the paper. Draw and color in simple shapes to make your characters features such as circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles, zig zags, or free-form designs. To grade up this activity, draw shapes on different papers (to color in or start with colored paper), cut out the shapes, glue them on in their appropriate spots. Make any of these characters or others, imagination is the limit. Work on fine motor skills, visual motor skills, attention to detail, and bilateral coordination.

08/02/2022

Work on visual scanning, letter recognition, and fine motor skills. Use a toilet paper roll and write letters out of order around the tube. Have your child rotate the tube to find the letters in order. Peel pre-labeled alphabet stickers off a sticker sheet and place them on the matching letter. Grade up by using lowercase and upper case letters, adding numbers into the mix, using a paper towel roll instead, or calling out a letter to find rather than going in order. Grade down by crossing out/coloring the letter on the tube when it is found without using stickers, place the letters in order around the tube which still requires rotation but uses visual memory and knowledge of the alphabet to aid in finding the next letter.

07/29/2022

Work on shape recognition, visual scanning, memory, drawing, coloring, and counting.

Either you or your child should draw a specific shape multiple times, continue with new colors in new shapes until the page is as filled as you would like it to be. Then provide the challenge questions at the top.

To grade this challenge up, have more shapes on the page, all shapes the same color, or distraction such as numbers or letters mixed in. In this case, some of the questions can be about the distractions. To grade this challenge down have fewer shapes and use different sizes for each (a big triangle, a small circle). You can also use this to work on understanding the concepts of big and small.

07/28/2022

Make a healthy summer snack perfect for all ages. Work on planning, gathering materials, practicing bilateral usage, and knife skills.