Who doesn’t love themed activities to help inspire fun treatment planning?!
This week in our OT-Language group in early childhood classrooms we did an apple theme for working on letter A. I just couldn’t pass up sharing this with you all! Here were the activities we did and the targeted skills.
Apple Tissue Craft
When making this fun craft we worked on so many skills including:
1. Drawing circles and lines
2. Coloring in small shapes like the leaf
3. Bilateral skills for tearing tissue paper
4. Fine motor skills and hand strength for tearing tissue paper
5. Hand strength and pressure grading for using glue
6. Visual skills for keeping paper within the boundary lines.
Apple Tree Beading
For this activity we had students bead small red pony beads onto a pipe cleaner “Apple tree”. This activity targeted bilateral coordination skills as well as fine motor grasping skills. For our older students we worked on picking up 2-3 beads one at a time and then holding them in the hand while threading each bead one at a time. This works on translation skills (moving items into and out of your hand using your fingers) and separation of sides of the hand (you hold the extra beads in hand while using thumb, index and even middle finger to pull bead out of hand and put on tree).
Apple Says and Apple Toss
This was our fun gross motor station. We targeted lots of skills with these games. First we had the students follow 1-2 step directions to place foam apples at different places on or around their body (ex behind your back, on top your head, etc). This worked on auditory processing and motor planning. Next we had the students through the apples into the basket one at a time. We emphasized opposite arm/leg movements (stepping with opposite foot of throwing arm) which is good for bilateral integration and eye hand coordination for throwing.
Applesauce Drawing
This activity was filled with great sensory opportunities! We included skills for opening apple sauce containers, pouring and spreading the applesauce on the plate. Next we worked on copying shapes or writing words in the applesauce on the plates. Several kids enjoyed writing with their fingers. We had students with tactile aversions do this with qtips or paint brushes. Several kids were interested in trying their apple sauce. You could use this task for Sensory play in food as you work to reduce anxiety and aversions kids have with trying new foods and textures.
Parts of Apple craft
For this activity we had students cut half circles, glue three Popsicle sticks together to make an apple core and color in small black seeds with pencils on the Popsicle sticks. This task worked on bilateral coordination, cutting control, hand strength and motor planning, as well as fine motor control with pencil for coloring. It was also great for talking about all the parts of an apple for building language and vocabulary skills!
Ten Apples Up on Top
This activity incorporated our book for the week. We had kids work on number recognition and counting to place Apple clips on paint sticks like the apples that went up, up, up on top the animal heads like in the book. The clips targeted hand strength, pencil grip, and fine motor control.
Apple Worm Size Sorting
In this activity the students used their hand strength, fine motor and visual motor skills. Students worked to pull worms out of the apples and sort them by size. They then had to twist the worms back into the apple holes, which incorporated some great dexterity, 2 hand use, and hand strength.
Apple Tree Sorting
We used Apple stickers with upper case A and lower case A written on them. Some students sorted the stickers onto two trees to help with visual discrimination and fine motor skills. Other students used tongs and sorted red/green colored Apple erasers between two “Apple trees” made of paper and toilet paper rolls.
Apple Sensory Bag
In this activity the students moved red buttons around in a zip lock bag filled with green hair gel. The red buttons resembled apples and were used to build letters, shapes and pre-writing strokes while incorporating a fun tactile sensory task.
Hope these fun activities inspire some great letter A and fall apple theme activities!
Ready to Grow – Casey
OT and Grow With Me 