Cool Tool

Kit Item #7: A Writing Surface

There are many different writing surfaces out there that would be perfect to put into a kit. I love using things that can be used again and again
to help Andrew build his handwriting skills. I have the following items in my own My Obstacle Course materials:

• Magna-Doodles (I have even found small seasonal ones!)
• Aqua-Doodles
• white boards (write on/wipe off or dry erase) that come lined like beginning writing paper and plain white (make sure to use the correct markers and NOT permanent markers – speaking from experience here! 🙂 )
• chalk boards

These items make it super easy to set up, easy to clean up and are about the size of a sheet of paper so they store easily. I have also found that they are much less intimidating and more fun for Andrew than paper. He is much more willing to draw or write if he knows it was not going to be permanent. Using these tools helped a good deal because if it didn’t look the way he wanted, he could erase it easily and start again.

Past Posts You May Find Helpful:

Click here for a past post on the different writing surfaces I have used as part of our stations – No Paper or Pencils Required Here!

Click here for a past post on Handwriting Helpers if you want to learn about some tools that are out there to help with finger placement on writing instruments.

Activity Suggestions:

• Flip and Draw
• Make the Same – writing words using models, like the space words above, flash cards or speech words
• Practicing letters or numbers
• Painting shapes, letters or numbers with water on a chalkboard

Handwriting is one of those skills that is a common challenge for children with motor and/or planning issues (and they know it!) so I am always looking for ways to sneak it in while making it fun. These items make it easy for me to create stations to do just that and hope that they might help you as well!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Obstacle Kit Item #6: Food Coloring

When thinking about how to make activities fun in order to make building more challenging skills exciting, I thought back to teaching my “Colors” unit in kindergarten. The students loved experimenting and learning how different colors are made. I started using food coloring in My Obstacle Course station activities with Andrew and got to see the same look of wonder and joy as he saw firsthand what happens when two colors blend together. So easy and so fun!!

Uses:

• drops of color into water combined with droppers, bulb syringe or turkey baster to build fine motor skills while experimenting with color
• drops of color into shaving cream or frosting to build hand and arm muscles by mixing with spoon

Sample Activities:

These are all pretty straight forward station activities. Click here for a food coloring post search from my website but these photos give a good idea of how we have used food coloring to add some color to station activities aimed at building hand muscles and muscle control.

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Adding food coloring to make orange shaving cream for autumn themed shaving cream writing station

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Color fun with droppers

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Use hands to squeeze bag so frosting mixes and makes it colored

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Use spoon to mix and make the frosting turn green

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Pour colored water to fill muffin pan

These are just some ways we have used food coloring in My Obstacle Courses to make them a bit more fun. Such an easy add in that helps to motivate and inspire experimentation. Have fun!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

 

Droppers, Bulb Syringes and Turkey Basters

These items are great to have in a My Obstacle Course kit because they add fun and build hand muscles with hardly any set up – just add water and some bowls or cups and you are good to go!

They also help to build some other skills, like planning, patience and focus (in a way that I found was tolerable for Andrew 🙂 ) because for it to work, the child has to do several things:

• squeeze the top
• hold it squeezed while putting the bottom in the liquid
• release the bulb slowly to allow the liquid to get sucked into the tube.

These muscles also have to work to squeeze the liquid back out. He learned pretty quickly how to do it to get the most liquid and would talk to himself about how it worked and what he was going to have to do next time. (Andrew: “Oh, not a lot. Try again and get some more next time. Hooray! Look at all the water!”)

I found a package of droppers (I think 12) at my local teacher store and I do find that having more than one is helpful. The bulb syringe was something that was left over from when Andrew was a baby. They also sell these as part of ear cleaning kits. Look no further than your kitchen drawers to find the turkey baster, however, I did buy a separate one for Andrew’s use (really inexpensive one from the grocery store) to keep with my other station materials.

Uses:

• making different colors when combined with colored water
• transferring water from one container to another in order to fill it to a certain level
• squirting water on something (putting out fire blog post)

Past Posts Using These Items:

• Droppers
• Bulb Syringe
• Baster

Adding any of these items to a My Obstacle Course kit is a super easy way to encourage experimentation with water while also helping to build muscles that will help with handwriting. I love things that make this fun!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

 

Kit Item #4: Tweezers or Tongs

Tweezers or tongs (or even kiddie chopsticks like the ones I got from Sur La Table) are great for building muscles required for handwriting. Tweezers are something that almost everyone has at home which makes it even better, almost like getting a free tool! They also pair quite nicely with kit item #3, puff balls.

Click here for a past post on tweezers.

Uses:

This item pretty much has one use, to build hand muscles by squeezing the tweezers to pick something up. Where you can get creative is with the items that you are having them pick up. Some possibilities:

• puff balls
• mini marshmallows
• jelly beans
• gummy bears (gummy anything really!)
• cut pieces of string or pipe cleaner
• sugar cubes (it is really fun to stack sugar cubes but requires a more steady hand so I wouldn’t start out with stacking these)

Sample Activity:

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Help the baby spiders get back to their mom!

This was a really easy station to put together using tweezers, some brown shredded paper and colored puff balls. That is it! You don’t even need the shredded paper, you could have them scattered about on a cookie sheet or foil tray in salt or sand and pretend they are lost in the snow or desert.

Kit Item #3: Colored Puffs

This is one of my most favorite My Obstacle Course purchases and I actually bought this package of multi-sized, multi-colored cotton puff balls at Michael’s for my first Obstacle Course with Andrew. They were great then and I am still finding ways to use them! I’d say I’m getting an excellent return on this investment :).

Using something like this requires a little bit of thought (I mean teeny, tiny because I’m giving you some suggestions) but almost no time spent putting a fun station together other than picking out the colors/sizes you want to use. I love things like this which make it super simple!!

When using them in a station activity, I first decide what skill I want to work on with him and then choose the puffs from there. I also think about the theme we are doing so, for example, around Valentine’s Day, I would pick out the red ones and do an activity with just those. I store them in a plastic bag the closes so I don’t have puffs all over the place.

Uses:

• sorting by color
• sorting by size
• patterning
• sequencing from smallest to largest (and vice versa)
• counting (use them as counters or manipulatives)
• one to one correspondence
• paired with a straw to build oral motor skills
• paired with tongs, kid chop sticks or tweezers to build fine motor skills
• paired with a frisbee for motor planning to make one go around the edge and visual tracking when watching it as it goes around the edge (I’d pick a colored puff that really stands out from the frisbee color.)

Click here for a link to a “puff” search on past posts.

Sample Activity:

My Obstacle Course Station Activity: Puff Blowing

For this station activity, Andrew was working on oral motor skills, specifically getting his lips to create an “o” to blow air out of. We began this station with a straw to blow through and that helped so much. It gave his mouth something to form around. We gradually progressed to doing it without the straw. He was getting so much better at this (he used to blow air out of his nose thinking that he was doing it if it was making the same sound 🙂 ) so I thought I would throw in some larger puffs that would require more power from his breath. I also used a timer to see if he could blow all of the puffs to the window within a certain amount of time. A little motivational challenge for him!

The puff blowing helps build oral motor skills but also provides a way to sneak in some other skills, like building receptive and expressive language. I would do this by asking him which puff he wanted to blow (ex. large or small, green or red) or tell him which one to blow and see if he understood which puff that was. This gave me a lot of great information about where he was with this stuff and he has a blast blowing them into containers, off of the counter or like above, blowing them towards the window before the timer runs out.

Remember, this is just one example activity that uses these colorful puff balls. Check out past puff posts link above to get more ideas!!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!