OT type activities

[Sweetum]

We have a student training to be an OT working for us as an OT, with us providing the plan and the material as much as we can manage. At this point she is working on fine and gross motor skills. I am looking for next step ideas for the activities he is currently doing. Please suggest some ideas/activities.
Fine motor:
1. piggy bank - he puts coins in with each hand individually. she places them on the table and has him pic them up and put them in the slot. then she puts a single coin in the palm of his hand and has hime manipulate it to his fingers and then put them in.
2. use tongs to transfer big blocks from one bowl to another. he is still working on this skill, so we will continue it.
3. lacing: we had him do lacing blocks that I ordered from lakeshore learning. We have just started doing lacing cards.

gross motor:
1. she taught him how to trike! yay! we are so proud :)
2. jumping: DS doesn't jump well. barely lifts himself. cannot jump into a pool, walks into it. it would be great to teach this to him, although neither of us is sure how to. ideas?
3. catch ball: doesn't do this consistently
4. kick ball: is not motivated to do this. ideas to motivate would be nice.

other:
1. roll on back on exercise ball and pick up mardi gras necklaces placed on the floor.
2. bubbles: he can pop, and does it. we want to eventually teach him how to blow bubbles himself. ideas how to?
3. sit n spin: we have a sit n spin and we have him do it 20 times in each direction.

we have not done any sensory stuff at this point since I feel she is not comfortable getting very messy, and I am not sure how to deal with it myself. I could do it on my own, but I dont know how to do it with her. ideas welcome here as well.
She also tried to get him to do some painting, but this is something he is simply not willing to do at all. we have sort of backed off on this.

Please provide your ideas that you are able to easily do at home that are next levels for some of the above that would help build a skill or strengthen his hand grip. I also forgot to mention that he does not have a strong core, so ideas for that would be great too.

thanks in advance.

[crl]

There is a book called The Out of Sync Child Has Fun that has sensory activities in it. I am sure there are others; that's the one I am familiar with.

On rainy days, ds and I used to have a car wash. We would get his match box cars together and I would set out a bowl of water. Then I would spray a big mound of shaving cream on the table. We would run cars through the mound and then wash them off in the water. Great fun. Huge mess.

Hope that helps,
Catherine

[Sweetum]

:) sounds like fun. I should do that. forgot to mention that he is tactile defensive, so, I need to go slow.
also, we already have him practice his scissor skills by having him cut strips of paper while I hold the paper. I used to have to position the paper between the blades, but now he is able to seek the paper out and position it himself. we will be working towards him holding the strip and cutting it.

[Pyrodjm]

How old is he?
Generally for fine motor I would suggest:
Stringing beads
play doh (pinching, pulling, rolling, etc)
Tracing shapes in sand/flour
Coloring and scribbling with thick markers and pencils
Legos or duplos if he is under 4

[Pyrodjm]

For sensory you can fill and container with dry beans or uncooked rice and hide small toys in it. No mess and if you vary the toys you can keep in interesting.

[brittone2]

Pinterest has lots of ideas for fine motor activities. There are some old BBB threads with tons of ideas. I don't know his age, so you would have to gauge by his age and ability which ones would be appropriately challenging. Strengthening his core will help with the fine motor things. Will he draw or paint on an easel? That is good for the muscles of the shoulder girdle and will help with the stability for fine motor skills. Depending on how his tactile defensiveness is, you can integrate some work on that with the easel. Will he touch shaving cream or finger paint yet?

Is his balance adequate to kick a ball? She could work on single leg stance activities and build up from there if it isn't (eta: stand on one leg and stomp on a dog squeaky toy or big bubble wrap if he's not averse to the sound of those). Can he walk on a simple balance beam or a line of tape on the floor? Will he play along with imitating different animal walks? Bear walk, slither like a snake, etc? Will he crawl through a tunnel? Climb stairs? Use a sit on scooter like this? http://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Scooter-Board-Handles-inch/dp/B001RPS87E/ref=pd_sim_sbs_t_9 You could also have him do it tummy down and propel with his arms.

The jumping could be a core strength issue, it could be related to the sensory things...hard to say without knowing him. Will he climb? Do you have a hunch whether it is gravitational insecurity or a core issue?

Have you ever tried a balloon with a balloon cover (etsy carries these) to see if he can catch that? It will be slower and a little easier to catch than a ball, but obviously skip this if he'll try to put it in his mouth and only do it with supervision. Try a knobby gertie ball once he can handle the balloon.

eta: Pinterest will have ideas for lots of sensory bins too. If he has something that makes him tick, use that first--trains, vehicles, airplanes, animals...if you know his "thing" that he is into, that will help. Like the PP said you can hide items in bins of rice, beans, different shapes of pasta, etc.

[brittone2]

For bubble blowing, have you tried using a straw, and having him blow through it to move a cotton ball on a table? If he can coordinate that, you could then work on blowing "lightly" vs. "harder" and see if he can modulate how hard he is blowing. He could have little targets to aim for, etc. where he'd have to blow harder for some games vs. softer to get the cotton ball into a small cirular target taped on the table or something like that. You could use little pom poms too. Maybe even a tissue or a crumpled tissue?

eta: for jumping, have you tried a mini trampoline with him yet? There is obviously a risk of injury, so you'll want to have it be supervised. If he has gravitational insecurity issues, he may dislike it and that might be too much for him at first, so YMMV on how to handle that. THat's what makes it tough to give activities at times...it depends on your DS's individual sensory needs and so forth, obviously.