One of the best parts about occupational therapy and teletherapy is that activities that address a variety of skills do not need to be difficult, hard to find, or have many components.By taking everyday activities and tweaking or targeting different skills, you can address a variety of skills while also increasing the odds that a student will generalize those skills in the classroom.
- I've been loving this activity for handwriting activities for my elementary school students. It's so motivating for them and always gives us a good laugh. Plus, this is a FREE download on Teachers Pay Teachers.
- This activity is great for visual motor skills and can easily be completed on the computer.
- I love this activity for children in pre-school working on pre-writing skills to draw or for a little older children to cut.
- These warm-up exercises are amazing for children needing proprioceptive and/or vestibular input.
- I utilize this website when working on visual memory, visual perception, spatial relationships, form constancy, and visual scanning.
- This website is great because it gives me a variety of approaches such as puzzles, word searches, and a memory game to engage students and keep it different each time.
It is also nice when I can share my screen with them to see how they are completing each task...so cool when we can utilize the same interface!
- This packet celebrates all things OT and has some great, FREE resources to help teach students about our profession.
activities + resources to address + improve figure ground skills
Some of my favorite skills to work on are visual perceptual skills - and more specifically, figure ground skills. Figure ground refers to the ability to focus on one object in a busy visual field. Think of it as trying to find a jar of mayonnaise in a fridge full of food!
Figure ground skills are important for reading, copying words/notes from a board, organization of personal materials, and completing written schoolwork, such as tests.
- Hidden picture activities address a variety of skills, but are my favorite resource to address deficits with figure ground skills.
- Word searches promote visual scanning as well as isolation of letters and words within a bank of letters.
- Puzzles come in a variety of categories and levels of difficulty, and all are great to address figure ground skills.
Interested in working as an OT for DotCom Therapy?
