Playdough with Accessories   

Description of item: Either store bought or made at home (see recipe below)

Why it’s recommended:

Playdough is a great, non-threatening activity for children with fine motor difficulties. Although Play dough can be used as a hand warm-up tool at times, it is also a great therapeutic tool in itself. It can be used to assist with hand strength, in-hand manipulation and coordination. Starting off by squeezing and squishing the dough for strength and moving onto rolling or pinching the dough will give your child a sense of success (as squeezing and general playing with the dough is much easier than coordinating both hands at the same time to create something!).

Play dough tools are a great addition to playing with playdough on its own. Tools such as cutters and pressers (cookie cutters and shapes) are wonderful for hand strength and often require both hands to work at the same time (bilateral coordination). Tools also incorporate challenges and problem-solving aspects to the activity, for example when using a play dough scissors, the play dough may need to be rolled out more for the scissors to cut through it properly.

Play is a great way for children seeking tactile input who touch everything in sight, find different textures and materials to rub, and excessively touch people’s faces or clothes. These children may be unable to get enough “messy play”, therefore, playdough is brilliant to incorporate in their daily playing. Adding beads/pasta shells/marbles to the playdough can add extra textures.

It can also be used as a tool to build self-esteem.  Children love to create pretend food, build ‘snowmen’, create animals, and use the accessories to make imaginative sculptures. There are no rules or correct way to use play dough, therefore children can take pride in what they can make on their own. 

Lava Lamp

Description: A great addition to any room, lava lamps have coloured wax which heats up and moves around to create different shapes.

Why it’s recommended:

Lava lamps come in many shapes and sizes, colours and designs and are a great gift for any age group from 5 years onwards. For children who seek visual sensory input, or even for those who are overly stimulated by stimuli in their environment, lava lamps have a natural calming effect when in an environment. When a child feels fearful, overly excited, agitated, restless, hyperactive, controlling or moody, this simple calming visual input can act to reduce their level of arousal/alertness. Lava lamps are also great for children who have difficulty settling down for sleep and regulating sleep/wake cycles, and for those who have a fear of the dark.

Balance bike

Description: Balance bikes, also known as runner bikes, training bikes or walker bikes, are bikes which don’t have pedals.

Why it’s recommended:

These bikes will help your child develop an early sense of balance and control, along with independence, self-confidence and happiness. The bikes offer your child just enough stability and at the same time instability that will teach them to learn balance. This builds confidence and eliminates fear by allowing the child to have their feet on the ground and progress at their own pace. Although a lot of these bikes are smaller and aimed at children aged 2-4 years old, there are bigger models available for children up to 10 years old. These are perfect for children with gross motor difficulties, and difficulties with balance and bilateral coordination.

Learn to dress doll

Description:  Many different models/dolls are available. Can be used to practice zips, snap buttons, laces, buttons, and buckles.

Why it’s recommended:

Dressing dolls is an effective way for toddlers to develop the manual dexterity they need to dress themselves. Not only are they developing the motor skills to get dressed, they are learning the process of how to dress themselves, the names of clothing and clothing parts. Dolls with additional clothing to put on or off can be beneficial as the child practices pulling clothes over the doll’s head and arms, and in turn, learns how to perform these same actions on their own body. Dolls are available with boy’s or girl’s clothing and children can also learn how to dress appropriately for different weather (a must for living in Ireland!).

Cra-Z-knit design set

Description of item: This set includes a knitting loom to knit yourself some personal items or presents such as a scarf, hat or anything else you wish. Using the loom makes it a lot easier to make cool designs and it comes with two looms and sparkly yarn.

Why it’s recommended:

With this year’s obsession with loom bands, this knitting loom is a great way to encourage your child to continue their creative streak. Working with the loom requires fine motor skills, organization and planning. It also requires your child to follow directions and problem-solve while using the loom. With this gift, your child will have an end product to work towards, encouraging them to continue and concentrate on the activity for longer and also brings their creative side out, making something personal and suited to them. The age recommendation for this set is 6 years and up.

Post by: Maeve O’Sullivan, Occupational Therapist

Blocks: Building the blocks for language

Why is this item being recommended?

Building with blocks is a brilliant language building activity. Not only does it provide lots of opportunities for pretend play, it involves social interaction (turn taking, problem solving), and basic concepts (tall and short, big and small, more and less). There are lots of great block sets out there, so when deciding which one is the best one to get, think about your own child (e.g. bigger, colourful blocks may be better suited for young children). As an added bonus here, no batteries are required – ever!!

To ‘Mr. Potato Head’ and beyond…

Why is this item being recommended?

Who needs buzz light-year when we have Mr. Potato Head? As any speech and language therapist will tell you, Mr. Potato Head is the staple, go-to toy on their toy shelf; he is our Toy Story hero.

Mr. Potato Head is a toy that I myself once played with as a child, and I now see many children playing with, and getting great enjoyment from. Mr. Potato Head provides endless language opportunities to be capitalised on if your child’s language development is delayed, from body parts, emotions, clothing, and size to comparisons, prepositions and more. Mr. Potato Head is a lovely toy that you and your child can play with together, providing your child with the social interaction that will foster and encourage their language development.
It is safe to say that Mr. Potato Head is lasting through the generations and as a speech and language therapist I would have to say “long may he last!”

Bubbles

Why is this item being recommended?

 Simple and extremely fun – bubbles are a great stocking filler that children will love and get endless hours of fun from. If your child is having difficulty making eye contact, bubbles are an interactive fun way of encouraging your child to give you eye contact in a social situation. When playing with the bubbles, get down to your child’s level, whether this means sitting, kneeling or standing. To start with, blow the bubbles a few times so that your child is aware of what happens (someone needs to open the bubbles, blow the plastic bubble stick and bubbles are created). Then pull back! That is to say, open the bubbles, put the bubble stick to your mouth, take a deep breath in as if you are going to blow the bubbles and simply wait – wait to see what your child does. If your child is at a stage where eye contact is fleeting, your goal is to get your child to look at your eyes and once he/she does so, you blow the bubbles immediately. Through this the child is learning that if they want you to blow the bubbles they must look at you. Eye contact is only the beginning of what you can use the bubbles for to help your child’s development.

If you are getting consistent eye contact from your child, wait for him or her to make a sound indicating that they are looking for the bubbles to be blown. Like the eye contact, once a sound is made by your child, blow the bubbles. Bubbles are great fun and can be used indoors or outdoors and are enjoyable for all involved. You can also adapt this for the sounds you are working on in therapy or for words like “blow”, “more”, etc.
Games

Description of the item: The games that fall under this bracket are those that require multiple pieces in order to play the game. The above games are simply suggestions that I have found to work well. Any game where a ‘token’ can be collected during your child’s speech and language therapy practice will work just as well.

Why is this item being recommended?

For the parents out there that are working with their child on his or her speech production, I know how repetitive and hard it can be to keep your child’s motivation going through numerous productions of sounds. That is why games such as the ones above can be extremely motivating for your child. Each time your child produces the sound that you are trying to elicit, you hand them a token. A token is the object that the child is collecting; it is required to play the game. Examples include: the white body parts in operations, or the horse’s objects in Buckaroo. There is also no rule that limits these games to be used solely with speech production; they are a great motivator for other work as well.

Articulate 

Description of the item:

A team board game where the teams are competing against each other to be the first team round to the finish segment on the board. Progress is made by correctly guessing what your team mates are describing.

Why is this item being recommended?

This is a great game for the older kids, teenagers, and adults! A team game which means that this can be a great game to take out around Christmas time to play with family and friends. It is perfect for the child/teenage who is working on their expressive language; building their vocabulary or especially those practicing adding descriptive words to sentences. Allows us to work on language in a fun and interactive way; a task in itself which can be tricky to do with teenagers.

Other Ideas:

Remember that many games or toys can be adapted to build on your child’s speech and/or language skills. All you need is a little imagination. Keep your ‘goals’ in mind while you play and keep introducing new words and emphasising the important ones.

Post created by: Niamh Ni Dhufaigh, Speech and Language Therapist

Hand Print Spiders

This craft is a good way to work on tactile (touch) processing, fine motor skills and visual motor integration.

You’ll need:

• Black Tempera or poster paint
• Paper
• Googly eyes

Paint your child’s four fingers and palm black (but NOT the THUMB)… Press the painted hand onto paper pointing fingers out. Paint the other hand and press it in the opposite direction overlapping palm prints. Add wiggly eyes and you have a cute, not so creepy spider.

Pumpkin Treat Bag

This craft is a also a great way to work on tactile (touch) processing, fine motor skills and visual motor integration.

Make these bags at school or home, for children to keep their Halloween party candy.

You’ll need:

• Orange paint
• Green paint
• Lunch paper bag
• Sponge
• Palm of hand, index finger

Apply orange paint to the palm of a hand with a sponge. Press the palm onto the front of the paper bag.

Using the index finger & green paint, make stem and leaves on the pumpkins.

Egg Cartoon Bat

Skills needed: This craft is a good way to work on tactile (touch) processing, fine motor skills and bilateral hand coordination.

You’ll need:

• Egg cartoon
• Red and black marker
• Black paint, glitter, googly eyes (optional)

Separate 3 cups from one side of an egg carton. Cut out part of the bottoms of the 2 outside cups to resemble bat wings.

Add eyes, a mouth, and decorate.

Hang it from a string or a rubber band.