We're always on the lookout for cool toys that make it fun to work on important developmental skills with kids. Ever heard of Squigz? Learn more here!
My kids came home from school with a fun little pamphlet full of "experiments". and my kids have been begging to try the Wave Bottle all summer long!!!! And since Idaho is pretty far from
This Tetris printable game will bring back nostalgia for your favorite childhood video game. Print, cut, and try to fit as many pieces in the grid.
Whether your kids are bored, have energy to burn or just want something new, these Frisbee games will do the trick.
Fun STEM activity for outdoor play and makes a great science lesson! (Includes a printable rocket template).
Free printable mazes for kids who are just starting out with mazes. Perfect for toddlers and preschoolers.
Hey busy SLP! Ever find yourself in a therapy rut or in need of some articulation activities ASAP? I’ve got you covered! This post is full of 12 quick and easy articulation activities to help you achieve as many target trials as possible, without resorting to the ever-tedious drill, drill, drill! Articulation Activitie
Dzieciakom (i mi również) gra Roll&Draw spobobała się tak bardzo, że postanowiłam zrobić swoją wersję. Zapraszam więc do rzucania kością i rysowania swoich potworków – Roll a Monster gam…
It's so fun to make a DIY spinner toy! These spinner toys are so bright and colourful, and they're so cool to play with! Watch the colours combine as the string spinner whirls through the air. This is such an easy craft to make, especially when you download our free spinner templates (find the links below!). Decorate and colour your spinner disc however you'd like, and create hours of fun for mere pennies! This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a small commission which helps us run this website. DIY Spinner
I always keep my empty Altoids tins after I use them, because they're so handy. Here are 17 Altoids tin ideas that will amaze you.
One of my daughter's favorite toys is her parachute. We have played so many parachute games for toddlers specifically. They keep her so busy and entertained. Parachute games can help kids with social skills, coordination, and fine motor skills. It is great for a single child or a large group of kids. This is the
It's so fun to make a DIY spinner toy! These spinner toys are so bright and colourful, and they're so cool to play with! Watch the colours combine as the string spinner whirls through the air. This is such an easy craft to make, especially when you download our free spinner templates (find the links below!). Decorate and colour your spinner disc however you'd like, and create hours of fun for mere pennies! This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a small commission which helps us run this website. DIY Spinner
Free crossword puzzle printable for kids. Beach themed puzzle for ages 6-10. Challenging, brain buster activities for kids.
You and your kids will love putting together these simple helicopters and watching them fly! *Video below
DIY Cheerleading Pom-Poms: Near the end of the school year, my six year old came home from school, just BEGGING to go to summer cheer camp. I just couldn't bring myself to pay the exorbitant fees associated with it, and so I planned my own cheer camp for her in our backyard. …
It's no secret that I love toys and including play into my therapy sessions. If you haven't already downloaded my FREE Play-Based Speech Therapy Homework you can download it HERE! One toy that I use often but have never really included is a shape sorter. Sometimes this one may seem a little "babyish" but I am always surprised by my kiddos who want to play with it. This toy can be used to target many language goals and I thought I'd put together a little list of ten goals you can target with a shape sorter. I usually bring it out with my Pre-K-Kinder population or my younger students who have autism. Please know these are just general ideas, really the possibilities are endless and you may need to adjust to what your student needs. Here are some ideas of how to use a shape sorter to target language skills! First is obvious, naming or identifying colors. Now with this particular sorter, I am limited to five colors but usually, that is a good number to start with. You can give directions such as "Give me a purple block." or ask questions "What color is the triangle?" to target this goal. Next is requesting! This is a goal I work on often, many of my kiddos enjoy independent or parallel play and are used to grabbing what they want. But often I want to encourage cooperative play where they acknowledge a partner playing with them, not just next to them. I will hold the sorter bucket with the blocks and put the top in front of the student. Or I may hold all the blocks but give them the bucket with the top. Then prompt them to request what they want using as much detail as possible. My end goal would be for them to verbalize "I want a red square please!" or "Can I have the purple circle?" but we will work up to that with maybe just verbalizing or signing "more" or "please" at first. You may have to use some more structure when playing to target following directions by withholding some of the blocks. You could maybe give your student half the blocks and you keep half. Give them directions while handing one of your blocks such as "Put this block in the bucket" or "Stack this block on the star". Understanding quantities can be tricky for my younger kiddos. With the blocks, you can work on understanding "more", "some", "all" and "none". You can sort the blocks into two unequal groups and ask which group has more. You can instruct the student to put all the blocks in the bucket. You can ask the student to give you "some" blocks. You can show them an empty bucket and ask how many are inside. This one can go hand-in-hand with following directions. Prompt the student to give you a block with negation. For example "Find a block that is NOT red" or "Give me a block that is NOT round". You can use the top of sorter to match or you can put a set of blocks in a row and encourage your student to match them up with another set of blocks as shown in the picture. Positional Words, Spatial Concepts, or prepositions...whatever you call them they are all essentially the same and you can use the sorter to target them! The easiest positional words to target with the sorter are "in", "out", "on", "off", "under" and "over". You can either have the student follow your direction "Put the square on the triangle" or answer a question "Where is the orange block?" while holding it over or under another object/block. Take turns putting the blocks in, taking them out, requesting, lining them up, naming them, counting them...any of the skills you are working with! Count the blocks, it may be easiest to put them all in a straight line to help work on one-to-one correspondence when counting. For older students (end of kinder, 1st grade), you can use the blocks to count by 5's or 10's. And last but not least you can work on naming or identifying the shapes. Ask the student "What shape is this?" while pointing to the block. Request a block by naming the shape such as "Can I have a star?". If your student is good with naming/identifying the basic shapes work on the attributes instead. For example "What shape has three points?" or "Give me a shape that has four sides". That's it! One little toy and so many possibilities!
Toddler busy bags for traveling are an essential on our packing list when going anywhere. It keeps our toddler entertained when needed.
This oobleck stress ball has a really cool texture and is SO FUN to play with! Make this simple DIY stress ball in 10 minutes or less.
26 portable sensory processing disorder activities, toys, and products to support sensory sensitive kids at home, in therapy, at school, and beyond!
Make foam playdough with just 2 ingredients. Find out how to make playdough with shaving foam. Plus, printable rainbow playdough mat!
These following direction activities are directionality activities that can help kids learn directions or spatial concepts such as left, right, up, down, and compass directions (north, south, east, and west) with a motor component. This hands-on learning activity really gets the kiddos moving and learning! We’ve shared directionality activities before that help kids navigate and ... Read more
Gift giving inspiration with meaningful toys that will enrich your children's learning and development! In case you happen to be considering getting a gift for your child's classroom or you happen to be putting a wish list together for your own classroom, I have put together a snapshot of what I would consider to be the
Need a rainy day activity idea or a few summer crafts for kids to make in the summer camp (or at home). We've got some of the best summer art and craft ideas to share
This past week we've been enjoying toys and games during our therapy sessions. With COVID it's been awhile since we've sat closer at a table and shared game pieces so this week was so much fun for the kids and myself! Over the years I have created a wide variety of game companions and mats that can be used to target a variety of speech and language skills while also playing with toys or games. Each activity is available separately but I have also bundled most of these Toys and Game companions on TPT for a discount! All the pictures below are linked. Check them out! Playdough Mats First up, playdough mats! I have a range of articulation and language mats that make planning mixed groups super easy. Pop it Companions This is a new companion I made this year when the Pop it craze took over my kids. They love this one! Play N' Say Mats Uno is always requested with my kids in grades 2nd-5th. These mats make it easy to target speech sounds while also playing. When they play a card they must say the word on the color mat that matches. Speech Builders I printed and laminated these strips and use them with a variety of blocks. Duplo, legos and hashtag blocks, they love them all! While most of the toys and games we've played with are physical games, we have many boom card games we play too. Tic-Tac-Talk This is an easy one for the beginning or the end of a session. We always get a lot of trials in when we play this game. Articulation Four-in-a-Row I have an articulation and a language version of this game. It's similar to Connect 4 except players can put their pieces anywhere on the board. First to four in a row wins! Game Companions This file has open-ended mats for a large variety of games. So many ways to play! Guess What? A little while ago I made an Articulation Mini-Objects kit and we use them to play many different games. This Guess What poster is an easy way to play using a mystery box or bag. We hide objects and the kids ask questions to figure out what's inside. Some of my kids need a little more help than the poster so we may use these Mystery Box mats to give them an idea of what could be inside the box. For my preschoolers I have a collection of toddler toys/games we like to play with to increase overall language skills. These Vocabulary Parking Lots are free and so much fun to "park" our cards on different words. Also for my younger kids or for my kids who are working to expand language skills we incorporate Aided Language Mats into our play. We place the mats near the toys and point to the words as we use them or try to incorporate these common words while we play. Play-Based Speech and Language Therapy Another FREE resource, are these play-based cards that give ideas, tips or tricks to target speech and/or language skills during play. These are super helpful to send home to parents for home practice too. That's a wrap for toys and games. We played this past week but we often incorporate these toys and games throughout the year!
Printable summer themed fill-in puzzles for kids. Word puzzles are a fun way to keep the brain active during the summer months. Helps with spelling, logic & problem solving skills. Pdf with answers.
Are you looking for engaging toys for children with CVI? This blog post shares my 10 favorite CVI-friendly toys to keep kids engaged...
Set yourself up for a more enjoyable road trip by printing out these Free Printable Road Trip Activities and Games to occupy your kids.
Grab these free printable games for math facts practice at school or home! You’ll get a total of 40 games for students to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Great for building math facts fluency!
Beat the heat this summer with any of these incredible outdoor water activities. These refreshing backyard ideas are perfect for toddlers to teens - includes fun water games, educational activities, best DIY contraptions, crafts, water balloons and easy sensory play ideas. Keep cool all summer long!
Wondering how to teach kids to share their toys when you go to the playground? Try using "The Sharing Ball" technique.
Today is a big day. This might be my favorite quiet book theme to date! I LOVE this cars quiet […]
Our gift guide for outdoorsy kids has 75+ gift ideas! Everything from DIY gifts, to services, memberships, products, experiences, and more!
thank you google images Recently our school district had another shooting threat. Our town went through its own school shooting in 1996 and every now and then we get warnings. Sadly, it’s today’s new normal. On this last call the middle school decided to keep all the kids indoors for the day. I would think the kids had a better chance at not being hit on a playground running to and fro then in a crowded hall or lunchroom of wall to wall kids, but it’s a tough call. No matter what an administrator decides it will be second-guessed if someone is hurt. School playgrounds and playground rules are definitely not what they used to be and that is a sad reflection on us. I have great memories of playground games. Here are ten of my childhood favorites: · tag (in many forms – regular, freeze, TV, etc.) · pom-pom-pull-away · baseball (work up) · jump rope · hopscotch · rollerskating · blister bars · merry-go-round · Helen Keller · Rotten Egg I imagine every school had versions of Helen Keller and Rotten Egg: We played Helen Keller in a small foyer. “Helen Keller” put a coat over her head (if she couldn’t be trusted to keep her eyes closed) and was twirled around while everyone counted to ten. Then she groped her way around the little room until she caught someone and felt who she was. If she guessed correctly Helen Keller joined the game and the one that was caught became the new Helen Keller. (A game like that would never fly today what with political correctness and students touching each other. The real Helen Keller was a favorite heroine for many of us and we thought we were honoring her to play a game in her name.) We played Rotten Egg on the big cement steps. Eight or ten of us sat quietly thinking of a color. Whoever was “it” called out a color (any color) and then one by one rapped her knuckles on our heads. If the color was the color we’d chosen we chirped, “peep, peep, peep.” “It” and a friend swung us back and forth between their arms. If we smiled or laughed everyone chimed “Ewwwww, you’re a rotten egg” and we were out. If you didn’t smile or laugh you went into the good egg pile. The game continued until there were no more rotten eggs. The last (or first depending on the day) good egg got to be “it” the next game. Two of the jump rope rhymes we used were: Spanish Dancer touch the ground Spanish Dancer turn around Spanish Dancer do the high kick Spanish Dancer do the splits Spanish Dancer go upstairs Spanish Dancer say your prayers Spanish Dancer turn around Spanish Dancer get out of town Cinderella dressed in yella Went upstairs to kiss her fella Made a mistake and kissed a snake How many doctors will it take 1…2…3… We also sang these nonsensical songs: So-and-so stole a cookie from the cookie jar. (So-and-so would say) “Who me?” (Everyone would reply) “Yes you.” (So-and-so would say) “Couldn’t be.” (Everyone would respond) Then who?” (Then so-and-so would call out another name and the rhyme would start again.) Miss Lucy had a baby She named him tiny Tim She put him in the bathtub To see if he could swim He drank up all the water He ate up all the soap He tried to eat the bathtub But it wouldn’t go down his throat (I hated it when kids taunted with this next song. It was embarrassing.) Two little lovers sitting in a tree K-i-s-s-i-n-g First comes love Second comes marriage Third comes (names two people) pushing a baby carriage (I guess I shouldn’t have disliked that jingle. It did teach us the proper order of things: love, marriage, and then children which is much better than how some play today: children, marriage, and maybe love thrown in there somewhere. Maybe it had its purpose afterall.) How about you? What did you do on the playground? What were your jump rope rhymes? What games do your kids play on the playground now?
Hand and grip strength is a big contributing factor to functional use. Learn about fun activities, toys, and games for hand strengthening in kids and teens!
Planning a pool party and looking for fun games to play to entertain guests? This list has some fun classic and new options for you to keep your guests having fun in the sun.
