June Occupational Therapy Activity Calendar

It's June! We are half way through the year.  I hope that the second half of the year would get better for everyone. I'm back again with this month's calendar. The activities I've chosen are simple OT ways to enrich your child's environments and daily routine. 

I really enjoy making these calendars. I aim to make them different, for each day of the week I have chosen a specific OT area to target. This month I've included REGULATION!  It is EASY TO DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE just put into your cart and purchase for FREE!

This blog post is the instruction manual to carrying out the activities with your child.  Try to bookmark this page to make it easier. Make sure to hashtag #OTwithEmily so I can see and share you using the activities. 

Day 1 - Bake Cookies

Try bake something yummy together. It is a good functional opportunity to desensitise your child from different textures when exploring flour, water and mixing it together. The focus doesn't have to be the tastiest cookies but just having fun together and exploring the sensory experience. Let your child pour, scoop, measure, mix. Use cookie cutters. They could als have a go at cracking an egg. 

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/woman">Woman photo created by senivpetro - www.freepik.com</a>

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Bilateral skills
• Visual motor skills
• Following directions
• Safety awareness
• Body awareness
• Fine motor skills
• Taking turns and problem solving 

Day 2 - Pencil Mazes

Fun activity to support pre-writing skills. You can tape mazes to a wall or vertical surface to even challenge their shoulder stability and wrist extension. Help your child to control his/ her pencil through the maze without touching the black lines. You can also say "stay on the train tracks or inside the tunnel". These skills will help your child with letter formation handwriting in the future. I have created some simple mazes for all ages Click Here to get for Free. If you don't want to print a good tip is to use a highlighter and create your own maze. Have your child draw inside the highlighter maze.

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Problem solving, patience, persistence
• Cognitive
• Hand eye coordination
• Fine motor control
• Visual motor 
• Memory

Day 3 - Tunnel Crawl

Tunnel play is appropriate for most children of all ages. If you don't have a tunnel you can make your own DIY one at home by putting up sofa cushions or chairs and a blanket or towel over the top. Making a roof with paper tapping it to both sides of the hall way. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Gross motor - crawling, core, neck, upper extremity strength
• Sensory - vestibular sense
• Body awareness
• Bilateral coordination
• Motor planning 
• Shared attention and engagement

Day 4 - Yoga Poses

Yoga can be practice by most children. You can use it as a movement break during your day or schedule it at specific times in the day (sensory lifestyle) to help your child maintain optimal arousal for engagement and learning. Click Here for my Yoga Rolling Game. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Regulation 
• Gross motor - strengthening, proprioception
• Crossing the midline
• Fine motor 
• Interoception, Digestive Health
• Motor planning and Ideation

Day 5 - Visual Track Game

Visual tracking is important for daily activities like following your teachers writing not the board, tracking when a ball rolls away or transition during different activities (for more information visit my Visual Tracking Blog post). Click Here to download the visual tracking game for free (they go up in challenging levels). Ask your child to visually identify where each shape goes to. Use your eyes first as the challenge and then check using your finger. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Visual spatial attention 
• Visual tracking 
• Attention
• Cognitive
• Smooth eye movement and convergence 

Day 6 - Musical Instruments

Make a musical band together. If you don't have toy musical instruments like drums, pianos or rattles you can make DIY ones using kitchen equipment. They could drum pots and pants with a wooden spoon. You can make shakers by putting rice into a water bottle. Sing songs together and get creative!

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Play and shared attention
• Motor skills 
• Ideation, Imagination 
• Motor planning

Day 7 - Put stickers on body parts

Play Simon says but try to give more sensory tactile feedback by using stickers. You can use any stickers and put on different body parts. You can put it on your child's body and then they can take it off. Or they can put it on your body. 

Therapeutic Benefits:

• Sensory Processing
• Body awareness
• Sensory Discrimiantion 
• Touch Processing

Day 8 - Finger painting

Time for some messy play! If you want to keep it clean you can play with paint in the bathtub, on the walls in the bathtub or lay out a shower curtain not he floor before playing. If your child doesn't like touching the wet paint you can grade the activity by using paint brushes or sponges. If your child is young and may mouth paint. Try making finger paint with flour or cornstarch + food colouring. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Fine motor 
• Finger Isolation 
• Visual motor skills
• Sensory exploration 

Day 9 - Scissor Cutting

Scissor cutting is a functional skill that you can start helping your toddlers start to learn to snip. It is also a prewriting skill that can help children develop pencil control as well. Visit my Scissor Grasp post to learn how to hold the scissors correctly. You can cut snips or get really creative. I've also made a scissor skills bundle that you can download for FREE here. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Scissor skills
• Bilateral integration 
• Fine motor skills 

Day 10 - Rolling

If your child prefers to be upright your child can stand up against the wall and rolls themselves across the wall. You can make it fun by putting a target on the wall Go sign and Stop sign. If your child can lie on the floor try to roll them or ask your child to roll themselves with momentum. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Vestibular processing 
• Proprioceptive processing 
• Motor planning 
• Body awareness

Day 11 - Blanket burrito

Weight and pressure to the body can be calming. Roll your child in a blanket or beach towel like a burrito, remember your child's head has to be outside of the blanket. Try to let your take lead and if they tell you to stop or add more pressure you can grade the activity to suit your child. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Sensory Regulation
• Deep pressure
• Body awareness

Day 12 - Jigsaw puzzle

We use puzzles very often in OT to support development. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Cognition
• Fine motor
• Eye hand coordination 
• Social Emotional - confidence, patience

Day 13 - Body play

Safe and appropriate physical fun strengthens muscles and teach your child what they can do with their body, how to protect themselves and how to anticipate movements. It's a good way to connect and get shared attention. See my sensory motor body play video for demonstrations and further explanation of benefits.

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Body awareness
• Sensory motor development
• Touch processing
• Engagement and shared attention 

Day 14 - Put heavy groceries away

You can add this activity during your daily routine. They can help load groceries into the shopping cart during shopping. They can help carry them into the house and load the groceries at home. These actions are called "heavy work" which is a type of action that pushes or pulls against the body. This can have an organising affect on the nervous system. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Proprioceptive processing 
• Body awareness
• Muscle strength
• Regulation

Day 15 - Ice painting 

Summer is here! Try ice painting with your little ones. Start with an ice tray filled with water and drop of food colouring in each space. You an also put a paddle pop, toothpick or cotton bud in each ice cube if you want each cube to have a small handle. I would encourage to get your child to use their fingers and touch it directly feeling that temperature difference. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Fine motor
• Handwriting 
• Sensory motor

Day 16 - Paper plate craft 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Fine motor 
• Bilateral integration 
• Pre-writing

Day 17 - Stepping Stones

Make a stepping stone obstacle course at home. To make it motivating and goal oriented you can put puzzle pieces on one end and the puzzles on the other end. If you don't have stepping stones you can use boxes, books or pillows. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Balance skills
• Movement coordination
• Vestibular processing
• Motor planning
• Muscle development  

Day 18 - Bubble Volcano

Fun way to teach deep breathing. It can be calming and improve overall mood. All you need is to have a small cup. Pour in mixture of water, dish soap and a bit of colour paint (optional if you want to change the colour). Then put a straw in and blow to see all the bubbles flooding out. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Self-regulation
• Calming
• Sensory regualtion
• Oral proprioceptive input

Day 19 - Lacing 

You can start simple with large beads and a more firmer string or pipe cleaner.  You can make your own lacing activities punching holes in paper and using shoe lace strings. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• fine motor skills
• bilateral coordination
• motor planning
• visual perceptual skills 

Day 20 - Construction Play 

Open-ended play with blocks, legos or duplos. Take tuns building towers, crashing it down. Try building a block structure and getting your child to copy and see if it's the same. Make bridges for cars to drive under. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Visual perceptual skills
• Play skills 
• Fine motor - strength and grasp 
• Cause and effect
• Spatial awareness 
• Depth perception
• Object Manipulation 

Day 21 - Crashing Jumps 

If you don't have a crash mat, try making one with lots of cushions combined together, bean bags or you can jump on the bed. You can count down and crash together from a higher surface jump down into your crash mat. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Gross motor skills
• Motor planning
• Deep pressure - proprioceptive input to muscle and joints
• Body awareness
• Core strength

Day 22 - Sensory Zip Lock Bags

Sensory exploration without the mess. Sensory Zip Lock Bags are easy to create together, portable and inexpensive to make. You can fill the bags with water, hair gel, sprinkles, glue, baby oil, shaving cream and flour. You can write on the bags or search for little toys inside. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Visual processing 
• Tactile processing 
• Fine motor skills
• Social skills 

Day 23 - Draw a person

Draw a picture of a person along side your child. Talk through the drawing. You can support with hand over hand initially and grade until your child can imitate. Add all the body part and maybe have a laugh if any body parts of missing or out of proportion. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Body awareness/ body schema
• Sequencing
• Visual motor integration
• Fine motor skills 

Day 24 - Fitball exercises

Fitball exercises is an activity that we do very often in OT. Depending on how old your child you can play lots of different games and exercises using the fitball. See my video for some activity ideas: 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Gross motor
• Core strength and stability 
• Upper limb strength and stability 
• Vestibular processing 

Day 25 - Listen to nature sounds

Try to relax together listen to nature sounds before bed time or after a bath to calm down. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Auditory processing
• Sensory processing 
• Regulation
• Calming 

Day 26 - Dot shapes 

Download my dot shapes printout here. Start getting creative you can draw inside the circles, make play dough balls, put sticker on it or colour the dots. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Fine Motor 
• Finger & Hand strength
• Bilateral integration

Day 27 - Food play

Food play can be really good for children. Have a large tray or bowl. Finger paint, scoop, pour and explore for a fun tactile experience. You can have a mirror in front so they can get more visual feedback for the motor coordination to bring it to their hands. Some food ideas: yogurt, baby food, smashed bananas, pureed fruits for paint. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Tactile processing
• Self-care 
• Feeding motor skills 
• Sensory processing 
• Joint attention

Day 28 - Walk backwards

This one might be a tricky and fun one. Hold your child's hand and help them walk backwards. You can put tape on the floor so there is more visual feedback. You can challenge and grade it by making them go fast or slow. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Body awareness
• Improve balance
• Coordination
• Motor planning 

Day 29 - Freeze dancing 

This can be used as a brain break or movement break during the day to help refocus your child. Play some music and when you pause the music FREEZE! Try using fast or slow songs. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Sensory modulation
• Impulse control
• Sensory processing
• Gross Motor 
• Self-regulation

Day 30 - Torn paper art

If you have some scrap paper or coloured paper start by tearing them into small pieces. Glue the small pieces onto another piece of paper to make an art work. If you want to make it more try have your child tear and then scrunch them into a ball between the thumb and pointer finger. 

Therapeutic Benefits: 

• Fine motor
• Finger strength
• Eye hand coordination
• Functional grasp