Sensory Bin
Supplies Needed:
- Plastic bin (with a lid)
- Filler (shredded paper, rice, beans, pasta, sand, water beads, etc.)
- Different textured/sized items to place in bin within the filler (themed items for holidays/seasons)
Open all supplies and mix them together inside the box.
Have your child reach into box with eyes closed, feeling around trying to identify the different items. If your child has tactile aversions, this could be done with eyes opened.
This activity can help your child with sensory exploration and allows them to learn through hands-ons tactile play while engaging their senses. Sensory bins are great practice for fine motor skills, exploring new and different textures and improving imaginative play.
Fine Motor Bead Spider
Supplies Needed:
- Cardboard/cardstock
- Markers
- Hot Glue
- Single Hole punch
- Beads
- Pipe cleaners
- Googly eyes (optional)
How to build the spider:
- Draw a circle on the cardboard, color It in with a black marker and cut It out.
- Take the hole punch and make 4 holes on each side to make 8 holes for the spider legs.
- Thread the pipe cleaners through the holes leaving enough pipe cleaner out for the spider legs.
- Flip spider over and place a small dot of hot glue at the end of spider legs to keep them from falling/coming off.
- Glue googly eyes on to spider.
- Give your child beads to thread onto legs of spider.
This activity can help increase your child’s fine motor skills, imaginative play and bilateral coordination.
Paper Shred Pumpkin and Spider
Supplies needed:
- White paper
- Orange and black paper
- Markers
- Glue stick
How to make paper shred pumpkin and spider:
- Draw a pumpkin or spider on a piece of blank paper
- Take colored paper and shred it into small pieces (this can be done by cutting or tearing into small “squares”)
- Use glue stick to paste all pieces within the boarders of pumpkin and spider
- Try not to leave any white spaces (may need to overlap squares to eliminate white space)
This activity will help improve your child’s fine motor skills, bilateral coordination, visual perception skills and shape identification.
Homemade Halloween Trace Pictures
Supplies Needed:
- Paper
- Markers
- Scissors
Fold paper into fours
Draw four different Halloween images using dash marks.
Have your child use markers to trace the lines you drew to make four different pictures.
To work on your child’s cutting skills, have him/her cut out each square along the folds.
This activity can help increase your child’s fine motor skills, hand dexterity, pencil grasp, visual motor skills, shape identification and visual perceptual skills.