Your child is learning how to engage and play with peers appropriately, so he needs you to model and guide him through that process! You can encourage peer interactions within your current surroundings through seeking out opportunities that allow your child to practice relating to other children. Some ideas include, playing simple turn-taking games with siblings at home, bringing chalk or bubbles to share at the park, or attending a neighborhood play date or library storytime.

You’ll need:

-Empty water bottle (smooth bottles work best!)

-Glitter glue

-Fine glitter

-Clear gel glue

-Super glue

Directions:

1. Clean water bottle and remove labels.

2. Fill water bottle ¾ of the way with warm water.

3. Add glitter glue and fine glitter. Shake bottle to mix and melt glitter glue.

4. Add clear gel glue and fill to the top with cool water.

(You can play with the consistency at this point…more gel glue will make the glitter settle slowly and more water will make it settle more quickly.)

5. Secure the top back on with super glue.

6. Enjoy!

   Photo credit: By Inkwina (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Hide toys your child already has around your home. You could also extend the activity by having your child draw pictures of treasure that you can then “bury” (hide). As you hunt for your treasure be sure to model questions and answers about where that toy might be (e.g.“Is it under the table?” “No? Let’s keep looking!”). This activity is great for working on asking and answering questions, understanding location concepts, and following directions (e.g. “look on the chair!”).

Kids love seeing just how tall of a tower they can make when they stack the blocks in the right order, and the fun doubles when they get to knock it down. These blocks are great for teaching size concepts, location words, letter identification, and picture identification.

At this young age, it is normal to not understand everything your child says. Generally, a simple way to determine your child’s intelligibility (or his/her ability to be understood by others) is to take your child’s age and divide by four.   This determines the amount (percent) of your child’s speech that you should understand (i.e. 2 years/4=50%).  This may change depending on context and complexity of what your child is saying. Additionally, unfamiliar listeners may understand even less of what your child is saying.

The focus of intervention prior to age three is to make sure your child’s language skills are near age-appropriate before solely focusing on  his/her intelligibility.  When it is appropriate to begin targeting speech sounds, make it fun!  For example, you can give sounds different names:

/p/- popper sound

/b/- bounce sound

/m/- yummy sound

/h/- laughing sound

You can also make fun noises throughout play activities that contain difficult sounds for your child:

• scared noises (i.e.“ah” or  “ee” to work on vowels)
• find animal noises that contain the sound (i.e. “baa” to target consonant or vowel sound)
• sneeze sounds (“achoo”)
• Practice sounds in silly places: in front of a mirror before bedtime or in the car

Toddlers love playing with the traditional toy so many parents played with as a child! Not only can you build a silly face, Mr. Potato Head helps teach body parts and facial expressions. For your older child, you can take it a step further and discuss the function of each body part.

School-based occupational therapists observe, assess, and address the child’s strengths and needs within the natural school settings (e.g., classroom, lunchroom, playground) in order to support the student’s educational program. Services may be directed to the child and on behalf of the child in the school environment (e.g., training educational staff).

Hospital and clinic-based occupational therapists typically assess and address the child’s strengths and needs in a clinic setting in order to support participation in life activities. The focus in non-school settings may be more varied and may or may not address specific educational needs.

For the paper plate bird craft, you’ll need:

White 9″ Paper Plates – 100 Count (or cardboard circle)

• googly eyes

• Cardstock for beak

• thin strips of coloured construction paper

• craft feathers (you could also use crumpled squares of tissue paper – see our Rockin’ Robin Craft)

• paint

• glue

First fold the paper plates in half.  Put out a pallet of acrylic paints in assorted colours, and the kids can paint their birds however they wish. Next, we glued on the feathers, eyes and the beak.

For the tail, I grabbed several strips of the construction paper and I folded them in half, kind of fanning the strips out a bit, and we stapled those to the tail end of the birds.

Fold your bird back in half, and you’re done!

If your bird won’t stay folded, simply tape a piece of yarn or string to the inside, holding both halves of the plate together, while leaving about an inch and a half gap between them.

Now when you place your bird on a hard surface, you can “rock” it.

 

Battat Take-A-Part Roadster offers kids the unique experience of playing mechanic by dismantling and re-assembling a race car with their very own power tools.  It’s a fantastic toy for developing fine motor skills, problem-solving, and concentration – while also engaging in some fun pretend play!