Needlepoint Monster Bookmark for visual-perceptual and visual-motor skills

When I started working as a school based OT in August, I had many students between 9 to13 years old. I didn't know what to do with them in therapy since they were pretty functional. So I found this cute project in knitsforlife.com and decided to give it a try:

This is my version of the bookmark:

 

After working with this with my bigger kids for about a month, these were some of the results:

It is incredible how difficult it is for most kids to thread a needle or follow a simple stich pattern. These little monsters requiere visual-perceptual skills such as visual discrimination, spatial relations and visual memory. It also requieres visual-motor coordination and fine motor skills. As you may see, I adapted the activity for some of the kids by having them do longer stiches. With this task you can also work on frustration tolerance,  problem solving (example: when they put the needle in the wrong place, how do they fix it?) and so on. 

If you decide to try it, let me know how it goes!

If you need a more specific tutorial than the one offered in Knits for Life, please let me know in the comment section. 

Update

After months of thinking about it, I have decided to continue posting here instead of Tumblr for the moment. I'm just taking advantage that this page gets more traffic since the AOTA pinned one of my posts on their pinterest page. I’m also trying to start a blog for parents and professionals in Spanish, since there are very few blogs about Occupational Therapy topics in my native language, and I would love to make a contribution to that. Even though it's easier for me to blog in Spanish, it has been difficult to get readers to my blog. I don't know if it’s cultural, but I just happen to get more comments with the English version, which I love and keeps me motivated to continue writing. This Tuesday I start work again, so wish me a good semester, I'm also supposed to start a new job this month, so I'll try to keep you updated. 

With OT love,

Luna