Activity Analysis: Sand Art Craft

A new company called Special Needs Essentials asked me to collaborate with them by sharing my opinion of their website and offerings. Recently, they sent me a product so I could write an article for their blog about the importance of Arts and Crafts for child develoment. Below is the post that was featured on their blog:


"When I was a little girl, I used to spend a big part of my free time doing crafts. My grandmother and aunt loved them, so they will always include me and my little sister in their projects. For Christmas, my parents and other family members used to get us all kinds of craft kits. Back then they were just fun activities, but now than I’m an Occupational Therapist, I realize how many important life skills I was learning through those projects.

Crafts help kids develop fine-motor and eye-hand coordination skills as well as tolerance, problem solving and learning to follow instructions. They are also a good opportunity to bond with your child and to work on communication and social skills (such as sharing).  Even though today kids seem more interested in electronic devices, I’ve noticed in my practice that most kids still love arts and crafts. It’s up to us to provide them with opportunities to participate in such activities.

A couple of weeks ago I received this Sand Art craft kit from Special Need Essentials to try it out with my kids. It’s a fun craft that can be adapted to kids with different skills. 

I used this kit with patients from 4-18 years old. It consists of gradually peeling small pieces of paper from a sticky surface and then applying colored sand to fill the space and form the picture.  While doing this activity, we worked on fine-motor skills such as pinch grasp for peeling the papers (a task that was difficult to most of my patients). You can adapt it by starting to peel one corner and letting the kids do the rest.  

 Cutting the tubes (or similar things such as straws) is a great way to introduce scissors skills to little ones. That’s because they are easier to manage than paper and also help to strengthen the small hand muscles.

We also worked on developing a tripod grasp (like the one used in writing) while holding the sand tubes. The following little fella had trouble at first, but with some OT help he did much better.

 Applying the sand in the right place works on eye-hand coordination skills. If you put the sand in a bigger container, it requires more motor coordination to be able to pour it without dumping the whole amount at once.

 The sand also provides an extra sensory input to this activity. It's important that children get the opportunity to play with different textures to help them develop tactile sensory modulation and discrimination. The boy in the picture below doesn’t like the feel of sand or other similar textures, but because the activity is engaging to him, he is able to compromise so he will be able to see the end product.  This is one of the big reasons why crafts are so effective; they provide a great motivation that helps kids work in skills they usually don’t want to.

This activity requires to be done one spot at a time, which is great for working on tolerance and following instructions. It's important that the kids are also responsible for the cleanup, which is an independent living skill.

Below two of the end products:

You can make the activity easier by peeling the paper yourself and letting the child just fill the spaces with sand or by peeling larger amounts of paper at once to decrease the steps and time in finishing the task. Let me know if you have done something similar with your kids. You can also share crafts ideas in the comments below!"

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.