Teacher Tuesday….Fun Summer Activities

by: Cherie DuPuySummer is upon us and that means school is almost out!  Today we are providing you with FUN activities to keep your children occupied during those long, hot days. The following activities may seem like playing to you or your child, but each activity is working on those little fingers,hands, and bodies to keep them in shape for school!
Big Ice Cube Awesomeness

What you’ll need:

large

Tupperware

water

trinkets to put in water

food coloring

Directions:

1. Fill Tupperware with water.

2. Place trinkets in the water.

3. Add food coloring then cover.

4. Place Tupperware in freezer.

5. When frozen, pop out and let your children go to town chipping away with child friendly tools.

Tweezing Sunflower Seeds

What you’ll need:

Tweezers

A sunflower

Directions:

1. Use tweezers to pluck seeds from a sunflower.

2. Then toast the seeds and eat them for a snack

.DIY Bean Bag Toss

What you’ll need:

Plastic bowls

Bean bags

Index cards

Tape

Directions:

1. Label each bowl with a number.  This is how many points the children will get if the beanbag lands in that bowl.

2. Place the bowls in a straight line.

3. Have the children try and toss the beanbag into the bowls.  This can also be a little math lesson as well as they try to add up their own points from their tosses.

Homemade Ring Toss game

What you’ll need:

paper

plates

paint

scissors

long cardboard tube (from cling wrap, paper towel etc…)tape

Directions:

1. Cut the center from some paper plates to use as your ‘rings’.

2. To make the stand just cut slits in the bottom of the cardboard tube and flatten the ends, then tape it to the reverse side of a plate so it will stand.

3. Let the rings fly!

Therapist Thursday….Developing Strokes for Writing

by: Michelle Yoder

Fundanoodle teaches the letters in a developmental sequence to increase ease and accuracy and foster success!

Have you ever noticed that when children learn to write, the letters that contain diagonal lines are the hardest and often most illegible?  Letters like A, K, M, N, V and W are really hard!  Normally children develop the ability to write diagonals around the age of 5.  Even then, you’ll see that they are usually better at making them one way, compared to the other (either down from left to right or down from right to left.)

Before you get started on handwriting instruction, work on the formation of these pre-writing strokes, in this order:

vertical     horizontal     circle     right to left diagonal     square     left to right diagonal

Your child will need to use each of these strokes and begin to connect lines together in order to form all of the capital letters of the alphabet.

We know that our eyes develop and are stronger with vertical movements first.  Therefore, Fundanoodle teaches letters based on the type of stroke in the letter.  For instance, L, F, E, T, I, and H are taught first because developmentally children are going to be able to writing these letters first.  Next, Fundanoodle introduces that contain curved strokes: O, C, G, Q and S.  Third, Fundanoodle teaches letters with vertical, horizontal and curved strokes: D, P, B, R, J, and U.  Finally the last letters taught are the tough ones with diagonals: X, V, W, N, M, Y, A, K and Z.

Next week, I’ll discuss top to bottom formation and how using the Fundanoodle action words to create strokes ensures neatness and legibility!

Come One, Come All!!

Ever wanted to come see Fundanoodle?  Wanted to touch it, play with it, let your kids try it out?  Well….we are having an Open House, just for Y.O.U.!!!

Muscle Mover Monday….lowercase d

Dive like a dolphin.

Therapist Thursday….Teacher Ideas

In celebration of National Teacher Appreciation Week, today’s Therapist Thursday is devoted to unique places teachers can let students practice handwriting.  Each place will help foster the correct pencil grip to enable students more success with handwriting.

Fun places to write:

1- vertical surfaces

2- Easels or Chalkboards

3- Butcher Paper or Gift Wrap taped to a wall

4-  Windows

 

Muscle Mover Monday…lowercase a

slide like an alligator

Therapist Thursday….Dollar Store Finds Part 2

By Amy Bumgarner

Fundanoodle’s I Can Build Letter kits are a great multi-sensory way to allow your child to practice using his or her body to construct or write a letter before writing with a pencil on paper.  Other multi-sensory approaches you can use in conjunction with the kits include: sidewalk chalk on concrete or carpet squares, writing secret messages or pictures, and building straight lined letters or objects with popsicle sticks.

Fundanoodle’s Max and Alphies Adventures”workbooks are great for working on visual motor skills necessary for handwriting.  Using hands-on  2D and 3D manipulatives, such as puzzles and magnetic shapes are also great ways to work on those skills too!  do this before or after practicing in the Max and Alphie Adventures worksbooks to maintain the multi-sensory approach that is the basis for Fundanoodle.

Sale!

All of Fundanoodle items are still on sale to celebrate National Occupational Therapy Month through tomorrow….Hurry take advantage of the 30% off!!!

Therapist Thursday….Monkey Style!

by Michelle Yoder

A timeless toy, the barrel of monkeys, continues to provide our little monkeys with endless benefits! Fundanoodle’s Max, likes to play this linking game with his cousins!  Below are all the benefits to having a barrel of fun with a barrel of monkeys:

 Proximal stability:  One arm has to hold the monkeys high in order to string others below. If this is too hard, continue to work overhead, by stringing monkeys on a clothesline.

Visual Perception:  Visual spatial skills are needed to judge the positions of the monkeys as we manipulate and rotate them to link them arm to arm.

 Visual Motor:  Our eyes guide our hands for careful placement of the monkeys when hooking on the next monkey, while being careful not to disrupt the existing chain.

 Oculomotor:  Eye teaming is important, as we have to focus, converge (look at something up close, our eyes move inward) and diverge (look at something further away, our eyes move outward) on our work while we retrieve a monkey from the table and then move it to our chain.

 Fine Motor: Grasping, pinching, rotating and manipulating the monkeys just so, takes effective fine motor coordination!

 Bilateral Motor Coordination: The two sides of the body have to work together!  One upper extremity has to do the stabilizing, while the other moves toward the opposite upper extremity for accurate placement.

 Cognition:  We can string the monkeys to make a colorful pattern or work on counting as we make the chain longer and longer!

 All of these skills are important factors in the development of handwriting.  So, break out your barrel of monkeys and get monkey-ing around!

Teacher Tuesday

Raise you hand if you are on spring break?  Well….a lot of the Fundanoodle team is enjoying a little R and R this week.  In honor of those taking advantage of the break here are a few quick ideas of ways to keep your kids in the school routine:

1-  Play “I Spy.”  It’s a great way to incorporate kids of all ages.  For younger kids focus on colors, shapes, environmental text.  For the older kids focus on letters, sight words, or numbers.

2-  Let you kids “read” the menus at restaurants.  This is a great way for children to start recognizing common words.  This especially works well with menus that have the pictures also.

3-  Let you kids “show off” for you.  Have a special art time and ask your child to show you the latest picture, word, drawing they learned at school.

4-  Have fun!! Most importantly, have FUN with your kids and enjoy this time with them!