Material: Container

Squirt Till it Drops

A young child practices hand strength by squeezing a water bottle to make a ping-pong ball fall out of a bucket during a backyard activity.

Fill up the bucket/container with water to the midline and drop in the Ping-Pong ball (you can use more than one ball, or different size plastic balls). Fill up the squirt bottle with water and let the child squeeze and squirt the water out into the bucket/container until the Ping-Pong ball falls out of the bucket/container.

This activity can be done with more than one child. The first child that has his/her Ping-Pong ball fall out of the bucket/container wins!

To work on developing visual motor skills, fill up the squirt bottle with shaving cream or foam and let the child squeeze the bottle to draw shapes and letters on a concrete surface or an easel.

A Slippery Fish

A four-year-old child practices fine motor skills by using tongs to retrieve colorful toy fish from a water-filled container on a kitchen table.

Fill a container with water up to the midline and put inside small floating objects (i.e. ice molds, fish toys, etc.).

Have the child use the tongs to catch the objects in the water and take them out of the water.

You may want to have some paper towels ready for this activity as it might get a bit wet.

Yarn Painting

A 5-year-old child practicing fine motor skills by pulling a paint-covered piece of yarn through a folded paper butterfly cutout during a home art activity.

Draw a geometric shape or a picture on the paper and fold it in half (i.e. square, pumpkin, a person, butterfly, etc.). Let the child cut out the picture and open the paper.

Cut a piece of yarn (about 6-inch long). Put paint into the container and ask the child to dip one end of the yarn in the paint while holding on to the other end. Instruct the child to place the painted end of the yarn on one side of the paper, at the top. Fold the paper again and tell the child to pull the yarn out, from the bottom.

Open the folded paper, place the painted yarn at the top again, fold the paper, and pull the yarn out. Repeat these steps until the picture is painted.

You can use different colors and cut a piece of yarn for each color the child is using.

Touch and Match

A young child searches through a bowl of dried beans to find foam shapes that match the ones placed on the table.

For the purpose of describing the activity, we chose beans and foam sheets. You can use any media you would like to fill up your container (i.e. corn kernels, cotton balls, macaroni, bird’s seeds, send, etc.)and any objects to hide (i.e.buttons, pom-poms, pegs, coins, etc.).

Use the foam sheets and cut pairs of different shapes (you can also use different color sheets and cut a pair of the same shape in each color). Fill up the container with the beans. Hide one shape from each pair inside the container and place the other shape in front of the child.

Have the child dig his hands through the beans and find the matching shapes, taking them out one shape at a time.

Tactile Container

A 4-year-old girl searches for hidden coins in a tactile sensory bin filled with rice and lentils during a home-based occupational therapy activity.

Fill up the plastic container with beans, rice, or sand.

Add coins or beads to the container and mix with the selected container contents.

Ask the child to use his hands and pull out the different objects you hid inside the container.

To grade this activity, you can hide a variety of items in the container and ask the child to sort the items and put them in separate smaller containers.