Skill: Motor Planning

Motor planning is the ability to assess a motor activity, plan and organize how to carry out that motor activity, and finally implement motor skills to achieve that motor activity.

Motor planning leads to the ability to carry out a motor skill automatically after enough practice.

Small Button Box

Take 4oz putty container or container of equal size with a lid and use scissors or box cutter to slice a 2 inch x 1/8 or 1/4 inch rectangular slot into the top of the lid.

Place sticky back Velcro hook on bottom of container. Wrap a Velcro hook strap around the child’s chest or abdomen. The small constructed “Button Box” is placed on the Velcro strap on the child. The angle of the slot can be changed to suit the child’s abilities or needs.

Have the child use appropriate grasp to pick up buttons or coins of various sizes and place into the button box on self.

This activity can be modified in many ways to suit the child’s needs:
– Adjusting size or shape of the slot to accommodate the items placed inside.
– Weights can be used for upper extremity strengthening.
– Markers can be used to provide color around slot hole for children with Visual Perceptual difficulties.
– The items placed in the slots can vary in size, shape, density, and texture for added ease or difficulty

Fall Leaves

Use a brown construction paper and draw a rectangle to be used as the tree’s trunk.

Let the child cut out the rectangle to promote visual motor skills.

Ask the child to glue the brown rectangle on piece of white construction paper.

Using the crayons or markers, have the child draw a few branches coming out of the trunk of the tree on the white construction paper.

Instruct the child to mark a few dots using the glue on each branch.

Place some leaves on the table on the child’s non dominant side.

Provide the child with tweezers or tongs and have him catch one leaf at a time and move across the midline to place it on top of a glue dots.

Repeat until all leaves are glued on the tree.

Felt Bird

The first step is to cut all the shapes out of the felt. Using a pencil, draw the shapes onto the felt so that you know where to cut. You will need two of each the bird’s body, eyes, wings, and beak.

The bird body can be as detailed or as simple as you would like. For the wings, cut out two heart shapes, and for the beak, two small triangles. For the eyes cut two slightly larger circles out of white felt and two smaller circle out of black felt.

Once all the pieces have been drawn and cut, take a few cotton balls and lay them on top of one of the body pieces.

Place some glue all around the edge of the bird shape and stick the other body piece on top, pressing around the edges so that the cotton balls are in the middle, creating stuffing.

Stick the two wing shapes on either side of the body.

On the head of the bird, first stick a white circle on each side of the head, then on top of this, stick the black circles.

Take the beak shapes and stick these on the front of the bird. You will need to stick the two beak pieces to each other as well as the head of the bird.

Midline Passing

This ball passing game can be done in groups or during a 1×1 session.

Sit back to back with the child. Make sure the child is sitting cross-legged or on their knees. While seated, pass a ball or any other object around to each other.

Make sure to switch directions after a few times.

Make sure the child is crossing the midline while passing the ball without rotating the trunk.

Egg Carton Fish

Using the scissors, carefully cut around each egg cup, so that you are left with half a ball shape.

You will need three eggs cups for each fish, so cut as many as you would like, depending on how many fish you are planning to make.

Take the paint and the paintbrush and paint the fish.

When the paint is dry, use the glue to stick two of the egg cups together edge to edge, to create a whole ball shape.

Take the third egg cup and turn it around, stick it end to end with the ball. It should now start to look like a fish. Then wait for the glue to dry.

Once the glue is dry, stick on the wiggle eyes onto the front of the fish.

Take the paper and cut two small triangles out for each fish. The paper can be any color that you would like, or it could match the color of the fish. These will be the fins.

Stick one fin each side of the fish.