Entries by Your Therapy Source Inc

Word Cloud for Pretend Play

Have fun “playing” around with this word cloud of words associated with pretend play. Drag your mouse over the words to highlight them. Nice visual to remind us of all the benefits of pretend play and imagination.

Push Children to Be Creative

Technology offers us information at all hours of the day bombarding us with knowledge. With everyone having access to “google” at anytime, children need to be taught to think outside the box. Parents and teachers can provide opportunities for children to be more creative. One way to do this is to provide challenges that can […]

Play Outdoors Flag Hunt

This is a favorite outdoor game – flag hunt. Here is how you play: 1. Preparation: To make the flags, cut up four different colors of fabric or felt. Make sure you have one of each color strip for each team. We play with two teams so you need 2 of each color. If you […]

,

DIY Scratch Off Cards for Kids

The kids can make their own fortunes, game cards or activity ideas using a simple recipe of paint and liquid dish soap. After seeing this idea at Oh The Lovely Things blog, I thought this would be a great activity for the kids. You can either have them make their own or print our suggested […]

Sidewalk Chalk Puzzles

Here is a fun way to add some challenges to using sidewalk chalk. One person draws a puzzle on the ground. For example, I started by drawing a square, triangle, a hat and a random shape colored yellow. I provided the children with this clue… “The squirrel had yams”. The children had to guess what […]

,

Going Outdoors to Improve Attention Span

An article in the Journal of Attention Disorders, reports on the benefits of walking in a park to increase attention span. A small group of 17 children with ADHD, participated in a study comparing walks in a park, downtown and a neighborhood. The walks in the park resulted in a significant difference in concentration as […]

, ,

Good ‘Ol Fashioned Tin Can Stilts

The other day we decided to make some good ‘ol fashioned tin can stilts. This was super simple to make just not so super simple to walk on. All we did was remove the labels from some tin cans (actually 26 ounce cans). Use a can opener to make two holes in each can. You […]

,

Lack of Physical Activity in Preschoolers

USA Today printed an article entitled, Study shows preschoolers spend too much time on sedentary activities, in today’s paper about the lack of physical activity in preschoolers. Some research shows that preschoolers only spend 2-3% of the day in vigorous physical activity! An analysis was done by holding focus groups with early childhood educators to […]

Block Play with Motorized Toys

Since I have young daughters we have a few Zhu Zhu pets in the house but you could use any motorized animal or car. Set up some blocks on a table or the floor for obstacles that the Zhu Zhu pets have to move around. We played that each person picked a color Zhu Zhu […]

,

Active Game Using a Smart Phone

Here is a simple game that combines the fun of using a smart phone with physical activity. Print out the QR code hunt from growingplay.wpengine.com. Cut out the 8 QR codes. You will need to download any app that will read QR codes (just search the app store and some free ones will come up). […]