Blog - Kids Place Therapy Services

Developmental Benefits of Fall Activities

Fall is such a beautiful season! Enjoy the cool weather, pumpkin spice, and autumn leaves with these fun family activities.

Apple Picking

This great family activity offers numerous developmental benefits for our kiddos.

Here is how:

Encourage reaching for high and low branches to work on balance and gross motor skills.
Apple orchards contain lots of different textures for sensory exploration, including the smooth texture of apples, the roughness of leaves and branches, and maybe even hay on a hayride!
After, help your children count how many they picked or practice visual perceptual skills like sorting the apples by size and color.

Pumpkin Patch

This provides an opportunity to work on decision making by allowing our little ones to pick their own pumpkin.

When back at home, you can paint or decorate your pumpkins to promote creativity and fine motor skills via using stickers, different brushes, or even sponges as stamps. Of course, carving pumpkins is a phenomenal sensory and fine motor activity! Let your children help scoop out the seeds using their hands or a large spoon. Allow them to safely assist with carving by pushing in pumpkin cutter stencils to make a silly or scary face.

Need more fun fall ideas to promote growth in your kiddo? Contact our office.

September 12, 2024/by jessenpr

Getting Your Kids Excited About Food

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Summer is a great time of the year to enjoy fresh produce. August, in particular, is the peak season for many fruits and vegetables to be harvested. From farmer’s markets to orchards, there’s a variety of ways to include your youngest family members in selecting nutritious fruits and veggies for your household. Activities and outings that involve gathering foods are a wonderful way to facilitate an understanding of food production, the people involved, and where it comes from. It could also be a fun and exciting way to introduce or try different foods. Additionally, these settings encourage social skills via talking with the merchants. Asking questions can lead to new discoveries, curiosity, and provide practice talking with community members.

A visit to a market, farm, or orchard allows kids to touch, smell and get a chance to choose the produce themselves–building a sense of autonomy and pride in what was gathered. This could lead to a higher likelihood of them eating their vegetables since they picked it themselves. If you cannot get out to a market or farm, simply spending a little extra time at the grocery store produce section where kids can be included can be an easy way to build knowledge and interest in novel foods and their preparation, as well as get them excited about food. Healthy eating and good nutrition is vital to fueling our bodies and aiding in development as kids grow.

Questions? Contact our office.

July 29, 2024/by jessenpr

Ways to Practice Fine Motor Skills During Summer Break

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The first official day of summer has finally arrived! Since school is out, your kids’ days look a little different–more time outside, less structure, and open-ended play. While necessary to your child’s development, it’s also important to practice handwriting and fine motor tasks during summer break to avoid setbacks once school starts again.

Handwriting ideas:

Writing a letter or card to a family or friend
Making lists (i.e. grocery shopping, what to pack, activities they would like to do or try, and favorites of any category)
Journaling
Mad Libs
Alphabet hunt (You can be creative with your version of this!)
Hide letters around the house and have your child check them off of a list as they find them.
Idea for a child with more advanced handwriting skills: Have them find words in their everyday environment (such as in a magazine, books, on products, etc.) and copy a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet.
Junior version of scattergories
Decipher a code
Make up a story, character, or map

Fine motor/hand strengthening ideas:

Write or draw using sidewalk chalk
Pop bubbles with index finger only
Paint rocks or flower pots
Play dress up (with clothes that have zippers, buttons, or snaps)
Card games
Jewelry making
Use squirt guns for water fight
Use clothespins to hang things (clothes, art, etc.) on a line
Color using broken crayons (if working on improving pencil grasp)

Contact our office and our therapists can help identify strategies that work best for your family during summer break. Be sure to also check out our recent blog about why open-ended play matters.

June 22, 2024/by jessenpr

Why Open-Ended Play Matters

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Parents and summer have a love/hate relationship. Kids spend more time at home and the weather is warmer. That said, typical routines and schedules go out the window. While it may be tempting to register our children for summer camps, classes, sports, play dates, and more, it is very important to remember that our little ones need open-ended play with friends and free time just as much as structured activities. Not only does it benefit their mental health by reducing stress and anxiety, it also encourages creativity, problem solving, and other skills vital to their development.

Other benefits to free time and open-ended play include:

Emotional regulation. Unstructured play helps children process difficult emotions while still allowing them to act like a child.
Reducing burnout. It takes a lot of mental energy for children to stick to structured routines during the school year. It’s important to allow them time for themselves, similar to how adults approach self-care.
Improves sleep and boosts immunity. Warmer weather often means more time outdoors, which uses a lot of physical energy in kids. Physical exercise has also been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, which boosts immunity, in addition to improving sleep!

Contact our office and our therapists can help identify strategies that work best for your family during summer break.

May 21, 2024/by jessenpr

Benefits of Playing in the Rain

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April showers bring May flowers! Not only is this rainy time of year good for the earth, it brings many benefits for our children’s development. Playing outside in the rain can positively impact your child as they grow in a variety of ways, including:

Physically. When a child plays outside, they rely on their gross motor skills–running, jumping, climbing, etc. The rain can increase the need for balance, along with providing puddles to jump in! This strengthens their coordination and encourages them to be aware of their surroundings. Playing outside in the rain also positively impacts their immune systems–just make sure they are dressed appropriately to go outside and once they come back in.
Sensory. Rain provides a unique sensory experience by transforming the world around them with different sights, smells, sounds, and touches. Sensory input from the outdoors helps build neural pathways in the brain and promotes self-regulation.
Creativity. Rain encourages them to explore their surroundings via simply walking/running around, drawing with chalk (which can turn paint-like when wet), using their imaginations and playing with mud, dancing/singing, or catching rain drops on their tongue. It allows them to problem solve, cultivate a sense of wonder, and contributes to their overall intellectual development.
Mental Health. It’s been shown that playing outdoors for at least 20 minutes a day helps kids self-regulate and lower cortisol levels. When most adults see rain, they think to stay inside. However, being inside all day can lead to sensory overload for the little ones.

Contact our office today to see how playing in the rain can help achieve your child’s therapy goals.

April 18, 2024/by jessenpr