Developing Hand Skills Using Slap Bracelets

Its always exciting to find an inexpensive product that can be used when creating or adapting new activities. My clients love to try new activities and get bored doing the same old thing day after day. It is a challenges to come up with new ideas to help people who have limited fine motor skills, but the slapper bracelets have been versatile, easy to grade and a lot of fun.

They offer sensory feedback when simply bending them .  Add them to your sensory bin of manipulatives for children or adults who need to fidget and/or relax. 


The bracelets come in a variety of sizes, colors, strengths and materials. I recently bought a package of 72 for about 10.00 and use them in repetitive tasks such as the following....

1. I present them on a tray curled up so that the person has to straighten them out and insert into the slot opening. This takes quite a bit of motor planning and is quite challenging for some individuals.

2. I tied strips of fabric all over the bucket because the lid was not staying on and I didn't want my clients to dump out the contents.  Then I attached the bracelets all over the fabric so that they need to pull them off and insert. The orange lid stays on the bucket permanently. I cut a circle in the lid's center and pushed the top of a screw cap container  through it and taped in place from the bottom. I can screw a cover back onto that white screw piece you see on top to keep the contents inside. Its large enough for me to reach inside and remove the contents.

This bucket was originally used by a client who enjoys inserting the small objects on the yellow tray and he does not have the motor skills to remove the bracelets. So in this way different clients can use the same bucket in different ways according to their skills. Another individual has the skills to attach the bracelets, also a pretty high level fine motor skill.

3) You will see in the video clients removing the bracelets from a tall ring stack. I attached a pin wheel to the very top and asked them to blow after inserting the bracelet. This seemed to be calming as well as funny to them and others watching them. They certainly did really nice reaching and neck extension in the process.


4) Some individuals enjoyed attaching the bracelets to the top of the curvy ring stack. The bracelets  functioned as rings but putting them on and off involved a higher level of motor planning and they enjoyed the sensations of bending them in the process. I think that manipulating the bracelets provided the proprioceptive stimulation to the joints and muscles in the fingers helping with coordination and body awareness. 

5) The man in the blue shirt is blind and nonverbal but very good at motor planning. He also seeks sensory stimulation by ripping his clothes. We have not found a solution to the ripping behavior  (believe me, we have tried a lot of strategies) , but I like creating new sensory based activities such as the one below. I taped a cat toy to the top of a container lid. You can see the yellow lid in the photo below. The cat toy has a spring with a toy mouse on top that makes sounds when moved.  The client is able to attach the bracelets to the spring part and also has the skills to remove them, straighten them out and insert into slot openings on the sides of the container. The bracelets are retrieved by unscrewing the cap with cat toy taped onto it.
You will also see in the video a stringing activity made by attaching a heavy duty slap bracelet to the end of cord. The individual in the video has poor motor planning skills but is able to string or remove the large rings. Notice how I tied the bottom of the cord to his chair  to make the materials easier to control.

Source: Help children with autism build hand skills with slap bracelets by RecyclingOT