Easter Egg with Colorful bands to Remove

 I don't think my plastic red egg looks much like an egg given that the edges are curvy, but the kids believed me when I told them that we were going to remove the decorations and insert them into the folding basket attached to the horse tack. One girl did this while on her belly positioned like "super girl" and another while kneeling. An almost 4 year old was able to put a few of the bands (use hair bands or those sold to weave potholders) back on to decorate the "egg". It certainly was colorful, festive and promoted bilateral hand use and motor planning skills......   

Egg projects in action

The kids enjoyed seeing my white band with woven egg shapes on top of my hat today. One of my clients wove the egg shapes on and then held onto it for a while and posed with it on top of her head. The "egg band" was a hit !










The "eggs" are made by cutting shapes out of plastic bottles. Punch a hole in 2 small circles and connect them on each side of the egg with a paper fastener.

The little girl is demonstrating how to move the yellow "yolk" along the C shape of my white egg.  She moved it from the frog to the bunny sticker.......

Spring into Egg-ster Activities

Spring is a great time of year for egg-themed crafts regardless of your religion or location on this planet. Children love eggs and birth.......

Some of the common crafts include lacing, painting and forming eggs with clay. Here are a few plastic activities made out of  detergent bottles that I bet you never heard of before !!!
 

White plastic is available from the milk and orange juice bottles as well as cat litter and detergent or dishwasher soap bottles.  

I have been using the Velcro bottle for over 20 years. I love it to promote bilateral hand use,strengthening fingers and developing the eye hand coordination to insert the objects inside. I have found that older children with developmental delays particularly attend to and enjoy removing objects attached with Velcro.

Cut notches in the white egg shape for children to weave colorful strips through. Adding extra shapes, like the pink ones shown here add complexity and creative options.



 I always start out asking younger children to remove strips or shapes since its usually easier to motor plan opening and removing than attaching and closing.

You can see that the almost 3 year old in the video is very interested in removing the shapes from the long circular white strip cut out of a large yogurt container. At this stage  she needs a little bit of help taking the egg shapes off the  band.

I have been thinking about how to make a simple plastic motor planning activity that can be used to teach how shapes and letters are formed.At first I used such small shapes to move through the empty space that children were able to push the openings and remove them. But the yellow "egg" below has such a large blue shape attached on the other side that all is sturdy and seems to work well when pushing through the mazelike opening. The video I made demonstrates this and came out fairly well even though I was holding the camera between my knees while filming !!!  

Teaching children to Form Amazing Lines

http://www.childdevelopmentclub.org/index.php/blog/blog-posts/162-teaching-children-to-form-amazing-lines

Amazing Valentine Bottle

This plastic bottles used to hold cat litter was perfect for making these bottle mazes. Each side has a different maze pattern, but they all encourage moving top to bottom and across, just like the ones older children use with pencil and paper.

I cut different curvy paths on each side of the bottle. The hearts are made by cutting the heart shape out of plastic  (in this case Tide detergent bottle) with an extended plastic piece at the bottom. You can't see it, but the extended piece is folded  against the heart. I punched holes in both the heart side and the extended plastic piece side and then connected them with a paper fastener at the tip.

I can easily remove the hearts and use other shapes such as fish that will move down stream or cars on a road.The children were also happy to help me decorate the bottle with stickers.

Using my Plastic Bottle Book Stand

I used my book stand while making Anadama bread during the big February 2013 storm.   Look at how nicely my cook book stays open while I work.....

 

Instructions are included in my digital book: The Almost Complete Plastic bottle Activity Book

 

Most of the activities in this book describe therapeutic and teaching adaptations that promote learning and develop hand skills, but it was fun to include a few household adaptations such as the book stand- which can also be very helpful for students while reading or copying....

I also include below a couple of photos of the beach we went to today . We snow shoed on the trails and walked along the shore. The landscape was altered.....the wall of sand dune that my husband is walking toward used to be sloped so that we could walk up  to reach the staircase.

 

Adapted Heart Stencils

These adapted stencils make it easier for children or adults with hemiplegia, weak grasp and/or spasticity to color or paint inside stencils. I describe how to make the red stencil and yellow sponge handle out of a detergent bottle in my Amazon Kindle book "The Almost Complete Plastic Bottle Activity book". Check it out for lots more therapeutic activities and adaptations......  

For a little more Valentine's Day fun... 

http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Complete-Plastic-Activity-ebook/dp/B00AGMVCX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359032632&sr=8-1&keywords=the+a