The Playful Otter
1,518 FOLLOWERS
Children learn through play. As an occupational therapist who works with children and youth, I use games and toys almost every day to help develop important cognitive, visual perceptual, motor, sensory, social, play and leisure skills. While many different types of activities can be used in therapy, this blog focuses on off-the-shelf games and toys that are accessible to most.
The Playful Otter
4M ago
Here are some of my favorite one-person logic games. I like these types of games because many of them they include multiple challenges which increase in difficulty as you go. Great for multiple visual perceptual skills as well as reasoning and problem solving skills. Just click on any game name to go to my post about that game for more information.
Cat Stax - Arrange cats to solve puzzles. 48 challenges increase in difficulty as you go.
Get Packing - This was a fun game for either a challenge or for just packing the suitcase according to the challenge card.
Brain Tra ..read more
The Playful Otter
5M ago
I am very excited to introduce you to my friend Mason. I met him on the Teachers Pay Teachers website where we each have a store.
Mason is a young entrepreneur who has turned a growing talent and a dream into a successful clip art store - MKE Mason. He is honing his skills using the powerful iPad Procreate app, and his creativity has resulted in some fun ideas and some very original clip art sets, like his Copycat game above.
Join me in supporting this young artist and his dream. He loves interacting with people who stop by his store, whether it is through feedback after d ..read more
The Playful Otter
9M ago
Does anybody have a brown thumb, like me? Then maybe Build A Garden is the route you need to take - build an indoor garden that never needs tending.
Build A Garden comes in several different boxed sets, each with a different number of pieces. I have the set in the image above and it comes with 98 pieces, all hard plastic. I'm going to show you the contents of the box first, as it will be easier to explain after.
I enlarged the image above so that you can see the details on the blooms. There are four different flower parts, and the names are even printed on the box. The largest p ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
What's in Ned's Head? Without looking, feel for the icky, sticky, hairy and scary stuff inside.
There's almost no limit to the surprises that you can find in What's in Ned's Head? Use it with the objects that are included and then let your imagination run wild as you put all kinds of everyday objects in for more fun and extended play.
Objects included in the game may vary a little as I have seen different things over the years in What's in Ned's Head? including a frog, dirty gym sock, sticky sucker, lab rat, tongue, tooth, worm, bird poop with a worm in it, dirty diaper ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
I have long been a fan of the Pass The Pigs games. Now that I am retired, I don't get to go looking for new games. Of course Amazon doesn't know that I'm retired, so they keep adding new games to my feed. This is one of them and I couldn't help but go look.
The thing I like about the three Pass The Pig games that I own, is the tiny size of the pigs and the score pad. Lots of hand skills can be addressed with these games. I will put links to those three games below. Each one has ideas on using them in therapy.
The thing that is intriguing to me about this set, is the overly large ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
Bunny Boo - 60 challenges that increase in difficulty
Bunny Boo is a Smart Game for beginners to help teach, among other things, logic reasoning and problem solving. There are not a lot of games of this type for individuals with a moderate cognitive disability, and this one comes with 60 challenges!
Bunny Boo is a fun activity for beginners to also work on spatial orientation, visual closure, and building a 3D model from a 2D pattern card. There are only four pieces and they are pictured in the challenges from the top, the side, the front, or the back. You will be able to see ea ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
Wooden Pizza Party - Life-sized wooden hand tools
Melissa & Doug have a lot of different wooden food sets, like Wooden Pizza Party, that are great for creative play. They all include numerous pieces and most even include hand tools, making them also a favorite with OTs. The pieces are all wood and typically well constructed. Wooden Pizza Party is no exception.
The pizza pieces stick together with round Velcro tabs, and the pizza toppings stick on the pizza with Velcro, three toppings per slice. You can see a white, round piece of Velcro on the side of the piece of pizza th ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
Pizza Pile-Up - Don't add one too many toppings
Do you work with kids that have trouble with a graded release? That aren't able to open their hand and gently put something down? That's when I bring out the balance games. They always start with modeling, cueing, and usually hand-over-hand to get the feel of slowly, purposefully opening the hand to release something. After practice, many kids are successful.
With that said, Pizza Pile-Up is NOT one of those games that I would use for this purpose. Yes, it is a balance game, but the rubbery ingredients slide across the p ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
Use a hammer and tacks to construct cars and trucks from challenge cards.
A little pricey, but a fun activity. Construct vehicles by placing pieces on a cork board and then hammering in tacks to keep them in place.
The pieces are a lightweight wood with a picture on one side. One piece requires two tacks and the rest only take one. There are circles on the pieces to indicate where the tacks go. The tacks are not long enough to go all the way through the cork board, so won't scratch the table. The hammer is also wooden.
The five challenge cards are a heavy card st ..read more
The Playful Otter
1y ago
Q
This is a visual perceptual trio that is a good investment, IMHO. I have used these games for years and I keep using them for many reasons:
You can work on developing numerous visual perceptual skills as well as hand skills and executive functioning.
You can play this with many different ages and cognitive levels. It's starts with a 4-piece Jr. version and advances to a 16-piece extreme version.
You really get your moneys worth as there are MANY challenges to work through. The Jr. version has 60 challenges and the regular and extreme versions each hav ..read more