Spring is the perfect time to work on building skills using occupational therapy activities. Children can improve different skills during play, when learning, and while exploring nature!
Many of these fun occupational therapy activities involve using sensory input and improving gross motor skills, visual perceptual skills, and fine motor skills.
The spring time activities listed in this blog post (shared by an occupational therapist) are organized into three categories:
- Spring Season Outdoor Activities
- Gross Motor Spring Activities
- Spring Crafts and Fine Motor Activities
The first two categories involve the development of gross motor skills. All categories include sensory play embedded throughout many of the springtime activities.
Springtime Outdoor Occupational Therapy Activities for Kids
Outdoor spring activities for kids are a great way to add sensory play for learning in preschool and elementary students.
In many geographic areas, kids have been inside due to snowy, cold weather. Spring is the perfect time to get children outdoors as much as possible! It’s my #1 recommendation as an occupational therapist.
Scavenger Hunt
Use wide open spaces outdoors for a scavenger hunt. Make lists of bugs, leaves, flowers, plants, or other outdoor small items.
Enhance a child’s senses and have him/her identify objects by smell. Collect items and make a nature picture collage for sensory play and fine motor development.
Egg Hunts
Hide plastic eggs for an egg hunt. Write eggs-ercises on small pieces of paper and hide inside each one!
Scavenger Hunt with Clues
Give a child a clue on paper that leads to another clue hidden somewhere outside. Continue the clues (4 or more) with a fun prize at the end. This brings back so many memories from my childhood at my grandparents’ house! 🙂
Fly a Kite
Feel the wind on the skin (for sensory input) and strengthen hand muscles with kites! Have competitions or add to a math or science or social studies lesson.
Large Bubble Wands
A great way to encourage crossing midline. Also, kids experience tactile input outdoors from fresh air and sun.
Earth Day Cleaning
Earth Day is a perfect time to encourage children to clean up outdoors. Take time during the school day to help in the community. Create a homework assignment for elementary students to clean up their neighborhoods.
Clean up Sticks and Leaves
In addition to cleaning up garbage, have children help clean up sticks, leaves, and bark. Grassy areas and landscaping tend to collect these through the winter months. This is another great lesson during Earth Day. Gather the items for a compost pile!
Have kids push a wheelbarrow or pull a wagon for added heavy work sensory input!
Plant a Tree
Use fundraising money or donations to plant trees. Have students plant seedlings for Earth Day or Mother’s Day.
Dig a Garden
Prepare a garden by digging with shovels, pulling weeds, and raking. These activities offer powerful sensory input that are calming and organizing for the nervous system. And children also get the benefits of being outside while participating in these tasks.
Plant a Garden
Planting a garden offers sensory input and fine motor strengthening opportunities for children. But more importantly, it teaches children where their food comes from! They learn how to care for and grow their own produce.
Decorate Flower Pots
Add beauty, texture, and color with flower pots. Encourage creativity when assembling them. Or plant individual pots of flowers for Mother’s Day.
Draw on Brick or Concrete Walls
Work on letter formation using chalk on an outdoor vertical surface. Children can use squirt bottles to erase the chalk (this is a great activity to also strengthen the hands.)
Stick Drawing and Writing
Use a stick or branch to draw in dirt or sand. This is another great way to work on letter formation. (While also adding fresh air, sunshine, and sensory input from the outdoors.)
Nature Sensory Bins
Have children create their own outdoor sensory bins with objects from nature.
Occupational Therapy Spring Activities for Kids – Build Gross Motor Skills
My occupational therapy sessions start with movement and gross motor skills activities. Why? Because gross motor activities improve coordination skills needed for fine motor tasks!
Additionally, the different movements provide organizing sensory input (proprioception and vestibular.) Add these gross motor spring activities to your routines. They’re a fun way to get kids moving while also building many different skills that support learning.
Egg Relay Race
Have fun with a gross motor skills relay race game with two groups of students. Children place a plastic egg (or hard-boiled, your choice!) on a spoon and race back and forth. Play this in the hallway or outdoors in the grass for added sensory play.
Bunny Hops
Kids keep their feet close together and hop like a bunny through a path, on floor spotters, or through an obstacle course. You could also make it a relay race with teams.
Baby Bunny Hopping
While on the floor sitting on knees, kids slide their hands forward on the floor. Then, they quickly hop and pull their knees up toward their hands. (Hands remain still.) Repeat along a path.
Weight-bearing activities on the hands are one of my favorites as an occupational therapist. They provide proprioceptive input and they improve core strength, shoulder stability, and hand strength.
For more ideas, Weight Bearing Exercises for Kids, Easy & Fun Occupational Therapy Activities.
Walk Like An Inchworm
This weight-bearing activity requires a little bit more bilateral coordination in kids. They get into a bear walk position. I tell kids to “freeze your feet” while they walk their hands out as far as they can. Next, I say, “freeze your hands” while they walk their feet up toward their hands.
They keep repeating this motion to mimic the movements of an inchworm. This activity is a really great way to work on core and shoulder stability. And it requires a higher level of coordination.
Roll Like an Egg
Complete a forward roll. Kids can try to see how many they can do in a row. This is a great activity for vestibular input. And it gives deep pressure sensory input to the back.
Caterpillar Crawl
Children lie on their bellies and pull themselves along the floor with their elbows. This is hard work but kids love these fun activities. Use during transitions in the classroom. Or kids can do this down a hallway to brush their teeth.
Frog Jumps
These provide great sensory input (proprioception) for the legs! Kids stand, then squat down with feet on the floor and fingertips touching the floor. They jump up and then land in the same squatting frog position that they started in.
Have kids frog jump in place (10-20) or across an open area!
Wash Windows or Other Vertical Surfaces
Build upper body strength and encourage crossing midline while washing vertical surfaces. Kids can help with spring cleaning! Clean windows, whiteboards, doors, and chalkboards.
Dig in Dirt or Sand, Fill Buckets
Add proprioceptive input through digging, filling buckets, and then dumping them in garden beds or flower pots. It offers powerful proprioceptive work for kids.
Hopscotch
Use chalk to draw hopscotch squares on the ground. Create several different patterns.
Jump Rope
Have children set a goal for the number of consecutive times they can jump rope. Or use large ropes for double jumping.
Jumping Sideways
Place a jump rope or tape on the floor for sideways jumping. Increase the challenge with a small “log” for the game.
Stomp Rockets
Add stomp rockets to recess games. These are a great activity for proprioceptive input for the legs. And kids love them!
Spring Crafts for Kids and Occupational Therapy Fine Motor Activities for Kids
I often use laminated spring-themed worksheets during my occupational therapy sessions. However, I also love to change things up to add sensory input to as many activities as possible, especially spring crafts.
Art projects are some of my favorite occupational therapy spring activities. During my sessions, I start with a gross motor and/or sensory activity before sitting at a table. Spring crafts for kids are a great way to work on eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, visual motor skills, visual perception, and grasp development. Crafts also work on problem solving and encourage creativity.
When these fine motor activities are completed in small groups, it also works on social skills in children. Additionally, crafts are great mindfulness activities. Kids needed daily opportunities for this social-emotional learning.
Pick Bright Flowers or Green Plants
Go on a scavenger hunt to improve visual perceptual skills. Find wild flowers of different shapes or colors. Or find the green foliage emerging from different plants.
Create Nature Collages
Use flowers, foliage, rocks, sticks, etc to create art pictures. Give children some tips, but encourage them to use their own creative ideas. Creativity is so important for the mind and brain!
Sort and Count Seeds
Add seeds to your math centers for learning. This is a fun way to bring nature indoors and to add sensory input. Children can match, sort, add, or subtract. Use them in small group learning centers to work on social skills.
Plant Seeds
Have young children plant seeds in small containers for flowers or herbs. Build hand strength in kids by using a spray bottle or squeeze a wet sponge to water the plants.
Tissue Paper Shamrocks, Eggs, or Flowers
Tissue paper crafts are a fun way to add texture to projects. Twist tissue paper squares over the end of a pencil eraser, rub on the top of a glue stick, and press on the egg or flower picture.
Sparkly Tissue Paper Eggs or Flowers
Use tissue squares to fill in an outline on drawings or spring-themed worksheets. When the glue dries, paint with a clear craft varnish and sprinkle glitter over it.
Tissue Paper Flowers for Vases
Curl and twist medium sized squares of tissue paper. Cut a hole and push a pipe cleaner through the hole for a stem. Add pipe cleaners and beads for the flower’s filaments and anthers.
Construction Paper Pictures
This simple fine motor activity is great for bilateral coordination, pincer grasp, visual perception, and creativity! Tear pieces of construction paper to make a clover, a variety of flowers, a chick and an egg, a bunny, or any other spring theme picture.
3-D Paper Flowers
Cut heart shapes from colored paper of different sizes. Curl the tops of each heart. Glue them in layers starting with the larger hearts at the base. Add a contrasting color (or tissue paper) for the center.
This spring craft works on visual perceptual skills. It’s a great way to challenge preschool and elementary students.
Felt Flowers
Trace and cut flower shapes of different sizes. Fasten together with a button and pipe cleaner.
Scented Stickers
Place scented stickers on paper for matching activities or on small index cards for a memory game.
Puffy Paint Eggs or a Puffy Shamrock
Mix glue and shaving cream for this fun activity. Draw an egg or shamrock, or use a template on cardstock paper. Add small items such as craft beads, sequins, pieces of string, glitter, etc (or other seasonal items) to work on a pincer grasp as children decorate their puffy paint.
(The Puffy Paint Snowman blog post shares ingredients for the puffy paint.)
Finger Paint Pictures
Isolate the index finger, thumb, or other fingers to make spring paintings. Find spring-themed worksheets or encourage kids to use their own creative ideas. Make grass, a tree with blossoms, the sun, and flowers using finger paint.
Paint a Spring Scene
Encourage creativity with a spring theme painting and beautiful watercolors.
Flower Handprint Bouquet
Use different colors of finger paint for a handprint flower bouquet. Paint stems and add a ribbon. This is a great project for a Mother’s Day gift!
Bunny Handprint
Use brown finger paint on the palm and index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers. Have kids separate the fingers between the middle and ring fingers. (This focuses on motor separation in the hands.)
The index and middle fingers are one bunny ear, and the ring and pinky fingers are the other ear. Children lift the thumb in the air when pressing their painted hand onto paper.
Finger Paint Rainbow
Use the pads of different fingertips for each color of the rainbow. Add counting to make it part of math.
Wikki Stix Flower Picture
Bend and form Wikki Stix into creative designs. They’re a great way to work on pincer grip, hand-eye coordination, and problem solving. Additionally, they have a unique texture for a fun sensory experience.
Decorate a Small Tree with Eggs
Find small spring theme trees at a Dollar Store. Work on shoulder and wrist stability as well as pincer grasp and finger dexterity to decorate the tree with small eggs on strings.
Putty Spring Treasure Hunt
This is a fun activity and a kid favorite! Hide small Lego flowers or other small spring season items in therapy putty. Kids love looking for hidden items in the putty, and it’s great for hand strength and sensory tactile awareness!
Egg Writing Prompts
Place writing prompts inside plastic eggs. Opening each egg works on bilateral coordination and grading of movements.
Memory Game With Eggs
Place small seasonal items (or classroom or household items) inside plastic eggs. (Two of each item to create pairs.) Set them up in a grid for a memory game.
Guess the Object
Put small seasonal items inside plastic eggs. Show kids which objects are in each egg. Challenge children to guess the sequence of the objects. Or take one a way for a “What’s Missing?” game.
I hope you enjoy these occupational therapy spring activities. There are so many ways to get creative and have fun when working with kids. They don’t realize they’re building skills for learning as they complete any of these tasks.
Add these activities to your classroom routines, occupational therapy sessions, physical therapy sessions, or speech therapy sessions. (And of course, add your own creative ideas with some tips in this blog post!)
Share these occupational therapy spring activities on your favorite social media network! Or post this article on your classroom site to share with parents.
For more fine motor activities for kids and simple crafts for kids, check out these blog posts:
- Easy Educational Art Projects for Elementary Students – This post shares several other ideas for art projects and crafts.
- Super Simple Fine Motor Activity – Tearing Construction Paper – Make a self-portrait in winter clothes, a winter tree, or a winter scene.
- 107+ Easy OT Hand Strengthening Activities & Games for Kids – Find the best toys to promote fine motor development and hand strength.
More Occupational Therapy Spring Activities – Movement and Sensory Input Opportunities for Kids
The following articles from Develop Learn Grow’s occupational therapist share outdoor activities, sensory input, and movement activities for kids. They address gross motor skills that support fine motor development.
- 81 Outdoor Games for Recess & Sensory Play Activities for Kids
- 43 Occupational Therapy Motor Coordination Activities for Kids
- 30 Movement Activities and Ideas for Elementary Students
