Occupational Therapy (OT) tips for home Prep – Grade 2

This information is general to help support your child to learn at home.

Cutting tips

• Bold the outline with a highlighter or marker to help guide cutting.
• Hold scissors and paper with ‘thumbs on top’. You can place a sticker on your child’s thumb nail as a reminder.
• Begin first with cutting straight lines, then basic shapes, then complex shapes. You can use the junk mail or magazines to find things to cut around. Use these pictures to make a collage.

Gluing tips

• When gluing, put the glue on the object being glued and the paper.
• Make a mark or draw a line as a visual of where the glue should go.

Pencil grasp tips

• When holding a pencil or texta, the thumb, index, and middle finger should sit on the pencil shaft comfortably. The index finger and thumb generate the movement of the pencil while the middle finger stabilises the pencil from the side.
• Have your child hold a small coin or cotton ball with their pinky and ring fingers leaving only their index finger, middle finger and thumb available to hold the pencil.

Posture tips

• Feet should be flat on the floor (a footstool or a thick book can be placed under the feet to assist if feet do not reach the floor).
• You child’s wrist should be supported on the table and the paper stabilised by their non dominant hand.

Handwriting tips          

• When printing, prompt your child to use a top down formation - ‘Start at the top!’.
• Draw a green line along the left margin of the paper and a red line on the right to signal where to ‘start’ and ‘stop’.
• If your child has difficulty writing on the line, darken the baseline with a marker.
• Use a highlighter to indicate where to write between lines.

Participation tips

• Allow your child to take short, intermittent movement breaks (3-5 minutes every 15 minutes for preps – year 2, every 20 - 25 minutes for older students).
• Use a reward chart with stickers or ticks to reinforce positive behaviors.
• Break down instructions into simple 1-2 step directions.
• Have your child repeat directions to reinforce understanding.

Some ideas for movement breaks

• Hopscotch - try jumping (‘jumpscotch’ – great for kids who may find hopping difficult) or hopping in the squares. If jumping, remember to jump with feet together and maintaining control of jumping. Perhaps a grid can be marked out on the driveway using chalk or on the floor with masking tape. Make the grid as long or varied as you’d like. Be creative!
• Walking along a line - tape a line to the floor using masking tape or draw one on concrete using chalk. Walk heel to toe (ie heel of the leading foot is touching the toes of the foot behind) along the line forwards and backwards. Try walking along the line on your tiptoes. Try taking giant steps along the line (but don’t overbalance!). Take turns and keep a score on how many times the line was stepped off.
• Stepping stones - place cut outs of different pictures/colours/shapes on the floor with varying distances between them (or use different coloured sheets of paper). Ask the child to follow the course by putting one foot on each ‘stone’ (eg ‘follow the green path’ or provide instructions as to which stone to stand on next as they go).
• Balance in a crawl position - practise keeping balance by getting into a crawling position and then lifting up one leg or one arm. When this becomes easy, try lifting up an arm and a leg at the same time (opposite arm to leg). See how long your child can hold this position for!
• Statues - for a variation on the traditional game (eg freezing when the music stops), try jumping off a stool or chair and maintaining the landing position for a few seconds – like a ‘statue’. This takes good balance.
• Riding bikes, scooters etc.
• Obstacle course - create your own obstacle course in the backyard or inside on a rainy day. Incorporate portions to crawl through (eg tunnel of dining room chairs), climb over, balance on, jump on, step between etc. A fun variation can be to do an ‘under and over course’ ie you have to go under the first thing, over the next, then under the next etc.
• Animal walks - frog leaps, kangaroo jumps, waddling like a duck etc.
• Silly walks - walk up the hallway or along the driveway doing a silly walk. Do the walks as accurately as possible. Try not to rush! You might like to use masking tape on the floor to create a ‘tightrope’ to balance along (approximately 3m).
• Marching on the spot when counting.
• Simon says - try to balance with only the following body parts on the floor (eg ‘Simon says balance on your bottom and one foot’). You may wish to start incorporating some left and right concepts into the directions you give to make it more difficult eg ‘left foot and right hand’.

Kate Tague

Learning Support Teacher