Christmas activities for Teletherapy
This is a difficult time of the year to maintain our student’s attention to learning. If you’re looking for a fun, new way to meet many of your children’s Occupational Therapy goals without needing to spend hours planning your therapy sessions, check out this FREE Christmas themed slide deck that will target self-regulation, fine motor, gross motor, visual motor, visual perceptual and handwriting skills. It can be adapted for preschoolers to school-aged students. Slides could be used by physical therapists and speech therapists working virtually too!
This weekend, we put up our Christmas tree and to my surprise my boys decorated most of the tree all by themselves.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I was toddler proofing the tree and this year my boys were safe enough to decorate all but the tippy top of the tree.
A lot changes in a few years, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment!
Christmas themed slide deck
As an Occupational Therapist, I work with children in all different ages and stages of development.
I’m always trying to find ways to plan for my teletherapy or in-person sessions in the quickest and easiest ways possible.
When I began creating google slide decks for my teletherapy sessions it completely saved my sanity.
I build them around certain themes and then I can skip slides and re-arrange them to individualize my sessions based on my student’s skills, interests and needs.
No more fumbling through files to find different activities or endless scrolling of the internet needed!
Today, I’m sharing with you a FREE Christmas themed slide deck to use with your students.
This slide deck targets:
Self-regulation
Gross Motor skills
Motor planning
Auditory processing
Fine motor skills
Visual motor skills
Visual perceptual skills
Handwriting
If your students or school doesn’t celebrate Christmas, check out this post for some other December themed ideas.
Christmas themed self-regulation activities
Warm-up your sessions by practicing some Christmas tree breathing with your students.
Start at the star and follow the color coded arrows to breathe in for 3 seconds, hold your breath for 3 seconds and then exhale for 3 seconds.
Repeat as many times as necessary to achieve the “just right” alert level at the start, middle or end of your therapy sessions (I like to do this one myself in between therapy sessions!)
or
Flip a coin and practice some Christmas inspired yoga poses to quiet the body and mind (good for therapist and students alike!).
Christmas themed gross motor activities
Do the Reindeer hokey pokey to work on motor planning, following directions and to have some fun!
Christmas themed auditory processing activity
Decorate the Christmas tree by dragging and dropping the decorations on the left hand side.
You can use this as an opportunity to work on following directions and auditory memory by calling out which items the student needs to put on the tree first, next, last.
Christmas themed visual motor & visual perceptual activities
For younger students, follow the prompts to draw the Christmas tree.
After drawing, you could color, draw decorations onto the tree, practice cutting or place stickers for more fine motor practice. Don’t forget to practice writing your student’s name on the paper too!
or
For more advanced students, follow the video to draw the Christmas tree.
If using the video, I will usually have the students draw in one session and color and complete in the next session.
Christmas writing prompts
Depending on your student’s goals, use the hyperlink to spin the wheel and see what number the student will write, type or speak about.
Don’t forget to have your student self-check their work!
Hopefully, this slide deck leaves you inspired to have some fun this month and allows you more free time to check off the some other “to-do’s” off your busy holiday season list!
Christmas activities for Teletherapy
Looking for more slide decks and activities?
Check out the Growing Little Brains shop!
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