Need Some Great Gifts Ideas For Kids? Use Our Holiday Gift Guide!
Leanna Moss, Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant, and Anne Zinn, Speech Language Pathologist, are here to help you with your holiday shopping for all those kiddos in your life from an occupational therapy and speech therapy perspective.
Gifts for Infants
The Baby Einstein Jellyfish is really good for auditory and visual development.
Another good toy as infants get older are Little People. They are great toys for play as well as teaching children to follow commands.
Gifts for Toddlers
The Imagination Patterns Deluxe Set is great for visual motor skills. This toy’s wooden pieces are magnetic, so they won’t fall out all over the place, and comes with cards your kids can use to imitate what they are seeing. This toy also comes with dry erase markers that you can use to work on your child’s writing.
Another good toy to get this season is any sort of doll. Playing with dolls works on social interaction skills. To go along with a baby doll consider dress up items for your child. Playing dress up works on imaginative skills and can help with self dressing skills from an occupational therapy perspective.
Gifts for Middle Age Children
The Light Bright game is great for developing fine motor skills. The game comes with patterns, or you can create your own imaginative design. This game helps with identifying colors and works on number concepts.
Another good suggestion for this age group is books. Books are always good for language development. The book “Where is Babies Present?” looks at spatial concepts, so you have to find a baby’s present by looking under or behind or beside certain different Christmas items. Another good book is “You are Not an Otter”. This book talks about picky eaters, it looks at different animals and the way they eat and compares them to your child.
Jenga is also a great toy for this age group. This game works on grading a movement and is fun for the whole family.
The final gift that we are suggesting to promote and facilitate occupational therapy and speech therapy skills is Play-doh. You can purchase Play-doh or you can make your own homemade Play-doh kit. This is really good for language development and social interaction skills as well as imaginative skills. It’s also really good for sensory and the tactile components.
If your child is struggling with any of these skills mentioned in this video, please give us a call at 217-222-6550 extension 3418 with any questions.