Spring Activities For All Ages!

Posted on April 1, 2024February 27, 2024

Join us as we welcome spring!

As the world outside bursts into color and warmth, it’s the perfect time to dive into some fun activities that celebrate the season. We’ve put together a bunch of excellent OT spring activities for all ages that you can do that are fun and help you learn and grow.

From making yummy flower-shaped snacks to crafting bird feeders and sensory bottles, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Whether you’re a parent looking for fun OT activities with your kids at home or a teacher searching for exciting activities, you’ve come to the right place!

Join us as we explore the wonders of spring through activities that work on our fine motor skills and try new foods! Let’s make this season even more remarkable by having a blast with these therapeutic activities.

Spring Activities: Flower Snacks:

This fun and creative activity works on fine motor skills, food play, and meal preparation skills. It is also a great way to introduce healthy snacks into your child’s diet.

Beet slices flower snack– Use a flower-shaped cookie cutter to cut beet slices (or other soft fruit/veggies: pineapple, apples, thin potatoes…)
Mandarin orange flower– Peel an orange and open one end. Add celery for a stem.
Orange with flair– Add a grape tomato to the center of your orange to add a little color. Other fruits could also be arranged into a flower shape: apple, pear, and banana slices would work.
Dried cranberry mini flowers– Arrange cranberries (or raisins) into petal shapes. Add chickpeas for a center to each flower.
Tulip cucumbers– Cut a jagged line into cucumber slices. Add a piece of the peel for stems for each flower.
Flower art– Get the kids involved in this one! Provide carrots, broccoli, red peppers, and grape tomatoes, and create a flower design as a family. Enjoy!

Paint With Flowers:

This is an easy and cheap activity to complete at home that only requires paint, paper or plate, and flowers. Use the flower as a brush and press it into the paint, then paint away!

Oral Motor Exercise With Plastic Easter Eggs:

This is a fun activity to incorporate into your routine before feeding. Adding oral motor exercises provides sensory input and “wakes up” the muscles of the mouth. Give your child a straw and ask them to blow into the straw to push easter eggs toward a target.

Spring Animal Walks:

This is a fun gross motor activity that can be done in the home or outside. Have your child bunny hop, bear walk, frog jump, and snake slither from one side to the other. You can even have an animal race to see who gets to the finish line first!

Homemade Bird Feeders:

This is a great activity to improve executive functioning skills and bilateral coordination skills. You will need toilet paper rolls, peanut butter, birdseed, and spreading tools. Spread the peanut butter on the toilet paper, roll it in the birdseed, and hang it up outside!

Spring Themed Sensory Bottle:

Sensory bottles can provide a calming sensory experience to children by focusing on the different moving objects inside. All you need is 4 ounces of clear glue, warm water, hot glue (to seal the lid), a bottle, and any desired spring-themed objects to put inside (glitter, small toy animals, flowers, etc.).

Why Does My Child Put Everything In Their Mouth?

Posted on May 24, 2023October 4, 2023

What is Oral Sensory Seeking?

Oral Sensory Seeking is the constant desire or need for a child to place objects in or touch their mouth. Children who have an oral fixation usually feel the need to constantly chew or suck on something. Depending on the age of the child, this may or may not be appropriate. As a parent, this can be difficult to navigate, especially due to the risk of choking on small objects. We know it is impossible to have eyes on your child every minute and scary to feel like you need to keep everything picked up off the floor and out of reach at all times. The oral stage of development that happens from birth to 21 months involves an infant’s pleasure center being focused on the mouth and lips, which are used for sucking and feeding. This is the age when the infant puts everything in the mouth—from hands, fingers, wrists, toys, pacifiers, clothing, blankets … just about anything within hands reach. One of the first prominent objects the baby’s mouth becomes accustomed to is a mother’s breast, for milk. In this blog, we will explore some of the reasons why your child may continue seeking additional oral sensory needs when it is no longer age-appropriate and activities to help them with this behavior.

What are Oral Sensory Seeking Behaviors?

When a child chews, mouths, sucks, or bites non-edible objects and/or edible objects frequently, we will call this an oral sensory seeking behavior. It can also involve harmful behaviors like biting. Some children who are seeking out oral and tactile (touch) sensory input will bite parts of their body, such as the arms, legs, feet and hands. Although oral seeking behavior can help children regulate their bodies and emotions at times, it can also prevent children’s learning if the child is constantly looking for objects to put in their mouth, or cause harm when they bite or suck on themselves. If children are distracted by finding objects or fixated on this behavior, it can affect their ability to focus at school or on an activity at hand.

Here is a list of common oral sensory seeking behaviors:

Excessive or frequent licking and/or chewing of random objects or toys
Excessive or frequent chewing of soft items or clothing (shirt sleeves, bed sheets, blankets, stuffed animals)
Biting toys or people, especially when unprovoked or when overly excited
Chewing the inside of the cheeks or biting/sucking on lip
Biting nails
Grinding teeth
Stuffing mouth with food or holding food in mouth for a long period of time
Drooling or spitting purposefully

How Can I Help My Child With Oral Sensory Behaviors?

Although there are a variety of ways to provide oral sensory input to children in a safe way and to replace oral sensory behaviors.. no child is the same when it comes to the solution. Our occupational therapists at Carolina Therapy Connection recommend that you experiment with these activities as part of your child’s sensory diet and notice what tends to calm, alert, and/or regulate them.

Create a FREE sensory diet with this template from “Your Kids Table” HERE!

Oral Sensory Seeking – Chewing Activities

Chewing crunchy foods, chewy foods, gum etc.

Use a chewy jewelry or other sensory chew toys

Vibrating chew toys (for kiddos who need that extra sensory input!)

Various Activities for Sensory Input

Blowing bubbles or blowing up balloons
Suck on sour candies, lollipops, ice cubes, etc.
Clicking tongue
Drink various textures through a straw (apple cause, milkshakes, yogurt, pudding, etc.)
Whistles, party blowers, kazoos, harmonicas, pinwheels etc.
Make a bubble mountains with dish soap and water

How can Carolina Therapy Connection help?

Occupational therapy addresses any barriers that affect someone’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, which includes sensory integration difficulties. Sensory integration refers to how your body recognizes, processes, and responds to information received by our sensory systems on an individual and combined level.This includes our traditional 5 senses, sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing; however, we also have proprioceptive and vestibular sensory systems. Often times, oral sensory processing or seeking difficulties are paired with other sensory system difficulties. Occupational therapists use sensory integration therapy by exposing a child to sensory stimulation in a structured and organized way. The goal of sensory integration therapy is to adapt the child’s brain and nervous system to process sensory information more efficiently.

At Carolina Therapy Connection, we offer Sensory Integration Therapy and play-based treatment intervention that is specifically designed to stimulate and challenge all of the senses. Sensory Integration involves specific sensory activities (swinging, bouncing, brushing, providing oral sensory input and more) that are intended to help your child regulate his or her response to incoming sensory input. The outcome of these activities may be better focus and attention, improved behavior, and even lowered anxiety. Our therapists may work on lowering a patient’s negative reactions to touch, help them become better aware of their body in space, and work on their ability to manage their bodies more appropriately (run and jump when it’s time to run and jump, sit and focus when it’s time to sit and focus, etc.).

Our occupational therapists will complete an initial evaluation to become familiar with your child’s strengths, weaknesses and daily routine. Following the evaluation, they will create an individualized treatment plan and goals to address any concerns with development. We take pride in making therapy enjoyable and fun for your child, so that they can be motivated to live their life to their greatest potential. If you are interested in a FREE occupational therapy screening in the Greenville, Goldsboro, or New Bern, NC areas, call us at (252) 341-9944.

Transitioning from Bottle to Cup

Posted on February 15, 2022October 4, 2023

When should my child transition from their bottle to a regular cup?

It’s time to transition off the bottle! The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends transitioning from a bottle to a cup when your baby is about 15 months old. You might think it is time for those adorable sippy cups! BUT, current research is clear, and many therapists are recommending skipping the sippy cup altogether and moving straight to an open cup or a straw cup.

Many parents decide to use a sippy cup because they think that’s what they are supposed to do. Sippy cups were not designed as a tool for proper oral motor and feeding development, but instead were created to keep the carpets clean! The occasional use of a sippy cup is nothing to worry about, as it can be great for those long car rides and times where cleanliness matters. It is important to note that if your child has a medical reason to use a sippy cup, follow your pediatricians recommendations (i.e. some children require a valved sippy cup for safety). Despite the convenience of a sippy cup, parents should be aware that it is easy to become dependent on anything that makes life less messy, so when it’s possible to bring out the regular cup or straw, do it!

Why should I skip the sippy cup?

At only 12 months of age, your baby is developing a more mature adult-like swallow pattern! As opposed to the anterior-posterior suckle pattern infants use with a bottle, at only a year old, the tongue begins to stay in place or even move backward and rise while pressing on the alveolar ridge (the hard, ridged spot just behind the front teeth). The tongue will rise, push, and propel the food backwards! When your little one drinks from a bottle or a sippy cup, the spout prevents their tongue tip from elevating, often forcing the tongue down or requiring them to stick their tongue out in order to drink. If the tongue doesn’t rise to the alveolar ridge at rest and when swallowing, the brain creates a habit to keep the tongue on the floor of the mouth. This can contribute to oral motor weakness, and an impaired oral phase of the swallow.

According to the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, when the tongue sits low in the mouth it often forces the mouth to rest in an open position, which leads to mouth-breathing instead of your little one breathing through their nose. Long-term use of a bottle or sippy cup may also lead to dental concerns. The immature pattern of an anterior tongue thrust during the swallow increases the risk of pushing their teeth forward and creating a dental malocclusion. The tongue, lips, cheeks, and jaw all play important roles in both articulation of speech sounds and eating, and little ones with weaker oral motor skills may be at increased risk for a speech sound delay.

What are the benefits of using a regular cup or straw?

Open cups and straw cups help build normal movements in oral musculature.
Using a straw helps your child develop lip, cheek and tongue strength.
Open cups provide practice using the mature pattern of swallowing that will allow your child to safely drink and eat.
Straw drinking supports a child’s early articulation of speech sounds.
Regular cups and straws encourage proper breathing patterns and prevent mouth breathing.

What’s the best way to make the transition from the bottle to a cup?

When beginning to make the transition from a bottle to a straw cup or regular cup, it’s important to start small! This process can take time and it’s important to know it won’t happen overnight.

Start by introducing an open cup at mealtimes. You can hold the cup for your child to sip from the side of the rim to get them comfortable.
A great straw sipping cup is the Talk tools Honey Bear Straw Cup, which allows your child to squeeze the bottle so they can get comfortable with using a straw to start out with.
Offer both straw cups and open cups to allow for comfort with various drinking cups.
Use a weighted straw cup, which is spill-proof and allows a child to drink from any angle!

How can Carolina Therapy Connection help?

Your child may need speech therapy if they have difficulty with speech/articulation (pronouncing sounds or words) or using words to communicate. Because the muscles and structures used for speech (such as lips, tongue, teeth, palate and throat) are also used in drinking and eating, a speech and language pathologist may also help with feeding, drinking and swallowing difficulties, also known as dysphagia.

While using a sippy cup does not necessarily mean your child will need speech therapy, it’s considered best to encourage oral motor development by using open cups or straw cups at home! Ditch those sippy cups, and check out the spill-proof options for open cups and straw cups they make these days! Spill-proof….now that’s a concept we can ALL get behind!

As always, if you have any questions about your child development, call our clinic at 252-341-9944 to speak with one of our speech-language pathologists!

Written by: Ashley R. Holloway, MS, CCC-SLP