These moves are great for using right and left sides together (homologous movements) and using them separately (homolateral movements.) 
Lateral side bending/flexion Homologous movements and homolateral (one sided) movements Full extension and flexion of the body Bilateral Coordination Motor Planning and Imitation Rhythmicity and movement timing (especially when dancing to music! Grab Your Free Copy …
Valentines is a around the corner and here at The Big Picture Therapy we have some activities for the kids in your life to help them with development and visual motor skills. STNR-Inspired Valentines Reaches These are great one to use if a child has difficulty: -Sitting still-Maintaining good upright seated posture-Copying from a board …
Valentines Reflex Inspired Activities and Heart Chart Download Read More »
What do you do before drawing letters? Lots of vertical and horizontal lines building into intersecting lines! Make sure to get your download at the end of this blog. These printouts can be traced and have fading visual supports. I just used them with a 6 year-old kid with Down Syndrome who is just learning …
Halloween OT ActivitiesThese activities are for kids working on pre-writing and fine motor skills. This would be good for Pre-Kindergarteners though I will be using these with older kids with delays that are working on the basics.I am always encouraging people to slow down and work on fundamentals before having children copy letters or words. Finish the …
Leaves and Pumpkins Fall Activities
Mini-Pumpkin Motor Activities Mini pumpkins you can find at your grocery store offer lots of opportunities for kids to practice balance, core strength and force modulation to stack them. Check out a few ideas in this little video. 
Fall Leaf Clothespin Activities Got kids that are working on body awareness, washing their bodies thoroughly, …
Imagine that you hear a very loud noise and you have a split second to decide to run or hide. The Tendon Guard Reflex (TGR) helps you prepare your body for either choice. In short a reflex is “a neurological arc that has both a specific stimulus and a predictable response or responses” (Brandes, 2015). …
Foot Tendon Guard: One reflex behind the flee or freeze response in children Blog #14 Read More »
Rounding up bird activities from the week with free bird mirror image worksheet downloads:
4th of July Flag Activity Dopper to a Beat Moving to a beat helps with coordination and timing! This can be a great preparatory activity for writing. https://youtu.be/BVeTm8aldQA Download a metronome app on your phone and play around with what tempo works best for the kids you see. The tempo in this video is 50BPM. …
Many of you may already know about the flight and fight rest and digest state of the body, but did you know that there are ways to measure how “fit” these systems are? To my surprise there is a wealth of research on how the nervous system is correlated with patterns of social and emotional behaviors. …
The Autonomic Nervous System and how it affects Regulation and Behavior Blog # 13 Read More »
An easy way to describe and teach the functions of the brain based on Dan Siegel Clinical Professor of psychiatry at UCLA. Also inspired by terminology from OT instructor Julia Harper. The Brainstem Imagine that your hand is a brain. It sits on the spinal cord represented by your arm. Now what connects the spinal cord …
