Kindergarten Readiness & OT
Occupational therapists help children with daily occupations (things that they want/need to do that occupy their time).
We focus on improving academic performance, motor skills, self-regulation, and daily living tasks (like dressing or feeding) to help students engage in their learning environment.
Kindergarten Readiness includes achieving milestones across many skill areas:
Core strength/postural control
Midline crossing and bilateral coordination
Fine motor strength/grasp patterns
Pre-writing skills
Scissor skills
Visual perceptual skills
Visual motor skills
Self help skills
The following checklist was developed as a tool for parents to observe Kindergarten Readiness skills. This checklist is not meant to be a diagnostic tool, it is meant to serve as a tool to support progress to Kindergarten and guide conversations with the team members supporting your rising Kindergartener.
If more than 4 of these items are not checked off (not yet achieved) by your child reach out to discuss strategies to try at home or an occupational therapy screen.
We have also provided a list of home exercises to improve many of the areas addressed in the checklist. Links are provided where applicable. It is important to note that we are enrolled as Amazon Affiliates and we do receive commission, since we recommend these products so often!
Core Strengthening and Postural Control
Practice Meatball Position: Supine Flexion
Practice Supermans: Prone Extension or belly ball toss
Downward Dog/Yoga
Prone ball pass- works on extensor strength to support posture and balance.
Fine Motor Skills/Scissor Skills
Squeeze game
Squeeze Toys: hand launcher or ball popper
Loop Scissors
Game: Rubys Gem Quest
Scooper tongs: scooper tongs are a great tool to work on the motor pattern required for cutting skills.
Eye Dropper: Using the eye dropper to drop water on a paper towel to reveal a message underneath.
Loop scissors: these scissors “spring open” meaning they are a great building block for scissor skills. The spring open feature reduces fatigue. They allow children to focus on guiding the paper rather than struggling with the mechanics of opening and closing the blades.
Spring open Scissors: these offer a similar benefit to the loop scissors but facilitate efficient finger positioning, with thumb in the small hole and fingers in the larger hole. The scissors require that the child squeeze to close, but the spring will automatically re-open it.
Pre-writing/Handwriting
My First Mazes: mazes facilitate eye hand coordination + precision
Easel: drawing on a vertical surface like an easel, a whiteboard, or paper taped to the wall gives an addd benefit of facilitating wrist extension and shoulder strengthening.
Gross Motor Skills
Animal Walk Dice: promotes variability and options for shoulder strength and core strength. Weight bearing when completing an animal walk also helps develop the arches of the hand.
Stepping Stones: great for balance and motor planning
Two Tunnel options: Collapsible tunnel and lycra tunnel with added benefit of compresive material that can help with sensory regulation.
One of our kiddos practicing his static bear crawl- making a bridge for the cone to pass under.