Holiday Gift Ideas by Developmental Therapists
Guest Authored By Stephanie R, DT
Below are some unique gift ideas to help build children’s global development and play skills.
- Cause-and-effect toy
- Model while saying these words: Put in/Take out, Open/Close, Push/Pull
- Give them a turn (practice turn-taking and sharing attention)
- Counting coins (1:1 correspondence)
- Color Identification
- Pretend Play: Pretend to buy items (toys, food, etc.)
- Great toy to expand fine motor coordination
- Counting
- Color Identification: Following directions: “give me COLOR/put in COLOR”
- Taking-Turns
Targets:
- Fine Motor skills, Hand-Eye Coordination, and Problem Solving
- Color, number, and shape identification
- Letters: identification, early spelling
- Categorization and Classification skills: matching and sorting
Includes:
- Puzzles (sequencing), Animals, Food, Weather, Body Parts
- Targets problem-solving/Spatial reasoning skills
- Can practice asking for “help”
- Color and shape recognition
- Fine Motor Skills and hand-eye coordination
- Constructive play: building geometric patterns/figures (pyramid, robot, fish, etc.)
Coogam Wooden Tower Stacking Game
- Following rules: taking turns rolling the dice and fine motor skills to remove the pull of a corresponding color block
- Cause-and-effect play
- Hand & Eye coordination
- Color identification
- Matching