Parent Resources

It’s How We Provide A Safety-Net For All Students

Parent Resources

As parents, you have intimate knowledge of your child’s individual strengths and weaknesses. While school-based therapy addresses the education-related issues that children grapple with every day, children spend most of their lives outside of the school environment. This can leave parents feeling isolated in addressing many functional and behavioral challenges that arrive at home or other non-school situations. This website is designed to empower you to support your child as they work toward both their academic goals and the functional, real-life skills they need at home.

Activities and Strategies

Occupational Therapy

At Pediatric Therapeutic Services (PTS), we strive to ensure every student gets the appropriate level of care and services. We put together the resources on this page for parents like you to continue interventions at home. Here, you will find a wide variety of activities you can do with your child at home.

When you click on a link, a PDF will automatically download for easy access and printing. Use these adaptable Occupational Therapy (OT) resources and activities at home to help your child continue to achieve their goals.

OT Activities for Parents of Elementary Students: Help Your Child Develop Vital Skills, Improve Mobility, And More

If you have a child in elementary school, they are likely in the process of developing one or more of the following skills:

Postural control
Visual perceptual
Visual motor skills
Manual dexterity/grasp

By doing the activities below with your child, you can help them increase physical strength, improve both mobility and function, decrease or manage pain, and do things like learn how to hold a pencil, practice cutting with scissors, and develop emotional regulation skills.

Articulation Disorders

25 Easy Ways to Improve Executive Functioning Skills

A to Z OT Skill Builders
Activities and Exercises for Home from your Occupational Therapist
Activities to Encourage Bilateral Coordination
Common Household Items for Virtual OT and PT
Cutting Ideas
Heavy Work Activities at Home
Home Strategies Pencil Grips
Home Strategies Proprioceptive Activites
DIY Obstacle Course
Household Activities for Bilateral Coordination
Kids Sensory Activities – Kitchen
Kids Sensory Activities – Quick
Occupational Therapy Strategies for Home
OT Summertime Ideas for Improving Hand Skills and Helping your Child to Coordinate Both Sides of the Body
Proprioceptive Activities
Sensory Activities
Sensory Calming Activities
Sensory Ideas for Home

Summer Activities for Fine and Visual Motor Skills
Turning Games into Handwriting Practice
Occupational Therapy – Home Activities
Top 10 Activities for Fine Motor and Upper Body Strengthening

OT Activities for Parents of Secondary Students: Help Your Child Get Organized, Participate More Fully in the Classroom, & More

For high school students, the sheer volume of information that is provided throughout the school year can be hard to capture and organize. Effective learning behaviors, proper preparation, and strong organizational skills are key to students’ success at the middle and high school levels.

These resources will provide you with some helpful suggestions to help get your secondary student on track organizationally, so they can be a more competent in-class participant when it comes to taking notes, preparing for assignments, and studying for exams. If you have a middle or high school student in need of extra support, check out the resources below:

Taking Notes in Class
Executive Function Fact Sheet
25 Easy Ways to Improve Executive Functioning Skills

General OT Activities: Turn Everyday Experiences into Learning Opportunities

In addition to the activities for elementary and secondary students that we’ve compiled for you, use the following activities to add structure to everyday experiences—turning them into learning opportunities. Whether it be following a recipe together or completing extra writing activities over the summer, you can help your child practice key skills, develop their executive functioning, and more.

Activities to Enrich Visual Motor Development
Assignment Checklist
Easy Visual Recipes Cookbook
Summer OT Activities for Secondary Students

Start Using These OT Activities with Your Child to Support Their Development & Help Them Succeed

By doing these activities with your child at home, you can help them build up their confidence, achieve their OT goals more quickly, and feel more comfortable in their physical environment both at home and in school. When you integrate OT activities into daily life, you play a vital part in continuing your child’s education beyond the classroom.

Try the at-home activities that fit the needs and goals of your child today!

Physical Therapy

PT ACTIVITIES

Hand and Elbow Strengthening
Head and Neck Strengthening
Hip Strengthening Exercises (1)
Knee Strengthening Exercises
Trunk Exercises for Improved Posture & Control

ELEMENTARY PT ACTIVITIES

Common Household Items for Virtual OT and PT
Gross Motor Outdoor Fun
Gross Motor Skills
Gross Motor Improving Coordination
Gross Motor Suggested Toys and Activites

Speech

SPEECH ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGIES

Task Planner
ACC Strategies and Activities

ELEMENTARY SPEECH ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGIES

Incorporating strategies that stimulate language into a student’s daily routine, both at school and at home, can significantly improve their ability to express themselves verbally and participate with their peers. These resources will provide you with easy-to-implement ideas for getting your student to use more complex sentences and build their vocabulary. Just asking questions like, “Tell me the best thing that happened today!” vs. “How was your day?” will often generate a better, more expressive response than the proverbial, “Fine.” Playing word games can be a fun way to pass the time on a long car or bus ride, and students will add new words to their repertoire.

Common Household Items for Virtual Speech Therapy
Speech Language Strategies for Home

Summer Activities That Build Language Skills
Word Games
Work on Speech and Language in the Car
Lower Elementary Summer Activities
Middle Elementary Summer Activities
Upper Elementary Summer Activities
Early Speech and Language Strategies at Home

SECONDARY SPEECH ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGIES

Secondary Home Activities
Everyday Language for Secondary Students
Middle School Summer Activities

Behavior

BEHAVIOR HOME ACTIVITIES

Behavior Think Sheet
Behavior Monitoring Chart
Create Your Own Break Cards
Token Board

ELEMENTARY BEHAVIOR HOME ACTIVITIES

We all know that the school day doesn’t end when your child gets off the bus. There’s homework, activities and family time to fit in after a long day. Many kids find they can keep it together during the school day but have trouble following directions and staying on task to complete homework or chores once they get home. The good news is that the same positive behavioral supports and strategies that teachers use at school can be applied at home, bringing some much needed consistency and peace for your family. These resources are designed to teach you about why certain behaviors increase or decrease over time and how you can respond in a way that helps move things in a positive direction.

Resources and Links

Occupational Therapy

SECONDARY OT RESOURCES AND LINKS

Sensory Integration in Teens
Teenagers and Sensory Processing Disorder: The Special Challenges
Adaptations for Writing: Text to Speech
Seating Tips
Strategies for Homework & Assignments Organization
Strategies for Improving Handwriting
Strategies for Material & Paperwork Organization
Strategies for Promoting Attention and Focus
Tips for Locker Organization
Tips to Improve Focus
Vocational Skills to Practice Secondary Education
Adolescents and Executive Function Skills
Homework Tips for Teens
Organizing School Materials
Teens and Sensory Organization
Teen SPD Symptoms

Physical Therapy

ELEMENTARY PT RESOURCES AND LINKS

Students who struggle with gross motor skills can benefit from the strategies and activities that PT’s recommend, addressing some of their core functional deficits. Whether it’s strengthening, balance or coordination, practice makes perfect, so incorporating these PT activities into your students’ daily routine will help them achieve lasting results faster. Incorporating things like “heavy work” activities doesn’t just build strength, it can help students self-regulate (or calm down) helping them focus and improving behavior.

Heavy Work Activities for Kids
www.sportsrec.com
PTS Clinician Resources
Gross Motor Skills

SECONDARY PT RESOURCES AND LINKS

Teen and Tween Health

Speech

SPEECH RESOURCES AND LINKS

Articulation Disorders
American Speech-Language Hearing Association
Navigating Speech and Language services in schools
Typical Communication Development
Home practice guide for parents during COVID-19
Tips for bilingual and ELL students during COVID-19
AAC Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Stuttering Resource
Pragmatic Language Disorder
8 Tips for Teachers with Students who Stutter

ELEMENTARY SPEECH RESOURCES AND LINKS

Expressive and receptive language involves a whole collection of skills, such as reading body language, active listening, vocabulary, and learning syntax so that you can express yourself clearly. These helpful websites will give you some great tools that make it quick and easy to create vocabulary lists, word games and language stimulation activities for your students. We have also included some state of the art programs for helping your student build their expressive and receptive language abilities by challenging their brain.

Work on Speech and Language While Reading
Speech and Language
Top Ten Links for Parents of Students with Dyslexia
www.eyecanlearn.com
www.speechlanguageneighborhood.com
www.talkingfingers.com
www.spellingcity.com
www.lumosity.com
www.speechbooks.com
Verb Tense Practice
www.songsforteaching.com/index.html
100 Web Tools for Learning with a Disability

SECONDARY SPEECH RESOURCES AND LINKS

Incorporating strategies that stimulate language into a student’s daily routine, both at school and at home, can significantly improve their ability to express themselves verbally and participate with their peers. These resources will provide you with easy-to-implement ideas for getting your student to use more complex sentences and build their vocabulary. Just asking questions like, “Tell me the best thing that happened today!” vs. “How was your day?” will often generate a better more expressive response than the proverbial “Fine.” Playing word games can be a fun way to pass the time on a long car or bus ride, and students will add new words to their repertoire.

Middle School Speech and Language Resources

Behavior

BEHAVIOR RESOURCES

Visual Schedules and Social Stories Social Story Creator
Social Stories and Video Modeling Apps
Resources for Special Educators, Therapists and Families
Special Needs for Special Kids

ELEMENTARY BEHAVIOR RESOURCES

After a long day at school, it can be a challenge for children to get settled down and ready to do homework or test preparation. Like all of us, children can procrastinate when it comes to completing assignments or getting started on studying for an exam. Every parent knows that nagging and reminding only get us so far! These resources can help you apply basic behavior management principals at home to help your child focus and motivate them to demonstrate good learning behaviors.
Autism and Sleep: Empowering Children with ASD for Better Sleep
How to be an Effective Member of your Child’s IEP Team
Parenting Your Child To Have Successful Field Trips
Ready! Set! Go! to Kindergarten
Resources for Families of Children with Special Needs
Understanding an Education Based Model
Helping your Child with Homework
Help your Child Beat Procrastination
Parent Tips – Shopping Survival Guide

SECONDARY BEHAVIOR RESOURCES AND LINKS

Advice for Parenting Teens
Going to College
Organizational Skills for Students with Learning Disabilities: The Digital Master Filing System
Teaching Time Management to Students with Learning Disabilities

Parent Resources

It’s How We Provide A Safety-Net For All Students