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Children learn through play. As an occupational therapist who works with children and youth, I use games and toys almost every day to help develop important cognitive, visual perceptual, motor, sensory, social, play and leisure skills. While many different types of activities can be used in therapy, this blog focuses on off-the-shelf games and toys that are accessible to most. Whether you are a therapist, parent, teacher, or a game lover like me, I hope you discover something useful while you are here. Learn a different way to play a game you already own or discover a new game for your next family game night. Either way, just go play. It's good for you!

The OT Magazine named The Playful Otter one of the Top 5 Pediatric OT Blogs.


Jun 24, 2016

Wok and Roll

Wok and Roll - Use the tongs to pick up the bouncing food
The goal of Wok and Roll is to pick up the small food pieces with the tweezers (chopstick) and place them into the bowls. If your child is bothered by noise, this is not the game for you. The wok not only jiggles, but it has a small ball on the bottom that allows it to move around on the table top. The 48 small, hard plastic food pieces bounce around in the bowl and make quite a racket. Putting it on the carpet reduced the noise but slowed the movement way down. With the pieces bouncing and the wok moving, it can be a challenge to get a hold of the pieces, but doable. The food pieces are squares, circles, and oval shapes. The tongs have a small circular indent on each side on the inside to aid in picking up the small circles. The four colors of the bowls match the food pieces colors.

Object:
Be the first person to collect all your food from the wok.

Set up:
Place the wok in the middle of the players. Place all the food pieces in the wok. Give each player a bowl and a matching color chop sticks. If there are fewer than four players, just put in the food that matches the color for each player playing.

Play:
Turn on the wok. All players play at the same time, trying to extract all the food pieces that match their bowl color. First one done wins the game.

NOTE: The pieces are small and may look like candy to some. Monitor for safety. 

If you would like to see a list of games with tweezers and tongs, click here.

Try this:
  • Leave the movement off to reduce noise or frustration (much easier game without motion).
  • Play alone and sort pieces into 4 colored bowls.
  • Sort by shape instead of color.
  • Sort by the difficulty of picking up the shapes, easiest first.
  • Pick up several pieces by hand, one at a time, and squirrel them in the palm without dropping while putting the game away. Throw them into the box by handfuls.
  • Forget the chop sticks. Sort using the fingers from the big bowl to the small colored bowls.
  • Line the four colored bowls in front of the individual and place all the pieces into the wok (leave off). Ask the individual to pick up several pieces at a time and bring them to the fingertips, one at a time, to sort and drop them into the matching color bowls.
  • Work on eye-hand coordination, fine motor precision, manual dexterity, visual discrimination, tool use, in-hand manipulation, pincer grasp, palmar arches, figure ground, socialization skills, executive functioning skills, process skills, play and leisure exploration and participation
In the box: Moving wok, 4 chopsticks, 48 food pieces
 
If you are interested in purchasing this item or just want more information, click on the link below.

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