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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.


Dec 16, 2019

Light-Up Sno-Man

Light-Up Sno-Man - Includes flashing and steady burning lights.

Use the Light-Up Sno-Man kit to build a glow-in-the-dark snowman. Simply build your snowman (snow not included), insert the lights, turn them on and then step back and admire the most unique snowman on the block.

Are you one of the lucky ones that live in an area that gets snow in the winter? If you are, I hope you get out there and play - have snowball fights, make snow furniture and build snowmen. There's lots of different dress-your-own snowman kits out there, but none quite like this one. Light-Up Sno-Man has a string of flashing lights and a string of steady burning lights. And it even has a timer that turns the lights off after two hours to save the batteries.

Back of the box showing the lights.

Included in the box are a plastic hat, a string of flashing lights with a heart and four buttons, and a string of steady burning lights with a carrot and two blue eyes. The hat is 8 7/8" in diameter at the widest part. The carrot is approximately 9" long with the carrot itself being about 5 3/4" and the rest being the peg part that you push into the snow. The on/off buttons are on the side of the nose and the heart. If the lights are not turned off via the buttons, they will automatically go off after two hours. Requires 6 AAA batteries. Not included. 


If you are interested in purchasing this item or just want more information, click on the image below.


Dec 15, 2019

Bounce-Off Games

Bounce-Off comes in many versions.

Bounce-Off games are eye-hand coordination fun. I have blogged about several and each one is unique and offers a different challenge(s). There are several I don't own at this point so if you like them, check Amazon for more versions.

Bounce-Off Original - Bounce the balls onto a hard surface so that they will jump up and land in the tray in a pattern that matches a challenge card.

Bounce-Off Party - Geared toward group play, includes six grids for team competition.

Bounce-Off Blow-Out - Include twice as many balls as the original, twice as many ball colors and game mats for 7 different games.

Bounce-Off Rock & Rollz  - The game base rocks and the balls will roll while you try to bounce in balls to match a pattern card.