A Trip to the Pumpkin Patch is a perfect beginning to the Halloween Season – A teli occupational therapist shares some fun activities before the trip to work on your child’s fine motor skills!
Try these fun activities when heading to the Pumpkin Patch!
by Alex Beschorner, Occupational Therapist
This time of year, many families are heading to local farms and pumpkin patches for some fall fun!
Prior to your trip, coloring a fall-themed picture with your child is a great way to work on fine motor skills. Here are a few fun coloring pages:
Once you are at the pumpkin patch, there are many opportunities to develop body awareness and to work on visual scanning. Climbing over and around the pumpkins requires use of upper body strength, visual scanning, and can also be great for developing body awareness through proprioceptive and vestibular input.
Finding your way through the corn maze with you kiddo is a great way to work on visual memory and spatial awareness, as you use your sense of direction and try to remember all those twists and turns!
Lastly, if your child finds “heavy work” (pushing and pulling of heavy objects) to be calming, let him or her help pull the wagon with those nice and heavy newly picked pumpkins.
