5 Easy Ways to Prevent the Summer Slide

June 27, 2026UncategorizedTherapro

Summer break is a time for relaxation, outdoor adventures, and family fun. However, for many children, it can also lead to a loss of important academic and developmental skills. This decline, often called the summer slide, can affect everything from reading and writing abilities to motor coordination and attention. The good news is that it doesn’t take hours of structured learning to prevent the summer slide. Small, engaging activities woven into everyday routines can help children maintain and even strengthen essential skills throughout the summer months.

Here are five easy ways to prevent the summer slide while keeping learning fun and meaningful.

1. Keep Hands Busy with Fine Motor Activities

Fine motor skills are the foundation for handwriting, self-care tasks, and classroom success. Summer is the perfect time to strengthen hand muscles through play-based activities.

Encourage children to use tweezers, clay, lacing activities, craft projects, and building toys. Therapro offers a wide variety of Fine Motor Activities designed to build dexterity, hand strength, bilateral coordination, and finger control while keeping children engaged.

Explore Fine Motor Activities

2. Make Reading Part of the Daily Routine

Reading skills can decline quickly during long breaks from school. Even 15–20 minutes of daily reading can help maintain vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.

Allow children to choose books that match their interests and reading levels. Reading together, listening to audiobooks, and discussing stories can further strengthen language and literacy skills. Consistent exposure to print helps prevent the summer slide and supports academic success when school resumes.

Explore Tools for Reading Development

3. Incorporate Movement Breaks Throughout the Day

Movement supports attention, self-regulation, motor planning, and overall physical health. Children who stay active during the summer are often better prepared to return to structured classroom routines in the fall.

Simple activities such as obstacle courses, scooter board games, yoga, and outdoor play can provide valuable sensory and motor experiences. Therapro’s collection of Movement Activities offers fun ways to encourage active learning while developing balance, coordination, and body awareness.

Explore Movement Activities

4. Strengthen Visual Motor Skills Through Play

Visual motor skills help children coordinate what they see with how they move. These skills are essential for handwriting, cutting, sports participation, and many classroom tasks.

Games involving mazes, puzzles, target activities, tracing, and building challenges help develop visual motor integration. Many movement-based games also provide opportunities to strengthen visual tracking, eye-hand coordination, and spatial awareness.

By incorporating visual motor activities into everyday play, families can help prevent the summer slide while supporting readiness for academic tasks.

5. Turn Everyday Activities into Learning Opportunities

Learning doesn’t have to happen at a desk. Cooking, gardening, grocery shopping, and family game nights all provide opportunities to practice reading, math, problem-solving, communication, and motor skills.

Encourage children to read recipes, make shopping lists, measure ingredients, organize supplies, or help plan family outings. These real-world experiences build confidence and reinforce important developmental skills in a natural and meaningful way.

Keep Skills Strong All Summer Long

Summer learning doesn’t need to be complicated. A few minutes each day of purposeful play, reading, movement, and hands-on activities can make a significant difference. By taking simple steps to prevent the summer slide, families and therapists can help children maintain critical skills, build confidence, and return to school ready to learn.

Looking for more ideas? Visit the Therapro blog for additional resources and explore our collections of Fine Motor Activities and Movement Activities to support learning and development all year long.

Build Early Scissor Skills for School Success

June 24, 2026School-Based Practice, Therapist Resourcesclassroom strategies, occupational therapy (OT) tools, parent resources, scissors, therapist resourcesTherapro

Build Strong Foundations with Early Scissor Practice

Early scissor skills development plays an important role in preparing children for success in preschool and kindergarten. Before students can confidently complete classroom projects, crafts, or written assignments, they need the fine motor strength, bilateral coordination, and visual-motor integration required to safely and effectively use scissors. With consistent practice and the right tools, children can build these essential skills while gaining confidence and independence.

For some learners, however, mastering the opening and closing motion of scissors can be a challenge. Children with developmental delays, motor planning difficulties, tremors, or perceptual-motor challenges often need additional support before they are ready to use conventional scissors independently.

Why Scissor Skills Matter

Learning to cut is much more than an arts and crafts activity. Cutting activities help develop:

Hand strength and endurance
Bilateral coordination between both hands
Visual-motor integration
Hand-eye coordination
Motor planning
Precision and control for handwriting readiness

Practicing these foundational skills can make classroom tasks less frustrating while promoting greater participation and independence.

A Teaching Tool Designed for Success

The Peta Dual Control Teaching Scissors are uniquely designed to allow an occupational therapist, teacher, or parent to guide the cutting motion while the child actively participates. Although the double loops may appear unusual at first glance, they serve an important purpose.

The double-loop design allows both the adult and the child to hold the scissors simultaneously, completing the cutting activity together. Appropriate force, hand placement, and movement can be modeled while the child experiences the correct motor pattern firsthand. Over time, repeated practice helps build muscle memory, so assistance can gradually be reduced as confidence and control improve.

These scissors are especially beneficial for children who can grasp traditional scissors but struggle with the opening and closing motion required for successful cutting.

Additional Benefits for Diverse Learners

The Peta Dual Control Teaching Scissors can also support children who have difficulty aligning the blades on a cutting line due to tremors or perceptual-motor challenges. Their thoughtful design includes:

A wide finger contact area for improved comfort and control
Loop positioning that allows therapists and teachers to assist without overstretching their hands
Right-handed (blue handle) and left-handed (green handle) versions to meet individual needs

Developed in close consultation with occupational therapists and tested across a variety of learning environments and age groups, these scissors have proven effective in promoting motor skills while reinforcing correct movement patterns.

Helping Children Build Independence

As children become more proficient, adult guidance can be slowly faded until they are confidently cutting on their own. This gradual release supports successful early scissor skills development while reducing frustration and encouraging positive learning experiences.

Whether you’re an occupational therapist working on fine motor goals or a parent preparing your child for school, the Dual Control Teaching Scissors provide an effective bridge between assisted learning and independent cutting.

Explore all Teaching Scissors available at Therapro and help children strengthen fine motor skills and gain confidence with every snip. For additional cutting tools and resources, visit Therapro’s Scissors category to find solutions for a variety of developmental needs.

Sensory Diet Activities with Sensational Fun Card Deck

June 14, 2026Calming Tools, Sensory Regulation, Therapist Resourcesoccupational therapy (OT) tools, parent resources, product spotlight, sensory strategies, therapist resourcesTherapro

Occupational therapists continuously seek structured yet flexible tools to support individualized sensory interventions that can be embedded into sensory diets across home, school, and clinical environments. The Sensational Fun Card Deck from Therapro offers a practical, ready-to-use system designed to simplify sensory planning while promoting engagement, regulation, and functional participation.

This resource is especially valuable when developing or refining sensory diets for students who benefit from movement, proprioceptive input, and structured sensory breaks. Each card provides clear, actionable activity ideas that can be easily implemented, making them ideal for classroom transitions, therapy sessions, or home carryover programs.

Why Occupational Therapists Use the Sensational Fun Card Deck

The Sensational Fun Card Deck supports clinical reasoning by offering a structured way to incorporate sensory input into daily routines. Rather than reinventing activities, therapists can quickly select targeted interventions aligned with sensory needs, such as:

Proprioceptive input for regulation
Vestibular activities for alertness and focus
Tactile exploration for sensory modulation
Heavy work strategies for sustained attention

Its versatility makes it especially useful for therapists managing large caseloads or supporting educators with limited time for preparation.

Free Sample Activities: Clinical Application in Action

To support implementation, Therapro provides free sample activities that demonstrate how the Sensational Fun Card Deck can be used immediately in therapy and classroom settings.

Fancy Banquet

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Fancy Banquet Sample

The Fancy Banquet activity is particularly effective for occupational therapists addressing feeding challenges, including profiles consistent with Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) or significant food selectivity driven by sensory processing differences.

The structured “special meal” format creates a predictable, socially supported environment that reduces pressure while encouraging graded exposure to unfamiliar foods. This aligns with sensory-based feeding intervention approaches that prioritize emotional safety, predictability, and repeated non-threatening exposure.

Rather than focusing on immediate intake, the activity supports foundational feeding goals such as comfort, curiosity, and tolerance of novelty. Children who demonstrate resistance to mixed textures, visual complexity, or unfamiliar food smells often benefit from this kind of structured, low-demand exposure.

Therapists may observe increased engagement when the experience is framed as a social or celebratory event rather than a direct feeding task. This shift in context can significantly reduce anxiety associated with mealtime expectations.

Clinical benefits include:

Low-pressure exposure to new or non-preferred foods
Gradual sensory exploration (visual, olfactory, tactile)
Increased tolerance for food-related novelty
Opportunity for social modeling during shared meals

When paired with visual supports, sensory regulation strategies, and choice-based participation, Fancy Banquet can serve as a meaningful bridge toward improved feeding flexibility over time.

Knock First

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Knock First Sample

Knock First is a highly functional sensory-based activity that supports tactile processing, body awareness, and motor planning while strengthening core executive functioning skills such as impulse control, initiation, and social awareness. It provides a structured opportunity for children to practice respecting personal space, understanding boundaries, and regulating their own entry into shared environments.

Children often benefit from clear, consistent frameworks for understanding “when and how” to interact with others. Knock First builds this foundation by pairing a predictable routine with meaningful sensory-motor engagement. The repeated action of approaching, pausing, knocking, and waiting reinforces sequencing, timing, and self-regulation.

From a sensory integration perspective, the activity naturally incorporates tactile feedback, proprioceptive input, and motor planning demands, making it especially effective for children who benefit from structured movement with a clear purpose. The physical act of knocking, waiting, and receiving a response supports graded control of force, rhythm, and timing.

Children also benefit from opportunities to define and understand personal and shared space. Much like creating a visual or physical representation of one’s own body in space, Knock First helps children internalize the idea that their body occupies space and that others do as well. This awareness is foundational for safe and successful participation in school, home, and community environments.

Key clinical benefits include:

Strengthening tactile awareness through door/contact interaction
Supporting body awareness and spatial understanding
Enhancing motor planning and sequencing (approach → pause → knock → wait)
Improving impulse control and social timing
Reinforcing respect for personal boundaries and shared spaces

For children who struggle with impulsivity or difficulty recognizing social boundaries, repeated practice within a structured routine helps translate abstract social rules into embodied, functional experience.

When embedded into daily routines, Knock First becomes more than a behavioral cue—it becomes a consistent motor-sensory strategy for building self-regulation and environmental awareness across settings.

Looking for more free samples? Check out the Goop and Trail Mix Sample. These multisensory activities combine tactile exploration with sequencing and choice-making. They are highly effective for children who require graded tactile input to increase tolerance and engagement in messy play tasks.

Download sample:
Goop and Trail Mix Sample

Clinical Benefits in Sensory Diet Planning

When integrated into sensory diet programming, the Sensational Fun Card Deck enhances consistency across environments. Therapists can use it to:

Standardize sensory break routines across teams
Support IEP goal alignment related to regulation and attention
Provide caregivers with accessible home programming
Reduce planning time while maintaining therapeutic intent