For this month’s Therapy Tune-Up, we are introducing a stress management challenge! It is easy to participate and easy to make progress.

In addition to creating a fun and patriotic decoration for your home, this DIY wreath helps strengthen your coordination and motor planning skills. The actions in this craft also focus on bilateral integration, fine motor skills, and finger and hand strengthening.

Practicing this craft develops your fine motor skills, visual motor skills, and hand eye coordination as you add the color to the shirt.

Practicing water aerobics is a great way to get exercise at any age. Walking from side to side creates resistance and helps strengthen muscles and joints.

The Category Flipbook Game is a fun speech therapy activity that focuses on building vocabulary, word retrieval, and categorization skills.

Engage in building a sensory garden to combine occupational therapy concepts, sensory stimulation, and physical movement. Start with designing, creating, and maintaining a sensory garden to gain the benefits of its cognitive and physical engagement.

The practice of putting a jigsaw puzzle together can help you reduce stress and unwind while spending time alone or with family or friends. Doing puzzles helps develop fine motor skills, visual perceptual skills, visual spatial processing, and organization. This practice can improve brain function, uses both sides of your brain, and provides a short term memory boost.

For this month’s Therapy Tune-Up, we are introducing a health and wellness challenge! It is easy to participate and easy to make progress.

After learning the steps to create your paper art, origami can become a meditative activity to aid in developing your mindfulness practice. You can use any kind of paper in any color or pattern.

Any practice or activity can be improved with increased mindfulness. Helping your mind and body engage eating with more curiosity can help reduce cravings and establish healthier eating habits.

Learning to maintain health as a part of your every day routine is very important to being at a young age, but applies to us all at any age throughout our lifetime. Engaging in physical activity not only keeps your body healthier by keeping it active, moving, and strong, but it also strengthens our mental health at the same time.

Use household ingredients to make this therapeutic tool for stress relief and strengthening. Many individuals use stress balls as a tool for relief. Putty can be made at home as an alternative for stress relief or other uses such as easing arthritic pain.

Write the story of your life and use the practice of writing for self-affirmation. Writing your life story can have a positive effect on your mental health as well as cognitive functioning. Particularly when focusing on difficult events, writing can help you release feelings of tension while allowing your mind to make sense of chaotic experiences.

Start a new therapeutic hobby and and enjoy the meditative practice of macrame! Practicing macrame utilizes fine motor skills through finger and hand strengthening. Work on improving visual motor skills, hand eye coordination, executive function with sequencing, and stamina.

Learn how to reduce pain from arthritis through visualization and use your mind to help you overcome difficulties. Pain can release stress hormones throughout your body which can cause additional damage. Guided imagery is a way to use a meditative practice to stop your body from releasing stress hormones.

This craft uses fine motor skills to cut, trace and paint if you choose. Work on visual motor skills with tracing and cutting with accuracy, along with hand strength and dexterity to cut and assemble the house. We use our executive functions when following steps of sequencing correctly as well.

Planting a seed and tending to its growth uses fine motor skills with pinching, pouring, and scooping the seeds and dirt. Work on development of language skills to describe the items. This activity includes sensory exploration through different textures, socials skills to communicate and share (if doing with another person). Utilize executive functions through sequencing each step in the correct order.

Nature provides a sensory experience with visual, gross motor, and auditory input. Through the different sights, sounds and textures, balance and coordination through walking on uneven terrain, linguistic skills to name animals or plants that are seen during your walk, this experience has so many therapeutic benefits for all ages.

Some individuals with multiple sclerosis may find it difficult to exercise. Swimming is a great option due to its low impact on your joints, less intense resistance for muscles, and the ease of movement from your body’s buoyancy in water.

Find links between physical and emotional pain, decrease stress, anxiety, or pain, and sleep better with this simple meditation to scan your body each day. Use the habit tracker to keep track of your progress each day you meditate.