Summer 2025 Resource Hub

Welcome to the Sky High OT Summer 2025 Resource Hub—a dedicated collection of fresh, seasonally focused tools, activities, and strategies crafted to support your child’s growth at home, school, and everywhere in between this summer.

Dive into our specially curated Summer 2025 resources alongside our full archive of past guides, handouts, and tip sheets. Our team has designed everything with families, educators, and caregivers in mind—offering sensory activities, routine supports, and targeted solutions to help your child thrive through the sunny season and beyond.

Explore now and discover the practical, evidence-based resources tailored to your child’s unique developmental journey this summer!

HELLO SUMMER!

Summer is a time filled with excitement, freedom, and fun! It can also be a time of decreased self regulation in kids due to different sensory demands and lack of a consistent routine. 

Here are a few practical tips that can make a big difference in your child’s regulation when heading into the busy summer months.

As you start out on all your summer adventures, know that small steps in helping support your child’s sensory system can make a big difference! With a little bit of planning, everyone can have a fun and sensory smart summer! 

  • I know it is not possible to have the exact same schedule every day of the summer as you head out on vacations and fun summer experiences. However, it is helpful to keep a consistent routine so that your child can predict the events of the day, which will in turn help them with staying regulated. This can be something as simple as waking up around the same time each day, eating breakfast, playing outside at home or at the park, eating lunch, having quiet time/reading time, playing inside, eating dinner, and going to bed around the same time each night. When there needs to be a change in the routine, talk to your child about it in advance! 

  • Engage in a variety of sensory activities throughout the day to help their nervous system stay balanced and organized. Think about all of the sensory systems as you think about activities to do with your child throughout the day. 

    • Oral input of eating a cold and crunchy popsicle or watermelon

    • Tactile input of playing in a tub of moon sand

    • Vestibular input with swinging

    • Proprioceptive input with climbing at the park, running, and jumping 

    • Visual input of watching bubbles

    • Gustatory input with smelling flowers

  • Think about your child’s sensory needs before heading to an event and plan accordingly. If your child gets overwhelmed by loud noises, you will want to grab some headphones or earplugs before heading to a concert or neighborhood picnic. If your child is sensitive to light, make sure to grab some sunglasses or a hat before you head to the park. If your child has trouble sitting still, make sure they get in some movement activities before going to the movie theatre. 

Fine Motor Water Activities

Use a spray bottle to water flowers  spray chalk drawings

This is to help build hand strength and endurance.

Fill a sponge with water, then squeeze it out

 This fine motor skill will build hand strength and endurance. You can work on the smaller muscles of the hand and improve finger strength by cutting the sponge into smaller pieces to squeeze with the fingertips or squeezing water out of pompoms. 

Drawing with q-tips

This is a great way to work the small muscles of the hand and continue to promote use of the skilled digits to help with an age appropriate pencil grasp.

Squeeze a pipette to mix colors in an ice cube tray

This fine motor skill will help improve use of the skilled digits, which is important for pencil grasp development.

Paint with water on the sidewalk

This is to practice appropriate pencil grasp for your child’s age and further develop the hand muscles.

“Fish” for items

You can do this by using small kitchen tongs or ladles to promote hand strength but also precision skills to “catch” the items.

Nature Walks for the Whole Family

In addition to the physical exercise and family time, a nature walk is a great way to explore all of our senses. Sensory activities help our kids, and us, reach an optimal sensory state so that we can more fully participate in daily life activities.

We typically think of the 5 main senses- vision, touch, taste, sound, and smell- when we hear sensory experiences, but there are actually 8 senses! The other senses are the proprioceptive, vestibular, and interoceptive senses, which also play an important role in sensory regulation.

Here are a few activities that you can do to bring awareness to each of these senses: 


    • Complete a scavenger hunt- there are some great printable resources online, but you can also just create your own list of items to look for

    • Take turns playing “I Spy” 

    • Find items of each color of the rainbow 

    • Stop to look at something interesting (i.e. a caterpillar, interesting flower, roots of tree)

    • Take a moment to stop and feel the leaves of a tree, the petals of a flower, the dirt, or take of your shoes and walk into the edge of a creek

    • Stick nature items to contact paper to create a collage or place them in a little bucket to carry with you

    • Create shapes or letters in the dirt with sticks or rocks

    • Don’t forget to bring some water along to quench your thirst!

    • Eat a snack while you walk or find a spot to set up a picnic

    • Be completely silent and just listen to the sound of your footsteps as you walk. Think about how your steps sound different based on the different surface you are walking on (i.e. dirt vs. rock vs. mud) 

    • Listen to birds chirping or any animals that may be rustling in the leaves

    • Find 2 sticks or rocks and tap them together to create a beat or some music

    • Take a moment to close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Talk about what you smell. 

    • Smell leaves and flowers

    • Smell your snack before you eat it

  • This sensory system helps us to know where our bodies are in space. The brain receives signals from the muscles, joints, and tendons to process sensory information. 

    • Climb a few trees

    • Climb onto a large rock and jump down

    • Incorporate different ways to walk through the trail such as skipping, walking on your tiptoes, hopping, or walking sideways

    • Have your child carry a small backpack with a water bottle or notebook in it

  • This sensory system registers changes in the inner ear, specifically changes in head positioning relative to gravity. 

    • Stop on the trail to spin in a circle (fast or slow) and observe nature from a different perspective

    • Climb a tree

    • Roll down a grassy hill 

    • Lay upside down on a large rock

  • This “hidden” sensory system helps us to process how the inside of our bodies feel and register input from our organs like being hungry, thirst, or feeling pain. 

    • Think about your breathing, body temperature, how fast your heart is beating, or how your muscles feel while walking

    • Can you change the way your body feels? Do 5 jumping jacks and see if you can feel your heart beating faster OR take 5 deep breaths and see if you can feel your heart beat slow down. 

    • Are you hungry or thirsty?

Simple Summer Crafts Featuring Ocean Animals

Crafts are a great way to beat the summer heat for a little bit and incorporate several different skills that we frequently work on in occupational therapy. A craft requires motor planning, which is the ability to start the activity, sequence the steps in a logical way, and continue working on the activity to completion. It also requires the ability to sustain focus for the duration of the craft, follow multiple step instructions, and organize materials. Lastly, crafts incorporate a mixture of fine motor skills and visual motor skills that are great to continue working on while your child is out of school. 


Jellyfish

    • Construction/colorful paper

    • Scissors

    • Glue

    • Crayons/Colored Pencils


    1. Draw a semi circle “jellyfish head” and cut it out

    2. Draw straight lines on colorful paper for the tentacles. You can make as many tentacles as you want. If you don’t have colorful paper, you could do this on white paper and use crayons to make colors or designs on the white paper. 

    3. Cut out the tentacles. 

    4. Glue the tentacles to the “jellyfish head.” 

    5. Give the jellyfish a face and a name! 

    6. Swim the jellyfish through the house!

Fish

    • Paper plate (or piece of paper cut into a circle)

    • Construction paper or tissue paper

    • Scissors

    • Glue

    • Crayons/Colored Pencils

    1. Draw lines to create a triangle on the edge of the paper plate and cut the lines. 

    2. Glue the triangle to the back of the paper plate to make the fish tail. 

    3. Cut out squares of construction/tissue paper and glue onto the paper plate to make the fish scales. 

    4. Cut out 2 triangles and glue on the top and bottom of the paper plate for the other fish fins. 

    5. Draw the eye or glue on a googly eye. 

    6. Give your fish a name and have it swim through an obstacle course!

Octopus

    • Colored construction paper

    • Crayons/colored pencils

    • Glue

    • Tape


    1. Draw a rectangle on the construction paper and cut it out.

    2. Fold the rectangle in half lengthwise. This will be the crease so you know where to cut the tentacles. 

    3. Cut straight lines up to the crease to create the tentacles. 

    4. Decorate the tentacles if you want and draw a face for the octopus.

    5. Roll the tentacles around a crayon or pencil to create a curved effect. 

    6. Bring the 2 edges of the rectangle together and glue/tape them. 

    7. Give your octopus a name and have it swim through an obstacle course!