Our Therapeutic Crafts

Today we worked on some crafts for me to try with my clients, that can also benefit the girls, their classrooms and several of my clients. (We plan to make a few for them to gift to their teachers for classroom use after Spring Break).

We made stress balls...with play doh and balloons.  These can be used to squeeze or play with when stressed or angry. These were somewhat challenging to make, but well worth it. Open balloon as wide as possible, roll out (into a long worm shape) one regular sized jar/tub of play doh, in several pieces--shove into balloon.  Then roll around and push out the air bubbles, the tie.

And, we made glitter calming jars. These can be used when someone is upset, angry, sad, frustrated, or stressed.  Head somewhere alone and quiet, like your bedroom, shake it up, and watch the glitter swirl and fall.  When all settled, hopefully some of the anxiety or frustration will have passed.  To make these, we used peanut butter jars--plastic so they won't break and shatter and make a huge mess.  Put in two tubes of glitter glue, 1 tube of glitter, 2-3 drops of food coloring, and fill with HOT water.  Make sure to seal the top good (we used super glue) and shake, shake, shake, to get the glue to dissolve.

At rest:

All shook up:

We had a lot of fun making these! Thanks, Pinterest!!!