A short YouTube video by Mary Kostka (Ohana OT) demonstrating practical calming activities and sensory tools for children to support self-regulation. Mary describes hands-on activities (Bubble Mountain, blowing bubbles), sensory materials (kinetic sand), environmental tools (disco/light projectors, dimming lights, noise-reduction headphones), and wearable/weighted options (weighted vest), and offers encouraging implementation tips for caregivers.
Questions this video answers
About 20 minutes at a time.
About $10.
Foreign.
Aloha magnificent moms and dads. Mary Koska here with Ohana ot. In this video, I'm going to go over some of our favorite calming activities for kids. And the first one is Bubble Mountain. So in Bubble Mountain, you just get a bowl and put about this much water and squirt of soap, any kind of soap, hand soap, dish soap. We usually connect two straws together so that your face doesn't end up in the bubbles. So I'm going to show what this looks like. So as you can see, it can be a lot of fun. You can get the bubbles really big. You can have multiple kids doing this at one time. It's a great thing to do right before dinner. Clean up the table, clean up your hands. Anytime you can do an activity that include some deep breathing, it's going to help calm the child. So it really only takes a few breaths. One of my favorite things just to have with me at all times, you can just keep them in a ziploc bag in your purse. Is just a thing of regular bubbles. If a child is having a meltdown and crying, this has been one of the best ways that I've been able to pull them out of it or even if they're in a shutdown. Because there's something just naturally attractive about bubbles that just your brain is wired to alert to something new and different. And so it catches your attention. And then if you can get them to even just take a few breaths and the calming is more on the exhale, if they can do a nice long one, they're going to be able to calm down a little bit. We also love these little disco lights and they're pretty inexpensive. They're usually about $10 and they will just have slow moving lights all around the ceiling. They're fun to do with Bubble Mountain too. It's just really calming to watch these lights just gradually moving around the room. And just even just lowering the lights in a room can be really helpful. There's all kinds of different things that show, you know, stars up on the ceiling or any of those kind of light projection types. Things are very, very useful and calming for kids. And these things are good to do before bedtime as well. Some other really favorite calming activities. I really love kinetic sand and kinetic sand. One thing that's just really great about kinetic sand is that it just is really relaxing. It just kind of has this slow movement of almost looks like little snowflakes as it opens up. And for sensory kids, what's nice is it doesn't really Stick to the hands so they don't mind it so much. But then they get all the sensory input that you get from squeezing it and just the tactile input and it just kind of falls apart like this. And the other thing that I really, really love about kinetic sand is that it vacuums up, it's easy to clean. That's really helpful. Look at my big mess down there on the floor. Noise reduction headphones are a real important thing for calming for kids because if they have, most of them do have auditory sensitivity and when they do, this can just really help calm their nerves immediately. And I can remember at a swim meet, an indoor swim meet that had just so much noise, two, three hundred people yelling and screaming in giant tin can. And I was just having to keep going outside to take a little break from the sound and I felt like I was going to miss something. And so I went to my clinic and I went and I grabbed my headphones just to see if that would help. And so I put them on. And it was so interesting to me, the immediate relaxation response I had in as soon as I put them on just to cut out all that high pitched sound. That was really hard. And I could still hear the event number. It just made me really appreciate what it feels like to the kids to actually be able to tone down all that sound, all that extra peripheral sound. So noise reduction headphones are great. Love those. And of course, any kind of fidgety type of toy is really helpful. A lot of kids really enjoy having weight on them, whether it's a weighted blanket, which I talk about in another video. But this is just a vest that a lot of pockets that you can put weight in, put little bags of rice in it or metal weights, anything that you want. And if you do use a weighted vest for calming, you really only want to do it for 20 minutes at a time. And I don't use them for kids that have a weak core because you wouldn't want to put weight on a weak core weakness. So I don't use these as much. But for the kids that they work with, they really work great. So that's a few of our favorite calming activities.
Hi again.
I am so glad that you took.
The time to watch this video and I'm really proud of you because I know you're busy and it takes time to sit down and focus and learn something new and just really proud of you. Give yourself a pat on the back. You're gonna see this after each video. Cause I just wanna reinforce you and just let you know, I'm proud of you. And change isn't easy. Some of these things, you hear the idea and then implementing it. We're all habitual, so it's not always easy to do.
