Shadow puppets
Hold your hands up to the campfire light and shape them into animals that come alive on the rock wall.
What it works on
Finger isolation and fine-motor shaping: each animal needs a different hand position, held steady in the light.
The same control as doing up a button, holding a pencil, or picking a small object off a table. Fine-motor skill is the area most closely linked to independence in daily routines.
Start with whole-hand shapes, then two-finger ones, then two-hand animals. Hold each shape until it comes alive.
Skills it practises
What it records
| Measure | What it is | In the catalog |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | Answers that were right. | Response Accuracy |
| Help needed | How much help each answer took. | Prompt Level Required |
| Hand shape match | How closely a hand shape matched the one shown. | Gesture-Match Overlap |
| Tapping speed | How many times a second the hand opens and closes. | Finger Tap Rate |
| Getting started | Time to start after an instruction ends. | Initiation Latency |
| Changing course | Wrong choices noticed and left before answering. | Correction Rate |
| Steps in order | Multi-step actions done in the right order. | Sequence Accuracy |
What therapists use it for
OT · Fingers
Isolating fingers for buttons, zips and a pencil grip
Shadow puppets asks for one hand shape after another to cast an animal’s shadow, and ends each block with a short round of opening and closing the hand.
RecordedHand shape matchTapping speedHelp needed
