Toddlers love snacks. OTs love refining a child’s grasp. Mash the two together and you get….the Ziploc snack bag. Try serving a tiny portion of your child’s fave crunchy snack in a small bag that has a zipper closure and watch their fingertip control take off!
Here are the important points to make this safe and successful:
- Use the smallest zipper bag you can find. If it is large enough to cover their face or head, it is unsafe.
- Place only a few pieces of the snack inside. Why? If I gave you one goldfish cracker you would use your fingertips to take it out. If I gave you 20, you would reach in and pull out a fistful. So will your child.
- Always offer more snack servings,since each serving size is so small. You will seem like the most generous person they know.
- Close the bag after filling it. Children actually enjoy the experience of mastering the little zipper. It is a little moment of control in a day where everyone is telling them when to go potty, when to nap, and when to get in the carseat. This is a moment of control!
