What skills do tong games work on?
These fun games work on important skills such as:
- Separation of the two sides of the hands
- Pencil grasp development
- Opening the hand’s web space
- Pincer and overall hand strength
- Visually precision skills
- Finger dexterity
- Visual-motor skills
Functionally, these skills are used when cutting, forming a mature functional writing grasp, buttoning and unbuttoning clothing, zippering, tying shoelaces, and more.
Game Recommendations:
- Made by Coogam
- Ages: 3 years and up
- Players: 1-2
- The child needs to pick up each bee and place it into the bee hive, matching the color of the bee to the color of the bee hive. This game includes, 7 bees in 7 different colors, 1 wooden beehive, and 1 pair of tweezers.
Getting Ready to Write Gum-ball Grab
- Made by Lakeshore Learning Materials
- Ages: 3 years-6 years
- Players: 1-4
- The child grips the tweezer tongs like a pencil to grab, sort and release gum-balls onto their mats. This game comes with 4 game mats, 4 tweezer tongs, 40 question cards, a game board, and 40 balls in 5 different colors.
- Made by Learning Resources
- Ages: 3 years and older
- Players: 1-4
- This game includes a game board, 40 fruit counters, 2 tweezers, and a spinner. To play, stack all of the fruit onto the fruit stand. On your turn spin the spinner and whichever color is lands on is the color fruit the player takes off of the avalanche board with their tweezers.
- Made by Learning Resources
- Ages: 3 years and older
- Players: 1-4
- This game includes 60 counters (7 fruits in 5 different colors), a plastic pie plate with a removable divider, 3 double-sided sorting cards, and 2 jumbo tweezers. To play, place one of the activity sorting cards in the bottom of the pie and secure the sorting insert tray on top of the card. Be sure the card is lined up with the insert tray. Have children look into the sections of the pie and sort the fruit counters into the correct sections. The players can also pick one fruit out of the pie and match the fruit types in the pie dividers or divide the pie based off of the different fruit colors.
The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game
- Made by Educational Insights
- Ages: 3 years and older
- Players: 2-4
- This game includes a colorful tree-shaped game board, 1 squirrel squeezer, 20 colored acorns, 1 game spinner, and 4 logs. To play, all of the acorns are placed inside the tree and each player has their own log game piece. Each player spins the wheel and if the wheel lands on a color, use the squirrel squeezer to grab a matching acorn and place it in the matching hole in your log. If the player does not spin a color and spins a special label such as a squirrel storm, they have to put all of their acorns back into the tree.
Mini Muffin Match Up Activity Set
- Made by Learning Resources
- Ages: 3 years and older
- Players: 1-4
- This game includes 1 muffin pan, 2 dice, 1 tweezer, 12 double sided sorting circle inserts, and 60 mini muffins. The players can match all of the same colored muffins into specific inserts, roll the dice and follow the directions (i.e. place 3 green muffins into the muffin tray). This game can be played in a variety of ways so the players have a choice.
Frankie’s Food Truck Fiasco Game
- Made by Educational Insights
- Ages: 4 years and older
- Players: 2-4
- This game includes a colorful game board, 1 Frankie squeezer, 20 food game pieces, 4 placemat player boards, and 1 game spinner. To play, the players scatter all of the food dishes into the bottom of the city scene box and each player takes a placemat card and then spins the wheel. The player follows the directions on the spinner to place their order.
- Made by Educational Insights
- Ages: 4 years and older
- Players: 2-4
- This game includes a game board, 1 Shelby squeezer, 40 bones, 4 bowels, and 1 double game spinner. To play, the bones are scattered on the beach in the bottom of the box and each player receives a dog bowl. The players take turns spinning the red spinner and each label on the spinner means something different (i.e. the bone means to spin the blue spinner and use the squeezer to place that number of bones into your bowl).
- Made by Hasbro Gaming
- Ages: 4 years and older (Professional OT recommendation: 6 and older)
- Players: 2-3
- This game includes a bed frame, headboard, footboard, cardboard playing surface, cardboard insert, 3 different colored tongs, and 36 plastic bugs. Each player has a specific colored tong and they need to pick up the colored bugs that match their tong while the bed is vibrating.
- Made by Hasbro Gaming
- Ages: 6 years and older (Professional OT recommendation: 8 years and older)
- Players: 1 +
- This game includes a game board with a patient body part tweezers, light bulb, and a buzzer. To play the players get to be the “doctor” and remove the patient’s “ailments” with the tweezers. The players collect the most money by successfully removing the “ailments”. The game features a surprising and flashing nose when a player hits the sides of the body with the tweezers.
- Made by Blue Orange (Hot Games Cool Planet)
- Ages: 8 years and older
- Players: 2-4
- This game includes 49 microbes, 5 petri dishes, 4 lab tweezers, and 54 challenge cards. To play, the players use their logic, to race the other players to figure out which microbes are missing from the incomplete challenge card and snatch them up fast. The players will find the answer using this key: the superbug must always be a different shape and color than the other three microbes in their dish.
