![]() You also need to have flexion at the MP joint and the IP joint of the thumb. When you move the plunger down, one needs to stabilize the fine motor tool at the base of the thumb. In order to press the red plunger down on a pickle picker, you need to hold the tube steady. Knowing the difference between the force required and the resulting heavy work input against the thumb offers proprioceptive input through the thumb.įacilitate thumb IP joint flexion by pressing the plunger of a pickle grabber. To grab and pick up smaller items like mini craft pom poms or mine erasers, less force is required to push the prongs open. This is necessary for grabbing larger items such as extra large craft pom poms. You can grade this task and require more force to push the plunger all the way to the bottom of the tube in order to open the grabber’s tongs all the way open. This resistance offers proprioceptive input that alerts the muscles of how much pressure is needed to grab objects. When you press down on the plunger of the pickle picker, the spring inside the device pushes back against the thumb. Just some of the ways that a pickle picker builds skills: Occupational therapy providers LOVE the pickle grabber as a therapy tool! There are may reasons to have a pickle picker or two in your therapy bag. Pickle pickers, or pickle grabbers can strengthen hands, develop eye-hand coordination skills, promote motor planning, add heavy work to the hands, and be used to facilitate so many more skills. The pickle picker (affiliate link) is a powerhouse when it comes to fine motor skills! While this under-rated kitchen tool has so many benefits, it actually has fine motor benefits as well. Use a Pickle Picker for Fine Motor Skills But, you can also use the pickle picker in learning, too: The point to using this tool is to sort, foster fine motor work, and to us the tool as a manipulative while building underlying skills.Īs a functional task, the pickle picker makes fine motor work and finger strengthening tasks fun and engaging. While we don’t use the pickle picker to pick up pickles, we do use it to grab small objects: When I started out as a school-based occupational therapist, a pickle grabber was a therapy tool that I loved to have in my therapy toolbox. As the plunger is pressed, it pushes the prongs out of the pickle picker tube to grab items (pickles, olives, or other items in a tall jar or container). ![]() The utensil’s original use is to retrieve pickles or other items from a jar or container without getting one’s fingers or hands wet.Ī pickle picker (Amazon affiliate link) is a long grabber that has a plunger that when pressed, moves long metal prongs from inside the hollow tube. Let’s explain… What is a Pickle Picker?Ī pickle picker, also known as a pickle grabber, is a kitchen tool that has found it’s way into occupational therapy supplies because of the fine motor benefits of using the small kitchen gadget. Cooking Tipsįor pickle, as in a relish such as Branston Pickle, a spoon.Ok, when we pull a pickle picker out of our fine motor kit from our collection of occupational therapy supplies, the typical response is…”what is that?” But if you have ever used a pickle picker to grab pickles from a jar in the kitchen, then you know how beneficial this kitchen tool is. If the jar mouth is wide enough, an ordinary set of kitchen tongs is often is the best thing for fishing out heavier pickled items such as large pickles, pickled eggs, sliced or chunked pickles, etc. Most people end up chucking them to the far back of a kitchen drawer, and using a fork instead. The main complaint about pickle grabbers is how weak they are. Some have plastic handles, with the grabbers being metal. Strong enough ones can be used for ice cubes.Ī pickle grabber really needs to be made of stainless silver or plastic to stand up to repeated immersions in brine. Some can be quite weak, though, meant for nothing heavier than a slip of a gherkin or an olive, and can’t handle the weight of say, a dill pickle. Some have the same handle spring action, but have fork tines that do the grabbing instead and then release the object when the handle is released. Some have a push handle at the end: you push it in to widen the grabber tongs, release it to tighten them again around the object you are grabbing, and then lift. The grabbing ends often look like a set of claws. The pickled items they are generally intended for are small pickled cucumbers or cucumber chunks. Pickle grabbers are tong-like devices meant for fishing pickles out of a jar.
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