The kid I’m working with is a hardcore gestalt language processor*. I notice that they’re singing a song while the two of us work side by side on an art project. I can tell some of the lyrics are about characters from Mario, but many of the words are hard to understand. I think, “This … Read more
I had a student recently who I wanted to give a fidget to. He already had a fidget for his classroom, but I had recently got a big bag of fidgets and found a particular one I thought he’d enjoy, that I would gift to him. I set up a little scavenger hunt for our … Read more
I was going to take a selfie showing off my homemade bubble wands and it turns out that I’m incapable of blowing bubbles, keeping my eyes open, AND not looking mean or worried. Pipe cleaners/chenille sticks make great homemade bubble wands! I’ve found that they work best of all with any kind of bubble solution … Read more
One thing that’s really challenging for adults in all contexts—parenting, or professional contexts—is balancing between how much autonomy and how much protection to provide to their child. That’s why when I was writing this reminder to go on the board in my therapy gym, for the adults who work with kids who use it to … Read more
Last year, I had the opportunity to train some of the staff at one of the schools I work at about how to use the therapy gym as a place for some of the children to use regularly to self-regulate throughout the day — i.e., as opposed to only coming in there with me during … Read more
A fine motor, pre-writing activity offer in my therapy gym today: dot-to-dots to make the “flight paths” of different airplanes, rocketships, and helicopters. You can customize this whichever way matches the child’s level of drawing/tracing right now…to work on horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonals, curves, loops, etc. All of these things are skills that children … Read more
One of my favorite tools for building a whole bunch of skills— hand strengthening, finger strengthening, hand-eye coordination, and then copying from a visual model, and occupationally meaningful writing— are these toys which I originally found in a closet and have since googled to find out are called “Zoomorphs” and, more specifically, “Dinomorphs”. They’re basically … Read more
With the big kids in my action room who still have handwriting or letter formation goals, one of the activities I set out is a big huge grid on the floor drawn on butcher paper, with my gigantic Sharpies, and offer to make a word search themed about whatever they’re interested in. The sheer size … Read more
I did this activity with one of my older elementary school aged kids (in the 8-10 range): we went on a “sensory scavenger hunt” together. I had a lot of ideas in mind while I did this. -I wanted the child to be able to take a break from any classroom time, and get outside … Read more
This post has an audio and video recorded version for those who prefer to learn by hearing rather than by reading. Scroll to the bottom for the video of me reading it. On a recent post, I mentioned that I wanted to see if a child could do a particular task—I think it was cutting … Read more