Hand sanitizer….

An old picture I stumbled across…you never know when you may need hand sanitizer. 

spanx proprio

Nothing but monkey business :)

Two years ago in the Amazons 🙂 

This kid needs to work on his "p"

http://photos.ellen.warnerbros.com/galleries/funny_kids_art#215583/?adid=facebook

This is floating around on Facebook from the Ellen Degeneres show where people submit their kids funny work. In all seriousness, when I saw this, my first thought as a school-based OT was that he had a beautiful “g”, and then that the “p” needed to start below the lava line. AHAHAAHA. Incidentally, when you search on google for “Ellen Degeneres penis”, things you weren’t expecting may show up…

Dum Dum DUMMMMMMMMMMM

This should have posted like a week or two ago, don’t know why it didn’t!

1. I am finally getting over 10,000 page views a month! Very exciting! That’s been a recent goal and I have faith it will continue to grow as I work on content. Update 10/20/12: It’s already inching to about 11,000 page views a month. 🙂 

Copying with Mario

I bought these Mario figurines off Amazon and they ended up coming from Hong Kong, I guess I got from from a seller. Anyway, they are extremely popular. We often use them in writing, for example Okay pick the first character you want to write about, let’s write one sentence about that one. Now the next one. Etc. In this case I used my Star Wars Paper (same rules as lava/worm/bees) to write his dictated sentences, and then he copied onto Handwriting Without Tears paper. In hindsight that was a complicated move to go from 3-lines to 2-lines like that, but he did it well. It wouldn’t work for most of my OT kiddos to do that though. It was just what I had available and what he chose to use that day. I do like that HWOT paper though for the spacing if nothing else. By the way, I know you see some violence (Yoshi punched my face), but as long as it’s not excessive I do sometimes allow that if the child is motivated by getting to write what they want. If they get too violent I don’t allow it, but an occasional punch or kick that doesn’t involve another person is usually okay with me.

Chilling with my coworkers :)

We live near a beautiful state park/beach so sometimes after work I go walking with coworkers. In this case two of my favorite speech therapists! Me on left, Jamie in pink, Shannon on right. 🙂 Occupational balance is important!!

Guided drawings, step by step in an OT session

Guided drawings, step by step in the OT session. Something as simple as a balloon or a challenging person. Finally, a can can get to do the guiding, ie in this case drawing a Pokemon character with the occupational therapist copying step by step. Sometimes it’s as helpful for the child to learn to teach as to learn. Interestingly enough, teach and learn are the same word in Norwegian, no distinction. 🙂

Giveaways and reviews and comments etc

I've been pretty stressed and exhausted lately, spending 10-14 hours a day working and crying a lot. So while I had a lot of pre-scheduled posts that have been going, I'm behind on the ones that require work. 

Copying using lava paper

We were reading a Berenstain Bears book. After every few pages, we’d discuss a sentence to write, I’d write it and then he would copy it directly underneath. With this lava paper he knew the rules that you never go above the sky or the bees get you, you never go too low or the worms get you (they only like tail letters), and then you stay below the lava or it burns you. In this particular case handwriting is an extremely non-preferred activity (pretty much for all of my OT kids that is the case!) and we discussed how I didn’t mind if he wanted to go super fast with his writing, as long as it stayed neat and he followed the lava/worm/bee rules. I was pleased with his copying.