Voice memos to help with memory or worries.
Sometimes I wake up in the night worried or scared of forgetting something. Or I am out without paper and don’t feel or have time to type it. Hence voice memos on phone. The iPhone has it automatically so I assume others do too. Could be great for people with anxiety to dictate out their fears to voice them and hold them elsewhere instead of their head. Or for people with memory issues such as from traumatic brain injury. Using technology to make life better. That is what I call Centennial Vision. Love OT.
Zentangles in OT mental health
I was recently introduced to Zentangles and I am in love. You get special fine point Micron pens and there are a few basic rules which I semi ignore (google to read about them) but what I love is how it allows you to doodle but pay attention. And it can be very calming. It would be great to teach people with anxiety or let kids doodle while they listen in class.
My OT Zentangle
Yay for OT. I am slowly getting my blog mojo back. 🙂
3D printed cast for broken bones
OTs never stop learning
When meeting a fellow very passionate OT for lunch (Patti, LOVE HER) at a sushi place, we end up sharing ideas. In this case, a concept borrowed from S’Cool Moves. We used chopsticks as our tapping sticks and stuck the post-it to the soy sauce to use as a vertical surface, the music playing in the restaurant was our beat, etc. She had me practice it. It was surprisingly hard. It’s got so many great benefits (the quadrant tapping) in regards to rhythm, bilateral coordination, rapid naming for sight words, etc. I’ll hopefully explain more later as she also helped re-spark my OT mojo so I have like ten things I want to talk about.
Best OT quote ever
“Sometimes I wish I could do more for my friends, then I realize how helpful I will be when we start getting our hips replaced!!” – Brooke, former OT classmate
Hula hooping is my new obsession….
I am LOVING hula hooping. Not with those cheap kid ones from CVS that nobody can do, but nicer ones. I will have to post some video soon. I keep thinking of all the ways I could use them with my kids. Also, I started doing some baton tricks today just for manual dexterity improvement, and mostly because I was hoping if I could figure out the baton I could figure out how to use it with the hula hoop.Â
advocate as costume!
This is hardcore. One of my friends (a lawyer who would like to go into educational law) had her child dress up as an advocate for I think Halloween, or some other costumed event.  I know those of us who work with advocates would think that was super awesome! LOL! It wasn’t advocating for school services but even so. What a cool idea. 🙂 She gave me permission to post this picture because I laughed over it and wanted to share! What a cute kid.Â
blast from 2006?
I stumbled across this from my first semester of OT school…..blast from the past, man
I stay very busy. This upcoming week is going to be a nightmare. We had a delayed start on Thursday and a full snow day on Friday, but we can’t absorb the loss. Somehow they have to figure out a way to add in 10 hours of class to our already completely booked schedule over the next few months. This week., we have our first officer meeting, our first class meeting, and our first faculty meeting. Plus two anatomy quizzes, tons of reading for other classes, AND WORST OF ALL, I have two group presentations and two papers both due on Thursday. One is a developmental profile on the age segment 10 months to 12 months, a presentation and handout, due with one other girl. The other is an activity analysis and craft project with four other students. We are doing “Mexican Metal Tooling” and it involves a Powerpoint, a presentation, and then teaching the class the craft and doing it. Oh yeah, and the huge activity analysis paper where we look at task analysis, task adaptation, performance areas it works on, etc, all guided by the ubiquitous Practice Framework. We have the entire two hours ourselves. Scary, huh.
Sorry for such a long hiatus
Things have not been great here, so I haven’t had the energy to post in a long time. I presented at conference and that’s kind of the last of my OT passion I have had for a while, but I do know I fundamentally love my profession and just need to find that inner sparkle again. I blogged for six years straight so I guess a little break from blogging isn’t the end of the world. Summer starts soon so that will be a good time to try to focus on the blog again, and get my children’s book illustrated so I can publish! One thing I recently learned about that I had never thought about is using a LABELMAKER for kids who struggle with handwriting. A friend told me she has a child with tremors, and she has him use a labelmaker when he has to label a worksheet. He thinks its super fun and then he gets to participate in the activity with less stress.