Six color crayon wheel – great for OT fine motor/writing skills

http://www.azprecisiongraphics.com/page/services/promotional_products/crayon-craze-color-wheel

I found this at the 99 cent store in the kids art supplies section. I really like it, I just tried it out with a 2 year old yesterday. I taped paper to a vertical surface, somewhat high, and he was making lines down with it. I can’t find it online in regards to buying it, so check out your dollar stores. I buy a TON of my OT stuff there.

Enjoy!

Awwwww. Love.

[draft]

Hangman for OT… suggestion to change it to Monkey Bar Man…

I was talking to Tonya of TherapyFunZone.com and she mentioned Hangman. I noted I liked the game concept but found the Hangman in itself to be inappropriate. Not just for kids, just in general. The idea in itself is gruesome.

She said she plays Hangman as it being from "Monkey bars" which I found very clever. I could definitely play Monkey Bar man or something 🙂

A COTA daughter :)

This little girl has an amazing COTA for a mom. One of the first I ever got to work with. Love her. Hence the beautiful handwriting. Lol. But most importantly. Her mom knows her daughter’s name!

The Dance of Mental Instability: Sia's "Chandelier"

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2vjPBrBU-TM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The link below is Sia’s "Chandelier" video, if the embedding code for the Youtube video above doesn’t work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vjPBrBU-TM

http://www.bustle.com/articles/23600-sias-chandelier-music-video-is-a-must-see-visual-depiction-of-addiction-video

The above link is a great article on the song, and it talks about the "visual depiction of addiction" and goes into far more detail than I’m about to.

This is a haunting song, and the entire video is this absolutely stunni"ng dance, actually performed by an 11 year old who is known for being on the Dance Moms" show. The choreography is just exceptional.

The part that blows me away is how accurately the dance/video captures the mental health aspect of this song. The jerkiness of the body, the odd facial expressions, the bizarre sequences of movement, the constant and frenzied movement. All of course, interpreted via dance. It’s eerie, it’s absurd, it’s the dance of fraying mental health. Many OTs have worked in mental health arenas, and I feel like this video is almost a portrayal of the soul of some of our clients, those in their deepest agonies. Frighteningly familiar, frighteningly beautiful.

Parents.com article on learning cutting skills

http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/physical/teaching-preschoolers-to-use-scissors/

This is a great article by pediatric occupational therapist Dr. Anne Zachry, whose writing you will see all over the place! "Teaching Preschoolers How to Use Scissors"

OT, OT, OT…obsessive maybe

What can I say…I love occupational therapy! Making OT signs is fun…I’m in, like, an OT gang, yo….OT grafitti everywhere…

"Party Animals" = Great fine motor and imaginative toy for fine motor skills

Today I did two home visits and a clinic visit. All deliberately with parents present for education. Teaching basic undressing skills partially through a parent doing most of the work and then “getting distracted” and causing a kid to have to finish, haha. Teaching dealing with tactile defensiveness.

And best of all, my favorite thing when it’s a good fit for a child, is teaching how to boost motor skills through imagination. Today we (with a 4 year old) played with tiny figurines called “Party Animals” – my new fav toy in the world – tiny plastic figurines that come with little rubber costumes you fit them in. Great fine motor. REALLY popular with my kids. I got them at 99 cent store. I need to wipe them out, I already have like 20 and bought some for others. We made them a party house out of a colander and pipe cleaners after we put on their costumes for their party.

Then we picked up “water snakes” (q-tips) with tweezers so they wouldn’t bite us, and then gave them each a “hat” (a rubber eraser pencil cap) so they could have their own costume party. The kid said they couldn’t go to the other party because it was “too awesome” so they had to have their own water party. Then I brought out a clothesline clip attached to a cotton ball with eyeballs and said “Oh look, a water ghost wants to come too.” He said solemnly “No one likes a water ghost”. I said oh okay, what is it? He says “A fun ball poop.” So the water snakes had their party in the water (the carpet), and the little party animals had their party in the party house (colander). I LOVE IMAGINATION. He gets so frustrated with fine motor skills, but was super motivated by these tasks, and it’s this joint flow…IE I don’t go in thinking about water snakes/putting rubber caps on Q-tips or party houses, it just evolves as we go, a collaborative effort. (And yes, I was allowed to share this session)

Note: The figurines are tiny so a choking hazard. Be safe.

Facebook and Twitter winning lately

Hopefully you can see my sidebar and that my Facebook page and Twitter account are pretty active. I get frustrated with the blog right now because uploading pictures via e-mail or phone to the blog (which is how I do it about 99% of the time) has some bug related to it, meaning it blows up the picture so gigantic that I have to go back in and fix it. Grr. First word problems, right?

I had thought I would have a lot of time to work on Miss Awesomeness for its virtual resources, and alas, I’m ending up doing a lot of local work. Even if I only have a single kid at a private clinic, if it’s an issue I don’t have recent experience with, then it might mean hours and hours of research. Good for reviving dormant neurons, but if I’m only paid for one hour and do a lot more work than that, it’s not very helpful for Miss Awesomeness. However, I feel like it is in some ways, because the more I learn, the more I can share, right? 🙂

One issue I have is that I have like SIX THOUSAND blog posts I want to do, and then I start to collect them to do, and then I get overwhelmed, and then I actually never do any of them. Because I want it to be more succinct (hard for me, takes a lot of time), and to have a picture, and blah blah blah. I need to take a page out of my own OT book/advice and just be like, screw it, I’m doing a post.

I’m going to sit down this weekend and figure out how to make May focus a lot more on Miss Awesomeness and try not to add in new things for at least that month. I have gotten a lot of the legal stuff done for starting the business, so technically a lot has happened that is productive, but that’s not obvious on the virtual end.

Why can’t every day have ten million hours? 🙂 Why can’t I have someone sponsor my life so I can focus more on helping others and less on income? I hate charging people, I truly do, and yet I can’t survive if I don’t. AHAHAHAAHA you’re seeing my brain be like stupid real world!!

Loving OT, loving being my own sole proprietorship with plans to incorporate down the road. Glad I didn’t know what I was doing before I started or I would have been overwhelmed. Still am, but things are getting done and it wasn’t as hard as I thought to get the basics done. I realized I should write more about what I had to do and what I’m doing to be a business.

The Special Olympics and Kind Childen Supporters

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/23wxr5/my_class_competed_in_the_special_olympics_today/

This was on the front page of Reddit today. A teacher posted about her class competing in the special olympics today, and how kind the other students were. I opened the comments briefly for details. I will warn you, Reddit is wacky and often offensive, so I guarantee you there are plenty of rude comments within this. However, also tons of kind and sweet ones, so just be aware if you choose to read the comments, it’s at your own risk. I just loved the picture and the basic details. 🙂