Over-time (OT) and Off-topic (OT)

   
Bear with me, I get to be a little off-topic since I’m on break. 🙂 While I was in Alabama my friend’s mom made me a shirt based on one that my friend Orli originally made. We hit up a fabric store and I selected this lace, then basically you cut out a neck, reinforce sides, and add a seam near the body to make the bat wings….The other day one of my little girls I work with asked me out of the blue “Is sewing OT?” I was like…yes and no. It doesn’t HAVE to be OT, but it can be used as OT in that it works on a lot of great skills. I want to learn how to sew basic things. One of my goals as a thirty year old is “30/30/30” in that I want at least thirty minute basic lessons in at least thirty different things while I am thirty. Things that are pretty straight forward and used to be taught in home ec, but we don’t have home ec anymore… what I learned from this experience is that sewing is not rocket science but it’s not easy either. 🙂 Or maybe it is if you know how to fix things that go wrong…when I get home I want to go look at our old sewing machine and see if it’s useable.
   
I performed rocket surgery aka battery surgery on this endangered tiger on this old stuffed animal at my friend’s house. It was hit or miss, he flat-lined a few times, but ultimately pulled through. His eyes glowed with pleasure and he purred loudly after he woke up from his anesthetic. It was a little scary as you can see.

   
In case you all were wondering, LESTER IS THE CUTEST CAT IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. But his one and only goal for 2013 (besides improving his ability to make us alcoholic drinks) is to end up in the 2014 “Bad Cats” Calendar. I skimmed the 2013 which I got for his mommy, and I have no doubt he can make it. Just need to do the legwork of submission. By the way, that Santa on his back has been the one toy he has had for at least like four years? And he loves it. He plays with it all the time.

Lastly, I have to tell you all, I love Trader Joe’s with a passion and I want to marry Trader Joe, but whoever invented their “sea gummies” was likely a dolphin in disguise or at least at heart, because I can’t imagine any human accepting that taste. It was soooo fishy that I had to spit it out and rinse my mouth out, gagging. BLEH!!

Sharks and ducks, OT game

Working on a shark game…trying to find tiny things that float that the shark can eat! No luck so far….may have to go to a fishing store. I found some larger ducks that float…the shark could bite them but couldn’t fit it entirely in the mouth. Guess that’s okay. Oddly enough these ducks float head-down, butt up….may make for some good laughs? I am thinking good for a quick choice time activity on a hot day 🙂 A large container to hold some water, a few ducks, and a shark, and you’re set….

World OT Day: OT24x

http://ot4ot.com/ot24vx2012/

Make your letters fun!

A little guy and I were working on a rough draft of deciding how to make a laminated visual strip for certain letters (prone to reversals), as well as using his awesome creative powers to decorate letters, including his name. 🙂 Sometimes writing letters is way more motivating if you get to “play” with them after. I think we forget to make letters fun. We can think of letters as having quirky characters just like animals and people or being part of something cool, and make them more appealing. “L” doesn’t have to just be two lines. It can be a tower! It can be a pole! “U” can be a bathtub, or a smiley face. I liked his idea for “H” was a hippo 🙂 Mom gave me written permission to post this in case anyone is freaking out over a first name being shown… 😉

OT on OT: Random thought for the day

OT on OT is my new label for ‘Off-Topic on Occupational Therapy”…..

Bridging Flexibility and Imagination through Board Game Creation with Highly Preferred Characters

I have a child who is not big on flexibility or imagination. I think he has a great imagination, but for whatever reason accessing it can cause him anxiety. So I took my Super Mario stuff and a corkboard and we started to develop a board game together. We used these random cardstock strips (reject paper) for the rough draft version and we used Super Mario stickers for different types of issues, plus Super Mario characters as game pieces, and we turned a “Snerdle” box (Snerdles are Super Mario candies you can get at Party City that come in a “Question” box and they are verrrry popular with my OT kiddos) into a dice by using post it notes. We were working on deciding which handwriting scenarios you did with with issues, ie maybe certain stickers/rolls would cause you to have to write a word super dark or super light etc as the point was it was a handwriting game. I felt like it was a nice bridge to encourage imaginative flexibility in a safe way.

Pistachio shell art/imaginative play

So read this ad I found in I think Smithsonian magazine about the importance of brands. It basically says exactly what I hadn’t yet known to voice, but felt. That it’s about starting a “cultural uprising” and that’s part of what I want to see with Miss Awesomeness – an awareness and push for more imagination and creativity in our daily lives, children and adults alike. I realize there are plenty of people out there already doing just that, but I want to add my brand/voice to that clamor and maybe one of these days we’ll hit a critical mass. 🙂 ANYWAY, I saw this ad and toko a picture of it at the airport, but I felt it matched perfectly something that Tana Banana aka Miss Sweetness showed me today (according to one of the OTs at the hospital she works at, she is a “closet OT” hahaha).

Anyway, she was playing a little girl at a recent festival and they were eating pistachios. At the end, rather than just throwing the pistachio shells away, Tana got out markers and she and the little girl decorated the pistachios, turning them into a family. I LOVE THIS! This is EXACTLY what I am talking about! Take the resources around you ( a la Recycling OT, lol) and use it with imagination.
In this case it was also great fine motor and visual motor work! But the kid would just know it was fun. And I bet you money she NEVER sees pistachio shells the same way again!
 

Give-away mishap ;)

Updated 1130pm Friday – so I never did get around to posting details of the items of this particular giveaway, but sounds like you guys will survive until I can. Just post on this and I promise you’ll like what you get!
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Hey guys, my Thursday PenAgain giveaway (that I’m doing myself using pens they sent me last year) did not happen because I spent the entire day on a plane and didn’t have time to do it before I left! (By the way robbers, I have roommates that are still home so don’t try any funny business! My mom will SHANK YOU!) Cough…

Blue unicorn :) OT kiddo

I love the little corner at the top in this case, it looks like a blue unicorn! Providing the child with some much needed proprioceptive input. 🙂

Spelling words for OT

Today I worked on spelling words with a kid while working on his ocular motor skills. We had a metronome set at 60 bpm. He’d see the word and we’d do it together to the beat, ie b, o, n, e. Then I’d take the card away and he’d repeat it, b, o, n, e without seeing it that time. It’s nice to do ocular motor work with a metronome while also using the academic piece of sight words or spelling words. In this case a teacher showed me this list and I quickly took a snap shot so I could reference it later. I am using my iPhone a lot these days for digital reminders.

Also, for the metronome, I haven’t googled the “evidence” but anecdotally and via mentors I have spoken to, having a metronome on at 60 bpm is very calming and coordinating for the brain, for SOME kids. If you’re a person – or have a kid – where you start the metronome and the kid finds it super annoying, then use it sparingly, just for spelling words or something. But if you have a child who doesn’t really care or pay attention to the metronome, by all means leave it on to play in the background while the child is working.