How to get an OT response plus some typical treatment…OT in schools

Today I rushed to school #1 (for the day) for a 7am parent/teacher conference that involved special ed; then rushed to school #2 where I normally am on Thursdays to do as many normal scheduled treatments as I could; then ran to school #3 for a 20 minute conference with special ed involvement; then ran back to school #2 for meeting with parent….busy day of running around.

The good news is I am getting slightly more organized with my car and toys…..

Thursday mornings always involve one of my favorite little groups (maybe like 7 years old??) where they rush me saying “Miss Awesomeness!!”…to be fair they're usually ready for a distraction from like, fractions. Because their special ed teacher is amazing but fractions will never beat silly games. 😉 We started with a little warm-up where I scattered puzzle pieces to the alphabet puzzle on one side of the room and put the puzzle frame on the other. The first time around they had to do tiny quick steps to gather 2 pieces to place into the puzzle….second time around they had to do a “jello” walk (really wiggly and floppy) which turned into more of a zombie jello walk, lol. Third time around they had to chomp their arms big like alligators….etc until all 26 pieces were in. Then we used Bendaroos to work on b/d/p/q and then to write out all of our names… augh 8% battery left working quick to finish before it dies…..then I got out big grid paper and my stamps and they had to carefully position their stamps in certain grid areas such as the upper left corner (we are working on lefts, rights, directionality etc)….finally we used “Story Cubes” and took turns coming up with a single sentence at a time which we all wrote using the images for inspiration…my favorite one was something like “The bee is swimming in the Earth and the fire is in the scales” or something ridiculously long like that, haha. That was from a kid who normally doesn't like writing…he wanted to write out that entire thing!  I think their favorite image was of the debit card…(we're actually not sure what it is supposed to be so we're going with debit card). While working on our best handwriting of course. 🙂 Fun times. Love my little guys.

7% I am getting nervous augh

okay off to get my charger this is too anxiety provoking lolol….okay phew

A few more sessions working with story cubes, handwriting, directionality/following instructions, etc…..plus meetings with parents….I don't go to all parent/teacher conferences of my kids or it would be insane, but I go to ones that could use a quick OT update or something. I really dislike the phone, I get kind of stumbly, plus I think parents in general do better face to face, so I do try to drive to a school rather than do a phone call, when I can…

Tonight I need to finish some paperwork. And I have so many more pictures to share, but I am trying to space them out instead of doing blogging blizzards so that things are more stable/consistent on the blog.

Tomorrow I need to hit at least 2 schools and possibly up to all four…depends on how things go I guess…last day before spring break so things may be a little chaotic in the classrooms. Guess we'll find out.

This weekend goals: Finish up my part of the presentation for conference, plus taxes….goals for spring break include catching up on paperwork!!!!

Hey, on e-mails….still over 200 new mails and many hundreds of blog emails to respond to….I've started trying to respond ASAP to incoming blog question emails instead of postponing (thinking I'll actually write a succinct thoughtful answer if I take my time later) because I never do get the time for it. (Or to be more fair: I don't end up CHOOSING the time for it when I'm resting). So I'm writing quick immediate answers. But here's the thing. If you ask me a question about something semi personal, ie “Do you think I can work while in OT school,” or “I'm nervous about working with population X, do you think it will get better”, then I can help you out, because you may not be able to find your answer as it's more of an advice kind of thing. But if you write me a very factual question such as “What is the difference between PT and OT…” the chances are high you will not get an answer, because that kind of question frustrates me a little bit, because basic google sleuthery will get you that kind of answer.

So please….contact me if you'd like (I do love hearing from people), but if you are going to ask me a question, the chances are highest you will get a response if A) you include something personal about yourself that gives me at least a basic feel of who you are/where you are coming from (not in the literal sense of location) B) you don't ask fifty million questions or at least prioritize a few above all the rest (ie here are ten million questions but if you could at least answer question X that would be awesome) and C) you ask questions that a google search won't easily answer…ie advice, not basic facts. Oh. And if you write me a single sentence that says “lets discuss OT”…um yeah. You need to write more than that. AHAHAHAHA

If you HAVE done what I have asked and have not gotten an answer and still want/need one, your options are to A) wait…I do EVENTUALLY answer the vast majority of questions that fit criteria above) or B) resend it but note its a re-send.

Finally….if you want to be my friend on Facebook, please make it clear you are an OT blog reader with a few details about yourself so that I'm not randomly friending robbers or something…if you have asked before and it didn't go through feel free to try again with an explanation, maybe I messed up or who knows.

Hope my clarifications above don't offend anyone. I LOOOOVE bringing new people into the profession and helping out, but I can only help so much so I'm starting to learn it's better to prioritize…..good night!!

Tower of bunnies for OT

Tower of Bunnies, OT session, for an older kid. I needed to set the girl up in RapidReader, so while I was doing that I had her mess with my Tower of Bunnies….as you can see she got it stacked high. The carrot hooks are kind of for Jenga-like movements of pulling bunnies out, but it's super hard. What else do you expect for 3 dollars at CVS? I do like the concept overall though, for stacking.

Rainbow tower

I told my little preschooler we were going to make a rainbow tower. He has speech difficulties, but he made it clear he wanted to know how we were going to make it arch like a rainbow. I thought that was adorable. I obviously just meant stack it in rainbow patterns and to his mind, a rainbow meant an arch……so cute.  (ps making tall towers is great for precision work for little ones)

Letter Y – OT, handwriting without tears, alphabet puzzle, etc

Today I worked with a 4.5 year old preschooler on his “y” in his name, and when he finally got it, we did a “Y” dance, plus he got 2 goldfish. He did it successfully a total of 7 times, so we had seven dances and 14 goldfish from the bottom of the container…he would chortle with glee each time he got slightly more than 2 goldfish (ie goldfish debris). Pretty cute. 🙂 PS: On normal paper we couldn't get the Y….but with the little gray boxes of Handwriting Without Tears, he was finally able to do it.
The first time he got it right, after we've been trying for quite a few sessions, I jumped up and did a celebratory “You know how to do a Y” dance, and then it became mandatory for each subsequent Y. lol.

We also cut up straws and shot them into the waste basket, worked on a few different letters, and did an alphabet puzzle which is shown a few down, a 1 dollar foam one. He did NOT want to do the puzzle, but I turned it into a game…I push out the foam letters saying “WHAT! Go to bed!! Stop jumping out of bed!! What do you think you're doing!!” Then I sigh and am like ugh…have to get all these letters back to bed…they are really misbehaving….so then I start putting them back, but I might, for example, put Mr W in Mr D's spot, and be like MR W!!! STOP PLAYING! STOP DANCING IN MR Ds SPOT!! If you don't behave it's going to be a time-out!! And so then we get into putting all our letters back into bed, and it's quite an ordeal, with a lot of threatening of time-outs, and dancing in the wrong spot, etc. And if the kid is struggling to put the letter back where it goes, I push it out again after it's in, then admonish that letter for getting out of bed again, etc. So it's super dramatic and silly.

Squiggles

The squiggle drawing, monster theme, that we used the story cubes with. See below.

Story cubes for OT work

Story cubes are making the rounds in OT land. About $6.95 on Amazon.com. 9 dice, 54 images, batrilions of ideas. Lots of ways you can play with them. I like them to help with idea generation for kids struggling with that, common in autism etc. Today was my first day using them. For one child, he rolled all 9 dice, picked an image, then wrote the first sentence. We were using a monster theme. Then I'd write the second sentence after I picked an image off the dice I rolled. Repeat. But the possibilities are endless, y'all have OT brains, figure it out. 🙂

By the way, if you can see the “squiggle” on top? The first graders have “book of squiggles” where they have a partial drawing, that they can turn into whatever they want, then write about it. Super cool.

Today I had a boy doing it who drew a poisonous snake, but wrote “bo not touch” and I was like “Boo not touch???” and they thought that was hysterical……..then he WANTED to write it that way. Those b and d reversals are tricky. 🙂

Alphabet game for OT handwriting

So today we were using Story Cubes (post to follow on what that is) to write a story. The little boy (whose work has gone from COMPLETELY illegible to the beautiful writing you see here, in first grade), I’ll call him Lyle so the rest of the story makes sense. Ignore the horrific construction of that last sentence. Anyway. He did an absolutely beautiful “p” and I was like ooh, that “p” gets a gold star, wow, amazing. So I put a tiny pencil mark next to the the P on that alphabet puzzle you see (it was a dollar).  That was all I planned to do, but then he thought that was a new game more or less. So for each letter he did, he tried to do perfectly, so that he could get a mark next to another letter. So he’d do a letter, examine it for perfection, fix it if it wasn’t, then make a mark next to it on the puzzle. It became a game where he wanted “L” to win since it’s the first letter of his name. So I suggested the word lollipop, lol. I don’t know if you can see the dots next to the letters, make the picture big to see. But I think I’ll try erasing those dots and playing that game again with him or other kids to work on perfect letters….and/or will laminate the alphabet to use a dry erase marker next time, or who knows. Pretty fun! Such lovely handwriting! My mom’s friend who is visiting said “That’s nicer handwriting than what my high schoolers produce.” 🙂

Oh. And my pencil didn’t have an eraser and his did, and I would sometimes make a mistake (I was on another piece of paper) and pretend-weep and be like “I don’t have the force”….because he is a Star Wars kid so we call the eraser “the force” that saves the letters. So he was like what!! you don’t have the force!! and would then use “his force” to help me out. ahahaha. Remember that if you have kids who don’t erase and tend to just write over it, it may be because erasing is not an easy skill for them…check out their eraser skills…..

OT surprise…I have no idea what this picture will include!!

Still need to figure out formatting. I basically have 12 pictures of 6 pictures each for the next few weeks….I had a photo shoot OT toy party this weekend. But I send this via email so the picture is a surprise. So I guess it will either be self-explanatory, or I will have to go back and explain things soon. For now it's 9pm and I am trying to calm my brain down to go to bed. Very busy life these days. Looking forward to AOTA conference in Indiana next month – I bought my plane fare, am sharing a room with LIBBY and one of her peeps, and registered for conference…..so it's official. Who is coming to our session on social media on Saturday morning? Who is gonna come say hi to me???? Can't wait to meet y'all……

OT pictures/chat/ideas

OT 1:30am update

Well I slept too much today so now I'm awake. I have tons of pics to post to the blog, but for now just going to do my typical rambling 😉

The other day one of my little 3rd grade boys with autism walked in (on his toes, of course!) to the Learning Center and I said “Good to see you, my friend.” He said in his stilted voice “I really liked to hear that.”  I thought that was so insanely cute. He was also very excited about an upcoming jog-a-thon, saying “I am going to run like Lightning McQueen.”

I had another 3rd grade boy with autism say “Miss Karen, let me read this to you.” He's hyperlexic. So I sat with him and he showed me what was on his iPad. He started to read it, and matter-of-factly was reading “blah blah overweight nudist blah blah lesbian wedding blah blah” I was like WHAT! It turns out it was a Seinfeld episode summary he had gotten off of Wikipedia. I was like “This isn't appropriate for school” but it was all I could do not to laugh. That same child loves to translate words into Spanish using Google Translator, and when he wants to do past-tense, he just adds an “ed” to the Spanish verb.  Clever!

I did a duet poem with a 2nd grader with autism the other day from the book Joyful Noise. The poems in that book of duet poems are not really intended to be read by someone so young, as the vocabulary is advanced, but he is hyperlexic as well so had no trouble. I like using it because it forces the child to wait his turn and work with you at reading at the same pace at times (you each have a column you read at the same time – some times just you, sometimes just him, sometimes both of you). We took a little video of us doing it and he started by saying “My name is John Doe, and this is my trusty assistant Miss Karen, otherwise known as Miss Awesome” AHAHAHAHA I love it.

Someone asked me today what my favorite part of my job was. I thought about it for a second and decided it was when I showed a child they could do something they didn't know they could do, or they mastered a skill for the first time (like tying a shoe, or writing neatly). Really just seeing a big smile on my child's face is what I live for.  And um, I love toys. AHAHAHAA

I took out ALL the toys from my car finally, including a bunch buried in my trunk, and re-organized them. I'm going to end up with a fine motor bag, visual motor bag, sensory motor bag, and seasonal bag, in my car. Because for example I just bought a ton of seasonal toys that I love, like the tower of bunnies, bunny spring-ups, etc etc. I want to post pics soon of all that stuff.

As a therapist who runs from school to school each day, I have to carry every thing I am going to use with me. I've done this a year now – literally my one year anniversary was this Saturday as a school OT – and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to organize myself so I don't get so loaded down. I've also been more in a toy mode lately, especially as we get close to spring break, but we're still certainly working on goal areas! One thing that frustrates me with organization is that a lot of things that are fine motor are also visual motor, etc, so having separate bags isn't that easy.

I'm slowly starting to catch up with work, although I have a long way to go in some arenas. Good thing break is coming up soon, I can try to catch up a little, although I have a friend coming into town for most of it! I just thought to myself I should go see Grandma over break, and then remembered she is gone now. 🙁 That makes me sad.

My friend who came over tonight to provide moral support while I organized toys, is a great artist/creater, so we got out Sharpies and decorated a bunch of plastic Easter Eggs. It started when I realized some of my easter eggs had little holes in top, so I stuck toothpicks in them, but they wouldn't go all the way through and looked like antenneas. So I decided to put an alien face on it. We ended up decorating a bunch either with patterns the child would have to match up, or just silly stuff. I am going to make a laminated checklist (maybe a normal piece of paper in a sheet protector), and have a brief description of each egg, ie blue jumbo egg, and have the child come check off each egg as they find them…….another good one is to write words in each egg and then they have to write the word, or a sentence, etc. Or write an action and when they find it they have to do what it says such as 10 jumping jacks. So many ways to use plastic easter eggs for handwriting, visual motor, hot/cold game, lefts/rights directionality, etc etc……I guess speech therapists could do the directionality up/below etc too!

I bought some like seventy cent putty “knives” and scrapers at the hardware store recently….the kids are way more into play-doh when they have actual grown-up “tools” to use with it.

I was working with a Hispanic little girl who had an accented I in her name, but didn't like it, and would just do a normal i instead. Mom reported this to me and I was like hmmm. I had an angry bird on my keychain the little kids were looking at, and the diagonal eyebrows gave me an idea. I told her that she had an “angry I” in her name just like the angry birds….and then all the kids around her wanted to show me how they could draw an angry i. So now she is okay with using her angry i in her name most of the time, and she notices when other kids have an “angry” letter too. I love it 🙂 So many kids just need a little gimmick and then it's fine.

I realized a few hours ago I could maybe use Jenga blocks to make little angry bird structures….now just need to get an angry bird to throw at them…..I could maybe draw an angry bird on an Easter egg and weight it with fishing weights or something, I dunno. The slingshot part is the hard part. I know they have games you can buy but I already spend a ton of my own money on toys, am trying to think of ways to do it for free with what I have. 🙂

The other day I did a lesson on flexibility for my self-regulation seminar with four little guys. I thought about it for quite a while. I did several things. For one thing, I showed them how a hard rigid tree can fall over in a storm, but a flexible tree sways in the storm and survives. I had them stand and be rigid or sway as I gently (Very gently) pushed against them so they could see what happened. Then I had brought a bunch of different objects such as an orange, a sock, etc. We talked about how an orange could be a ball, it could be eaten, maybe it could be used in a game, etc etc….and that a sock could be a mitten or a stocking etc. One of the items I grabbed on a whim was a stuffed snail I had gotten in Colombia that was beautifully colored and how it too could be several things. At the end of the lesson, I asked the kids what they had learned. One kid said “I learned about a snail” and all the other kids agreed. The snail was apparently their favorite part. I was like……wow. Awesome. So glad my lesson on flexibility boiled down to liking my snail. AHAHAHAAHA.  I clarified the lesson, but it reminded me I should weave more concreteness throughout the lesson as to what we are specifically trying to understand. I tend to be quite verbal (and I speak fast) so it's not exactly ideal for little dudes with autism. I'm also very aware of the children's need for structure so we begin and end the same way and I tell them the schedule of our seminar in advance, ie first this, then that, etc. However, I'm not a teacher in the classic sense of the word and tend not to use typical teaching strategies. An aide was telling me after the seminar how she liked my style and I was like ??? and she explained that when I was handing out hair things (as one of the items that had many uses), I basically slung-shot/threw one to each kid, instead of being like “Okay, each of you stand up in a line and come get one thing from me.” I wouldn't have even thought of that. Not very teacher-l
ike I guess. The aide said she thought it was good for them to get a different experience where they did get a little more freedom/wackiness. I dunno. In some ways I think I need to work on talking more slowly, being more strict, etc. And then in other ways I think she is right and it's good for them to see different styles with slightly less structure….who knows!! I do know as a general rule I am super lenient with things like having to walk single file in line. I see the point when there is like 30 kids, but if there is only like four…..why does it matter that much?

The things I ponder to myself at 2am. Learning out loud, right?

AOTA conference is coming up, and deadlines are looming for our social media presentation. I need to get crack-a-lacking on that ASAP along with taxes, NBCOT renewal, etc…no biggie…NOT. Yikes. Today I was only semi-productive, mostly rested….my toys are about completed though. Tomorrow is paperwork day!!!! Bleh…

Ok I guess I am going to try to go to bed now that I've de-cluttered my brain into my blog. Hopefully I'll also upload a bunch of pics tomorrow to the bloggie.

BTW I wrote to Abilitations to submit ideas, but never heard back from the person who is supposed to send me the forms etc. Does it sometimes take a while to hear back??

Karen