Occupational Therapy
29
Mar
2013
Graduation presents?
We have OT students graduating right around now…what are good graduation presents for OT students????? I was just asked and I was stumped. For those of you about to graduate, or who have graduated, what are presents you wish you could receive, or have received???
Any suggestions appreciated.
I have ONE more day of work to get through – one more meeting, a presentation, and some odds and ends – and then two weeks to get my act together! Phew! I think I can I think I can!
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 5
25
Mar
2013
Spring break fever…
Spring break starts next weekend and I’m glad about that, because I desperately need a break. This last month or so has been rough! It’s all I can do to go to work each day. I’m so tired. On the weekends I’m doing very little besides sleeping most of the day and then all night too! I just can’t seem to get enough rest. Just worn out. I think I’m starting to burn out. I’ve been warned this would happen. I just hoped it wouldn’t happen so soon, seeing as how I’m only in my third year of being an OT, and my second year in the schools. I’m behind on everything – my blog, my e-mails, cleaning, etc. Sleep (as a form of escape) wins every time. I’m keeping up with my work but at the expense of everything else. So I’m hoping with the spring break it will be rejuvenating (I have a good friend visiting) and I’ll take some deep breaths and be ready to face the world again and be a little less broken down! Especially since I normally love blogging about OT and it makes me feel bereft to NOT be OT blogging!! I thought about coming here and writing some random airy note but I decided to be real. I’m struggling. But I’m trying to climb out of the hole I’m in. I love OT, I know I love OT, but I I’m currently lacking the energy to embrace it the way I normally do on this blog!! Here’s hoping I find it soon. 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 3
17
Mar
2013
Dried rice: An OT's best friend for weighted items and I Spy…
Making weighted hedgehogs, weighted tube socks, I Spy stuff…all with dried rice.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 4
17
Mar
2013
I think I have too much paperwork
Y’all think I got enough paperwork? 🙂 Organizing…
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1
10
Mar
2013
Sorry for the quiet…
Two articles I’m glancing at…
Chewing Gum Aids Concentration (I totally agree with this one – I frequently recommend letting some of my OT kiddos be allowed to chew gum in class, either for concentration or to keep them from putting other things in their mouth…some teachers are skeptical at first but become believers…pretty high success rate…)
(A comparison between Section 504 and IDEA)
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Sorry for the quiet here lately…March is March Madness in the school OT world in terms of lots of meetings and requests for screenings, so I am crazy busy with work. I’m stressed out and I haven’t been able to give much time to my blog. I need to pick a winner for the LetterReflex and Dexteria giveaway using random.org (only a few people commented so chances of winning super high for those who had commented before the deadline!)
I also am going to be writing a review about a book I just got called “Implementing Sensory Strategies in the Classroom” if I recall the title correctly – I’m taking the course with the same title on March 19th so I’ll wait to review the book till I take the course. 🙂 I’m REALLY excited about the course because even after just skimming through the book – it looks awesome and great to use with advocates as it’s filled with data sheets, and sheets great for reproducing for teachers and parents. I’ll share how to get the book at the time of the review.
I’m also preparing for presenting at our national AOTA conference, trying to work on my upcoming redesigned website, etc etc etc, so ummm, I’m a little tired and worn thin! This morning I had a Pilates class, then met a speech co-worker to go walk at Torrey Pines State Park/beach for an hour (a 3 mile hilly loop). I got my exercise in for the day which is HUGE for managing stress! I’m staring at tons of piles of paperwork, but a nap is definitely going to win the battle, I think. Then I go do my volunteer shift holding babies in a NICU, then grocery store, then a few hours doing work in preparation to start the week! It’s report card week aughhhhhh. ::runs around screaming::
Well I’m sure this was absolutely fascinating (said in most sarcastic voice ever). I just felt like a little stream of consciousness/rambling to explain why it’s been so quiet over here in Miss Awesomeness land lately (I am trying my best to refrain from making another self deprecating comment here)…LOOK I SUCCEEDED!! YES!!!
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1
2
Mar
2013
My newest OT blog love ;) + missawesomeness.com about to get a facelift
We’ve got a new OT blog in town….Anonymous OT. I saw Tonya over at TherapyFunZone.com link her on Facebook and curiously clicked. I’ve gotten a little lazy about exploring my OT blogosphere and haven’t seen any new OT blogs in a long time (the newest ones I can think of that I like are MamaOT and Embrace Your Chaos for pediatric blogs, and OTpotential is a great new addition for non-pediatric, serious blogging)
I really enjoyed AnonymousOT….here is her link and I also linked to a few of her “test pins” that I may try out soon.
In other news, www.missawesomeness.com is getting a face-lift. Right now it’s just my blogspot I’ve had for years. I got a friend/website designer to help me out and it’s going to go live soon – it will still need work, but it’s close enough that it can go live and I can work on it while it’s live. Otherwise it will never happen, yo. Once he gets the site up I’ll post so that those of you who access my blog via RSS feeds can go see it (pretty please)…
It’s almost 1am and I’m posting because um, I may have acidentally taken a nap from 7pm to 1am. Whoopsie doodles.
I haven’t written a stream of consciousness on my OT blog in forever. For those of you who have followed me for almost six years, that’s like…a miracle. I don’t think I’m going to start now (at least not with sixty pages worth like I could), but let’s just say March is going to be a challenging month! An IEP meeting almost every day. Luckily I work with super cute kids and that helps make it bearable. 🙂
Hope to see a bunch of you at conference! I need to get some business cards made ASAP…plus gather my address labels…plus um, do taxes etc etc etc. And maybe sleep. Yeah, sleep.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 2
28
Feb
2013
Child by Sylvia Plath
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
The start of a poem by Sylvia Plath that I recently received in my daily “The Writer’s Almanac”. I loved the first few lines that I copied over…it goes on, but I don’t know all the details about copyright and such so I stopped there. For those of us that work in pediatrics (or have kids), the purity of our children can be astounding. 🙂 I love the idea of their “clear eyes”.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
25
Feb
2013
LetterReflex: Review + Give-Aways of Dexteria and LetterReflex!
I just saw that none of my pictures are showing up right now! I wonder why not! Anyway, our winners via random.org are Ray for Dexteria and Deanna for LetterReflex! Congrats! 🙂 I contacted them both via e-mail to get them their free codes. Thanks for participating!
I was recently given the opportunity to review LetterReflex – “Overcoming Letter Reversals & Backwards Writing in Early Childhood Development & Dyslexic Children”. It’s considered a medical app and was developed by BinaryLabs, Inc. It’s part of BinaryLab’s “trilogy of essential apps for OTs” along with Dexteria and P.O.V. I’ve already reviewed Dexteria here and I’ll review P.O.V at a future date. I received these apps for free (which cost $3.99) in exchange for writing an unbiased review on my blog.
I also get to host a give-away! You can win your own free downloads of Dexteria and LetterReflex! You need to comment on this post, one comment apiece for each app you are interested in (so up to two comments) with at least a quick sentence as to why you would like your own copy of Dexteria and/or LetterReflex! Make sure you specify in the comment which app you are interested in, and leave an e-mail address. Spambots like e-mail addresses, so if you leave your e-mail leave it in a funky way, like Bob3333 AT AT AT gmail or something like that. 🙂 This give-away is open until 11:59PM Pacific on Sunday, March 3rd. I’ll use a random number generator for the comments for Dexteria, and comments for LetterReflex, to determine the winner for each! Good luck! Now onto the review…
LetterReflex is available for both iPhone and iPad. It has “two activities to help overcome common letter reversals”. The first is called tilt-it and is to help distinguish left and right. It has a b, d, p, and q in each of the four squares/corners and you have to tilt to get a ball into a hole in one of the four squares that it asks. You have to listen closely and sometimes I miss what it said. I’ve found that sometimes the ball moves quickly and so the kids get frustrated when it goes in the wrong hole by accident.
I do like from the OT standpoint that it forces the kids to work on gradation of movement – they can’t just tilt the iPad furiously left or right but have to gently and gradually move the iPad in various directions. I hadn’t until just now, when writing this review, noted that it worked on lefts and rights, however.
What I like about this particular activity is gradation of movement and following directions and seeing whether the child can quickly discriminate the b/d/p/q – which I don’t think is quite what the activity was intended for (apparently distinguishing lefts and rights!).
The second activity is called “Flip It” for Letter Discrimination – the client sees, for example, the number 6, then a bunch of 9s as well, and has to swipe the 9s to match the 6s. They are being timed for speed and measured for accuracy as well. I like this activity a lot as it definitely works on exactly what it says – discrimination – and the fact that it’s timed and measured means that even though the client can likely do the task no matter what, you can watch whether they are improving by their accuracy and speed.
For example, I can do it relatively quickly, swiping, but I have terrible accuracy because I have horrific spatial difficulties so I just swipe randomly until it tells me its right. I’m not dyslexic in the slightest and never have reversals, but if it’s sideways and backwards, I can’t easily figure out how to make it right in the least amount of swipes. I could mindlessly swipe away and not learn a thing, which is how I tend to do it…but hopefully I have an OT forcing me to think about my actions and do it in the least amount of swipes and making me look at my scores. 🙂
I work with elementary school aged kids and they like this one for at least a few levels before they want to move on. I could definitely see this being great for older-aged kids and adults with cognitive issues as well.
Overall, I liked this app. Do I love this app with a passion? No, but it’s a nice one to have in the toolbox, especially for only $3.99.
I definitely recommend you see if you can get yourself a free download. Comment here! The chances of winning a code to get a free download are pretty astronomical on this post as I don’t usually get a lot of comments. You have one week. Go!
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 7
23
Feb
2013
How to Draw: Using Progressive Drawings from a Website
My OT kids are motivated to use a website to learn how to draw. We’ve had success using
http://www.do2learn.com/activities/artprojects/howtodraw/index.htm
There’s only a limited amount there – 13 drawings to be exact – but my OT kids are more willing to use it and follow it than the similar progressive drawings I have on paper.
Since I’m left handed and my OT kids are usually right handed, it works out to draw a line down the middle, and then we both use the same piece of paper…I draw the first step, then my OT kid copies….we just keep following that website till we finish each drawing. With a motivated and relatively speedy child, we can get through about 5-6 drawings in a session…meaning we typically can only use the website 1-2x total.
If anybody else knows of similar websites, I’d love it. This one is not perfect, some of the shapes are a little hard, but you can’t beat the motivation of it being computer-based…
The reason we do the progressive drawings is to help my OT kids learn how to break down the drawings into small shapes and see how the whole breaks down into its parts (and how the parts turn into a whole!). Also many of my kids have trouble with shapes in general, especially rotated shapes, so we can work on that too…big, small, rotated, shapes…following directions…spatial orientation…etc. When a teacher comes to me and says wow, we just did an art project and my student REALLY couldn’t follow along, look at what he did…..this is the kind of session that follows. 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1
21
Feb
2013
Figuring out What to do at Conference
As I blogged about here: http://blog.missawesomeness.com/2013/02/come-to-aota-conference-i-beg-you-i.html, PLEASE Come to AOTA Conference.
Next morning’s update: Read Cheryl’s comment below before you start doing anything (after reading this post!)…she explained that there is a conference schedule builder you can use which is less work, etc…thanks Cheryl
if you feel like stalking me there, I am copy/pasting what I hope to be doing, not for the purpose of stalkers, but because I want you to see what it looks like. What I did was go through the conference booklet and (messily) in Word write up the courses and posters that most appealed to me so that I could get a sense of the time. If I were a better dork (or a nerd or a geek) I’d have done it in Excel. But I’m not so this is as good as it gets. At least this early in advance. I mostly focused on “Children and Youth” because I work in that field, although in reality there was plenty in other areas that appealed to me as well. I’m also probably helping work in my company’s booth (School Steps Inc.)
If you’re going or thinking about going, I recommend at least highlighting or marking in some fashion what you are interested in, then hopefully taking the next step of making a schedule of some sort. It will be way easier and less overwhelming to follow that, then leafing through the booklet frantically when you get to San Diego.
Two things I’m trying to figure out.
1) How to go to a course AND see posters that may be at the same time 🙁 There seem to be some super cool posters I am verrrry interested in.
2) What exactly RWP is or Research Program… I know they have to do with Research and I saw what the exact acronym stands for, (although I forget now) but I don’t know what the exact mechanism is – does it seem like a poster, or do you sit in a classroom and they present their research, or what?
Without further ado, and without yet bidding you adieu, here’s what I’m hoping to do:
Thursday April 25th, Keynote Speaker 4 to 530, then Maybe work an Expo Booth
Friday April 26th + Booth Times
9:30 – 11:00 am : SC 214 Multiple High and Low Tech Interventions For Improving Social Participation
11 to 12:15 Booth Work?
12:30 to 2:30pm POSTERS: Neuromechanisms of Dsylexia, Competency Checklist for Neonatal Therapist, Exploring Role of SI Among Educators
2:00 to 3:30pm: Research Program 213: DCD – Early Screening – Write Start ??? What’s Research Program Look Like???
2:00 to 3:30pm: SC 221: AOTA: Value Added Assessment of School Based OT Practitioners
3 to 5pm: Posters: ALERT Program, School Based OT Beyond HW and FM skills, Visual Perception in Preterm Kids at 5 years of age
330 to 5pm: SC 234: Electronic Scoring of SPM
Saturday, April 27th
830am to 930am: SIS Buzz Sessions – Creative Ideas for Applying Sensory Based OT in Schools by Deanna Sava
9am to 11am: Posters – Classrooom Integrated Therapy for Handwriting, Effectiveness of SI Therapy in improving School participation, Repetitive Behaviors/Sensory Responsiveness, Looking at Multisensory Handwriting Program, Quality of HW and Scaling of Hand size/Pencil Size also Karen Jacobs poster 9am to 11, Power of Social Media under General and Professional Issues…and Social Networking and E Profesionalism…
930am to 11am: SC 325 School Based Workload, What’s Magical formula?
1230 to 230 Posters: VP skills and HW, what is link? Implementing Alert Program, Addressing School Servivce – 3:1 Model, Experience OF OT in Rural, Using Self-regulation Program, Empowering Kids to Set Goals, Draw a Person Tests…Sensory Supporting Swimming…
1230 to 230: RWP Infant head movements, NICU Professionals
2 to 330: OUR COURSE SC 328 What’s New in Digital and Social Media for Occupational Therapy?
4 to 530: SC 371: Leadership for All, Developing Inner Leader to Advance School Based Practice
Sunday, April 28th
WS 408: AUTISM/Scerts: 8am to 11am: Maximize Social Participation and Sensory Emotional Regulation or OT role in addressing Bullying
Or Revising Assertiveness….WS 404 OR
WS 407.Sensory Tools for Mindful Living
OR?
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I also hope, of course, to hang out with my out of town OT friends, and I bought a ticket for AOTPAC night which was a lot of fun last year. I hope to do a lot of social networking while at conference and if any blog readers are there, please let me know so we can arrange a face to face! HEY, OMG, If Myy Space and Facebook ever merged, they could call it Space2Face. CLEVER.
Hope to see you all at Conference!
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 3