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.

Morphology Junior: Wednesday Giveaway :)

Today's giveaway is from Morphology Jr, who kindly sent me a free copy to review as well as send one to the winner of my giveaway. Just submit a quick comment and that's it. Winner will be chosen via random number generator, then I'll connect you with the right person to get your copy. 🙂 It lasts one week, so until next Wednesday. I am pretty sure you can decide whether you would want to win Morphology for teens/adults or the junior version. 

Morphology Jr as an Imagination/Flexibility/Creativity Tool for Our Rigid OT kiddos

Just received a free copy of Morphology Junior in the mail, to review. I tried it out today with a child working on flexibility and imagation. This game is for 8+ years old but I have to say it was challenging even for grown-ups to figure out how to do things like make a squirrel (other people have to guess what it is) using very limited supplies such as a few cubes, a string, etc. Actually I was impressed my child came up with balloon using the wooden dowel person, a string, and a white cube. (hard to see, but it’s in the upper part of the picture on the right). I also liked his version of “eating” – he made a little table with blocks, then a green marble thing was the food, and he had the wooden dowel person tilt torwards it.

We didn’t play it exactly as it is supposed to work, but I can tell that in its current state it’s too hard for most of my kids considering it was hard for us grown ups. HOWEVER, with slight modifications, it’s an awesome concept. I’ll probably provide a few more objects than what is currently provided. I let a special ed teacher borrow it to try with some of her small groups, I encouraged her as well to modify. We played a few rounds together. I see the potential. Not ready to fully review but wanted to share the first day’s insights! Anyone else used this?