OT in schools

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/25/california.triplets.visitation/index.html?hpt=T2

Really awesome (temporary though) ruling that a severely disabled mother (due to suffering severe brain damage during birth to her triplets) can have visitation rights.

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Two ideas for kids who press down too lightly while writing: Have them draw on TRIPLICATE paper (ie that carbon copy stuff). So they can see if it gets down to bottom layer of paper.  Or, use rainbow scratch paper with the tiny wooden dowels – have to do it kind of hard for the rainbow paper underneath to show up!

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I made a new game last night called “Silly Sentences”…..You start a sentence with “The” and then you roll the dice and it corresponds to an adjective 1-12 on a list….you have to write down the adjective that corresponds with what you rolled. Then same thing for a noun. Then same thing for whatever the grammatical term is (preposition??) for “over the, under the, at the” etc. Then again for another location/place/noun whatever. So this would be like a group activity ideally – like 4 lists and 4 kids each get a chance to roll and find their word. You end up with silly sentences like “The funny bug crawls under the park” or “The green boy jumps over the sky”. You have them cup their hands while rolling the dice (work on developing those palmar arches) and you can also work on the visual scan component of finding their number/word on the list, plus of course, the main purpose, which is the handwriting. 🙂 Word by word.

So last night I very quickly made up this game and just came up with several lists of 12 words ie nouns, verbs, adjectives….in big print and put them in a sheet protector. You can modify this as you wish. Does this make sense???

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A tip that is so basic that um, I only recently learned! Put a worksheet in a sheet protector and use dry erase markers on it to do the worksheet (ie one where you just circle a few things)….don't have to keep making copies and can re-use and the kids like the novelty of dry-erase….sheet protectors + dry erase markers = new fav thing 😉

I got a few tips from another school OT Libby that I will be posting shortly….and have a few other OT blog related emails I need to get through this week…but most of all I have tons and tons and tons of OT paperwork to get through this weekend so I can feel more organized with this new job! Loving working in the schools so far! All day long every day I think of stuff I want to share….of course by the end of the day I'm exhausted and have forgotten most of what I specifically wanted to share, and/or am too tired to write it up.

Today I was at 3 different schools and then I drove over an hour in Friday rush hour traffic to go spend evening with my Grandma….every Friday night I take her to dinner and then we watch a movie….although she just moved in with one of my aunts so we are waiting on the TV so no movie lately…tonight we went to a Marie Calendar's and had an early dinner of chicken pot pies and pies, hung out in her mini suite and read books and then I filmed her for about 30 minutes on my Flip as we chatted some about her childhood etc. She is lots of fun. 🙂 I am in love with her heat dish from Costco! So are the dogs.

Tomorrow I have Pilates early in the AM and then the rest of the day I pretty much just need to do OT, OT, OT, OT, OT….the pile of stuff to go through is so ridiculous. I love resources and therefore accumulate resources, hoard them, then get overwhelmed with how much I get and can't keep up. Vicious cycle I tell ya.

GOOD NIGHT….hopefully you WILL hear from me this weekend with OT ideas/tips/tricks/thoughts/e-mail/blog catch up!
KD

Mar 26, 2011 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 5