sparkle sparkle sparkle!
The other day a child with pretty significant ADHD (not on my caseload) walked past me in the learning center (I was sitting at a desk doing paperwork) and instantly stopped saying “Sparkle sparkle sparkle!!” She started touching my hair. I have hair tinsel because I do LOVE sparkles. 🙂 I was like Ooh! Do I have any left? I typically get about 12 pieces put in but I hadn't seen any in a while so figured they had all fallen out. She determined I had four pieces left. Then she saw my face. “Sparkle sparkle sparkle!” she said, pointing to my eyes. I also wear glitter eyeliner. Because again, I do love sparkles. 🙂
That encounter tickled me…she was enthralled. I've also had children with autism (notice my person first language?) look me in the eye because of my glitter eyeliner catching their eyes. I'm a big believer in appealing to the child demographic as an elementary school OT, even if it makes me a little extra eccentric to adults, lol.
(Side note – if you put a child with autism in front of a mirror and put fingerpaint or face paint on their face, they will often look themselves in the eye longer. And if you put the child with autism on one side of a tunnel and you on the other, essentially turning the tunnel into “blinders”, they will also often look directly at you.)
I've also had two SEPARATE encounters where I walked into a 1st or 2nd grade classroom and a young girl sitting near the door in both cases immediately latched on to me saying “I like your glasses! I like your hair! I like your shirt!” etc, in one long breathless exclamation……both times I laughed and it made my day. It was funny it happened almost identically in two different classrooms!! I LOVE working with kids! They say and do the funniest things!
Just for the record though I've also had plenty of days where kids refuse to acknowledge my existence, haha. I just choose to remember the fun days… 😉
I've been using my push-pin on corkboard handwriting game with bouncy dice a LOT lately….pretty much all the kids are drawn to it. Then we proceed to use the lava/worms/bumblebee sizing rules….I know I was asked to put up an example, I will try to get a picture in the next day or so! Along with my long-promised Dycem post and Linda's daily living skills post! And soon a Pen Again post (those funky Y shaped pens)….a little girl today refused my normal pencils today, saying she wanted to use the “awesome pencil” (referring to the Pen Again samples I received today in the mail to review!)
I'm starting to feel significant stress for the first time this year as the demands increase, but overall still LOVING my job in the school system! SO much fun!
I just spent an hour on the phone with a long-term blog reader, Meredith, who is doing a fieldwork in one of my old haunts. It was lovely! Okay now it's 7:15pm and I should probably get some work done…..blah
Karen