Group Therapy
Welcome back families! It has been great seeing some of you during our online group therapy sessions this week! We are providing online group sessions this week and next week before learning labs begin on September 21st. We look forward to seeing all of you next week!
Our theme this week and next is ‘Getting ready in the morning’. This week we focused on ways to incorporate communication and motor skills into the everyday experience of getting dressed. Please see our slide presentation with links for dressing songs, tips for dressing and adaptive clothing lines.
Morning Routine Visual Schedule
Transitioning from summer to a new school year can be challenging for many students. Given our current situation, the 2020 school year presents an extra layer of difficulty for students and parents! One of the strategies we can use to help ease the transition is to establish a predecible morning routine and reinforce it by using a visual schedule.
- Talk with your child about each step of the process and show the pictures as you move through each task.
- Help your child to understand the sequence of events by using “first- then” to describe the tasks in relation to one another. For example, “First we get dressed, then we eat breakfast.”
Clothing choice board
A way to incorporate communication skills during your morning routine is to provide opportunities for your child to choose his or her clothing.
- Present 1 or 2 clothing options at a time.
- Ask different types of questions:
- Yes/no questions such as “Do you want to wear this sweater?”
- Multiple choice questions using different types of clothing such as “Do you want to wear pants or shorts?”
- Multiple choice questions using the same type of clothing adding descriptive words such as “Do you want to wear the blue shirt or the red shirt?
- ‘Wh-‘ questions such as “What do you want to wear?”
- Allow for different types of responses:
- Nod or shake head
- Look at, point to, or touch the clothing
- Point to picture symbols on a choice board
- Produce sounds or words
- Provide a verbal model to reinforce your child’s choice such as “Shirt”, “Blue shirt” or “I want blue shirt”.
- Show your child how to point to the words on the communication board as you say them.
As always, please feel free to contact me with questions at huntd@dearbornschools.org or 313-827-8335.