Author: Joseph Evens

As occupational therapists, we often work with students on self-feeding. The students we work with may have difficulties with sensory processing skills or oral motor skills that make feeding difficult.

In addition, we work closely with these students’ parents to ensure carry over of skills.

Here are some helpful tips when working on feeding with your child.

1. Have your child help with meal preparation. This allows the child to experience sensory stimuli such as touch, smell, taste, and sight. If the child gains more awareness of the ingredients, they may be more likely to try the food.
2. Meals should last no longer than 20-30 minutes. When a child has difficulty with feeding, we want to make sure that we are not pushing them too much. If we push too much, the child may resent mealtime. We want to make sure mealtimes are fun and productive.
3. When having dinner, parents should offer the child at least one preferred food item. This will encourage and motivate the child to eat more.
4. Parents should offer non-preferred foods EVERY OTHER DAY. We do not want to burn the child out. We want to make sure that they are still excited and invested in the feeding process.
5. If a child gets upset during feed, stop the meal all together and revisit the food about 30-60 minutes later. This rule of thumb will give the child some time to reset before trying feeding again.
6. The child should decide how much to eat. If the child requests to stop eating, then we should listen. As an adult, if we were full but had someone tell us to keep eating, we would not be too happy. We need to keep the child’s requests in mind.
7. If the parent wants the child to eat more (maybe due to weight concerns) then the parent should suggest eating more only 2-3 times. After trying to encourage them to eat the third time, we should stop the feeding process.

One of the biggest tips I can give to parents is to make feeding time FUN! Allow your child to explore his/her food by playing in it. In addition, we should keep feeding time social by talking and interacting with the child throughout the whole process.

Working on feeding with a child can be overwhelming and at times, stressful. However, we need to remind ourselves that self-feeding is not an over-night fix. As long as we are patient and determined, the child WILL make progress.

Hello everyone!

Great news!! Snow and Oakman have implemented the Motor Moms and Dads program in the Kindergarten classrooms!

Research has shown that good motor skills has a direct impact on students academic success. In order to reach optimal readiness for reading, writing, spelling, and math, students should have a solid foundation of motor skills. These motor skills include adequate balance, gross motor/bilateral coordination skills, fine motor/visual motor skills, near-point visual skills, and visualization/visual memory.

Gross Motor Skills- the coordination of our large muscles (walking, running, skipping)

Bilateral Coordination Skills- using both sides of the body to complete a task (jumping jacks, running, walking)

Fine Motor Skills- the coordination of our small muscles in our hand (manipulating buttons, holding a pencil, cutting with scissors)

Visual Motor Skills- the ability to coordinate our eyes and movements (coloring, cutting, kicking a ball, catching a ball, building block).

Near-point Visual Skills- using our eyes to complete a task at a distance of 12-18 inches (copying words, doing puzzles)

Visualization/visual memory- the ability to recall the details of a what you see (memorizing site words

It is important for children to complete homework. It is equally important for kids to play at home! With play, children have the opportunity to build on these motor skills necessary for reading, writing, and math skills.

Here is a photo of Mr. Joe demonstrating Motor Moms and Dads for volunteers

Hello everyone!

This month, we are raising awareness for Person First Language.

1. “A child with autism” rather than “autistic child.”
2. “A person who uses a wheelchair” rather than “wheelchair-bound person.”
3. “A student with Down Syndrome” rather than “Down Syndrome student.”

Hi everyone!

This week, Staci and I (as well as Mrs. Kraft, the resource teacher) will be going into classes at Snow to discuss ADHD with the students.

It is important for students to understand this disorder in order to be empathetic and helpful to classmates who may have ADHD.

It is also a great strategy to raise awareness for ADHD and debunk the stigma that comes along with the disorder.

For parents out there who have a child with ADHD, I found that listing names of celebrities that also have this diagnosis can be empowering to children. Below are famous celebrities that have a diagnosis of ADHD (from webmd.com):

Simone Biles (Oympic gold medalist)

Michael Phelps (Olympic gold medalist)

Justin Timberlake (Grammy award winning artist)

Adam Levine (from Maroon 5, Grammy award winning artist)

Jim Carrey (Comedian and actor)

Channing Tatum (actor)

It is important to discuss ADHD with friends, families, and children to continue to raise awareness of this diagnosis and eliminate any stigma!

Thank you!

Joe and Staci

Hi everyone!

Staci and I are super excited to be back and are ready to kick off a new school year!

For today’s blog, I want to discuss a strategy that I incorporate into every one of my treatment sessions: animal walks.

Animal walks are fun and easy exercises that help improve students upper body strength, proximal stability and motor planning. We need all three of these components to be successful in the school environment.

One type of animal walk is called the bear crawl. Students walk on their hands and feet in a 4-point position without allowing their knees to touch the ground. This exercise is great for shoulder strengthening!

Another type of animal walk is called the crab walk. Students start off in the “table position” and use their hands and feet to walk forward/backward/sideways without allowing their bottom to touch the ground. This is another great exercise for upper arms and core.

A third type of animal walk is called the frog jump. The student will start off in a squat position with their hands on the floor in between their knees. Then the student will use their feet/legs to jump up and forward, landing with their feet and hands on the floor. This exercise is great for upper body strengthening and motor planning.

These animal walks are great strategy to help develop motor skills!

Please feel free to comment with any questions!

Have a great day!

Joe and Staci

Hi Everyone!!

I hope you are all staying warm and enjoying the snow!

Today, we would like to discuss the importance of play!

As school occupational therapist, we promote learning through play. We work on many academic tasks such as writing and cutting. We also work on life skills such as organization and self-feeding as well as promote independence. As OTs, we work on these skills through play. A student’s “occupation” to play is important for the developmental aspects necessary to successfully participate in the school environment. Play promotes development in coordination, emotional maturity, social skills, and self-confidence to try new experiences and explore new environments.

The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), provides multiple resources to help parents learn more about the importance of play as well as how parents and OTs can work together to benefit the child. Below are AOTA’s tip sheets for parents to read over.

Learning Through Play

Building Play Skills Tip Sheet

Please feel free to leave comments with your questions!

Have a great day!

Hi Everyone!

In Occupational Therapy, our students are working hard  on visual motor control. Visual motor control is the ability to coordinate visual information with motor output. Examples of visual motor tasks are handwriting, painting, coloring, and cooking.

This week, I developed an activity that incorporates sensory and visual motor integration!

Shaving Cream Mazes!

1. Our students squeezed shaving cream into baggies
2. For additional sensory input, some students added paint for color
3. I created different mazes with varied difficulty, as you can see below:
   
4. The students were asked to isolate their index finger and trace the mazes

This activity was super fun and addressed sensory and visual motor control!

For additional fun, I hid objects within the shaving cream and students had to find them!

This is a simple and inexpensive activity that could be easily recreated at home!!

If you have any questions please feel free to comment below!

Have a great day!

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all enjoying the Fall weather and color changes.

In the spirit of the Fall season, we thought we would show you guys a fun and easy activity to do at home.

This week in my OT groups, I had my students make “puffy paint.” “Puffy paint” is super easy to make and is a lot of fun to paint with.

Here are the directions:

1. First, find a coloring page with a Fall theme
   1. For my class, we used this outline of an apple
   2. 
2. Then gather the ingredients to make “puffy paint”
   1. Shaving cream
   2. Liquid glue
   3. Colored paint
      1. 
3. First, squeeze shaving cream about half way into a cup
4. Then, squeeze a lot of liquid glue into the cup with the shaving cream
5. Using a spoon, mix the two ingredients together
6. Then, add 3-5 drops of colored paint into the mix
7. Using the same spoon, mix in the paint
8. Then, scoop some of the mixture onto the apple outline and spread it using the spoon
   1. IMPORTANT: do not spread the “puffy paint” too thin, you want to make sure the “puffy paint” is nice and fluffy
9. Let your masterpiece dry over night
10. Enjoy your awesome work!
    1. Here is an example of a student’s AWESOME work!
       1.  

This activity is great for visual motor integration, bilateral coordination, and sensory!

That is it for this week! If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to comment!

Have a great rest of the week!

Hi everyone! Joe and Staci here! Ready for another fun activity?!

Children develop writing skills as their fine motor and visual motor system are developing.  Often times awkward pencil grips are the result of a lack of fine motor development.  Fine motor activities are quickly disappearing in a world of technology. While screens and video games have a place, it’s important to use our hands/fingers and develop these skills in a 3-dimensional world instead of a 2-dimensional screen. Remember to have your child use his/her hands to develop both eye-hand coordination and small muscles.

Developing two sides of the hand helps with fine motor skills, including holding a pencil or crayon efficiently – a skill needed for development of writing

Here are 5 fine motor activities to help develop the small muscles of the hand, as well as eye-hand coordination.

You can look up more fine motor activities such as these on Pinterest.com.

• Use toothpicks with fruit to make shapes/designs

• Use a small sponge to paint a picture – dip the sponge into cup of water to change colors of paint and squeeze with 3 fingers (the fingers used to hold a pencil).

• Use kitchen tongs/tweezers to pick up various items. – this activity develops the 2 sides of the hand and aids in learning how to use scissors as well

• Use clothespins when practicing spelling words.

• String buttons or beads onto pipe cleaners.  Hold the pipecleaner in non-dominant hand and pick up buttons/beads with thumb/index finger of dominant hand.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments! Enjoy your week!

Hi everyone!

Joe and Staci here! We are two Occupational Therapists lucky enough to be working at Snow Elementary!

Together, we will be providing students, parents, guardians, ANYONE with awesome and fun activities that relate to Occupational Therapy skills such as sensory integration, fine motor coordination and strength, gross motor coordination and strength and activities of daily living.

To start us off, we have attached a picture from Pinterest of a Fall Themed Sensory Bin!

In your clear bin, you can include:

• River rocks (large, medium and small)
• Plastic pumpkins and gourds
• Plastic acorns
• Felt leaves
• Small apple-pumpkin scented candle
• Foam sticker leaves
• Foam sticker pumpkins and apples
• Foam sticker footballs

Once all of your items are in your bin, the sky is the limit!

Examples of some activities you can do are:

• Let your child explore the different textures, shapes and smells.
• Have your child scoop out the rocks with an ice cream scoop or fingers  and place them into ice cube holders.
• Have your child separate the large rocks from the small rocks using tongs.
• You can hide the different items within the sensory bin and have your child search for them.

That is one example of the awesome and fun activities we will be posting each week!

Subscribe to our blog and let us know if you try one of our suggestions!