Saturday, June 18, 2011

Home-therapy, the OT edition

Here is the promised follow-up to the physical therapy post earlier this week. Lauren's OT sessions in the gym often work on core strength and overlap a lot with her physical therapy exercises. She works some on fine motor skills, even though that's not necessarily a big area of weakness for her. She is naturally drawn to activities that draw upon her fine motor skills, and I'll share just a few things we do at home.

Lying on the scooter board while playing with dollhouse people

Multi-tasking: balancing, knitting, and watching TV

Toast for breakfast

She not only built the towers, she photographed them all as well.

Art projects

Knitting a tablecloth

Our backyard (or rather back porch) sandbox

A bit of coloring using an improvised slant board

4 comments:

  1. OK, explain to me the rationale behind the scooter board while playing with the dollhouse stuff? And, why a slanted board while coloring? I love the sandbox. Taylor absolutely LOVES playing in the sand and I had made her a sandbox like that a few yrs ago but we ended up ditching it when we moved. I think I need to make her another one :)
    I love that Lauren took the pic of the tower she built! Awesome! I'd also love any tips you can share on teaching a child to knit.

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  2. The scooter board activities help Lauren with core strength, especially in terms of her shoulders. Anything she does in a prone position is good, and pushing/pulling herself while on the scooter board is a great workout.

    You can tell in the picture of her coloring on the slanted surface that she hooks her hand/wrist while she works. The slanted surface discourages that and encourages a more natural position where the fingers work more and the wrist/arm moves less.

    The best part about the new sandbox is that the stuff that spills out just gets swept between the boards of the deck.

    As for teaching a child to knit, it probably deserves a post of its own. It took me a while to figure out how to adapt traditional knitting to a preschooler level. I'll take photos this week and put up a tutorial (so to speak) sometime soon.

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  3. I think we need a peanut ball, and I love the idea for laying on the scooter board. Anna needs to work on core strength in a big way.

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  4. Visiting from the Crew and following now. I have a special kiddo too - LOVE your home PT pics!! I am so making a sandbox for our back porch!! And I have never thought of getting a scooter board for Music Man. Genius!! He loves his bouncy ball and is on it a lot.

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