My Obstacle Course: Engage, Encourage and Empower

A fun, structured, systematic way to work on your child's strengths and weaknesses at home!

Archives for May 2011

Pretend Play – Theme Boxes

When I first set out to really work with Andrew, one of the things that I wanted to focus on was his pretend play skills. I thought about what preschools and kindergartens did to encourage children to pretend play and realized that they simply provide materials for children to experiment with and play with usually based on a given theme for the week.

I remember our school receiving several kits while I taught kindergarten and my students loved going to the stations that had those kits. There was one in particular that was a paleontologist kit which had a little sand bin with fossils, bones and eggs that you could bury and unearth using toothbrushes, paintbrushes. The children would put on safari type hats, khaki vests and for that short time, they were paleontologists! There were some children who preferred to just play with the dinosaur figures and that was okay. I knew that it would not be that easy or natural for Andrew but thought that there had to be some way to introduce and expose him to this sort of fun thing using a more strategic manner.

It happened to be right around his birthday when I was thinking about this so when family members asked what he wanted, I told them that instead of going out and buying another toy he wasn’t going to play with, I asked them to choose a theme, get creative by getting things that reinforced that theme so we could make pretend play more meaningful while making connections. This did not have to cost a lot of money and could not include anything that had an on/off switch. We got so many fabulous things ranging from books to costumes and everyone had so much fun knowing that they were doing something that would help him.

The themes I chose were: cook, firefighter, farm, space, dinosaurs, doctor, construction, grocery store, cars.

 

Chef Andrew cooking up some Chex cereal concoction. He was only willing to lick, not eat what we made but that was farther than we had ever gotten with something like that!

 

It was so great and I still have those boxes, adding books or toy figures to them if they go along with the theme.

In my mind, working on building pretend play skills has to begin with relating it to one’s own life. This is a bit more challenging when a child is only focused on themselves but having theme boxes at home is a great way to slowly build this awareness in a safe environment.

When introducing this with Andrew in My Obstacle Courses, I began by choosing a theme, looked at the contents of the box and picked one thing to introduce. This was as simple as matching up the big dinosaur with the little dinosaur, putting a tool on it’s name card, or pointing to the ladder on a fire truck. This may seem basic, and if it is for your child, make it more in line with what they can do, but I was starting where he was, building the foundation. I would start this way because it is not as intimidating as sitting there with a bunch of stuff that they don’t relate to, cannot name and don’t know the purpose of. They cannot know what they do not know (just like us, huh!) and some children need this kind of play introduced more strategically.

From there we progressed to concepts like animals learning how to make friends using social scripts. A hammer used to tap a nail (or a golf tee) into a piece of thick foam. Dried beans, rice and pasta can be poured into a large bowl and stirred to make a colorful “salad” or “soup.”

Scripting Play

I strongly encourage using scripts if your child struggles with “getting” pretend play. It made all the difference in the world for us. It removed lots of unnecessary words from my mouth before the play actually began, which can often overwhelm and confuse him. It made it official, after all, it was printed out on a sheet of paper! It also provided a logical sequence of activity.

Ex. Push the blue car up the ramp. Park the blue car in a parking space. Put the red car in the elevator. Make the elevator go down. The red car needs gas. The red car is ready to go!

That’s it! Nothing fancy required but it made a huge difference. This gave Andrew a schema for what to do with these items, how to use them and what all of the parts of the garage could do. I did add some pretend play talk and noises while he was moving the cars around to model this for him.

While it did not happen overnight, just last night we got to listen to him pretend play with a castle and some people. The queen had gotten “hurt” and he walked two knights over to get her, making them walk across the floor while saying, “Oh no, she’s hurt!” They got her and brought her back to the castle. Some of you may think this is not a big deal and others may feel like they’ll never get there (I was like you!) but I feel that any small step one can take to move toward a goal is a step worth trying and taking.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

 

Patriotic Pinwheel Blowing

Patriotic Pinwheel

You may have picked some of these up for your yard or bicycle this Memorial Day but did you also realize that you can use this patriotic yard decoration to help your child build oral motor skills?

Andrew had a lot of difficulty trying to figure out how to blow air out of his mouth so I was always on the lookout for ways to help him. I found this particular pinwheel at Michael’s and thought that I could have him blow it to make it spin, giving meaning and purpose to something he finds challenging, while incorporating something he loves, spinning!

When I used this as a My Obstacle Course station activity, I had him either blow the pinwheel a certain number of times or use a certain number of blows. I found that providing him with a straw helped significantly because it gave his mouth some structure. (We also used a straw to blow out birthday candles. Much more empowering for him to do it that way as opposed to having us do it for him.) This year, we will try it without the straw to continue building his oral motor skills.

Note: Try blowing the pinwheel before purchasing it because some of them would get stuck or were more difficult to get spinning, which would only cause frustration.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Velvet Coloring Pages

These are Velvet Coloring Books that I found in the dollar section of Target recently. (Andrew also got one yesterday from a friend at school as a birthday favor.)

Flowers
Cars
Jungle Animals

I have seen these many times before, I even remember coloring with them while I was growing up but picked them up because I thought they would be great for someone who struggles with fine motor skills of coloring. The velvet edges create a natural border around the space to be colored and since the velvet is black, any markings that go beyond the coloring space is not as noticeable.

This is something that I would incorporate into several different My Obstacle Courses knowing that coloring is not a preferred activity for Andrew but using this a little bit at a time, maybe one section at a time, to help build his coloring confidence. I have seen little glimpses of him wanting to color but also struggling with his thoughts that he’s not good at it.

To be completely honest with you, I don’t really care if he is a “good” colorer or not. What my intention with something like this is to give him an opportunity to practice this skill in a safe environment, allowing him to experiment and practice the coloring strokes without judgement or worry about what someone else might say or think. If it turns out to be something that he enjoys but just needed to build fine motor skills in order to do this, than great!

This thought process is not limited to coloring but is something I think is an important benefit of doing My Obstacle Courses with him at home. He gets opportunities to build strengths and weaknesses at the level he is ready for without the worry or pressure of judgement.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

Calendar Numbers With Story Starters

I recently found these calendar numbers at the teacher store and thought they were perfect for summer. In addition to being great for working on number recognition and number order, these also include “Story Starters” on the back to encourage creative writing.

Calendar Days with Story Starters by Teacher Created Resources

Each calendar number has a story starter on the back which makes them perfect for either independent journaling or writing together with your child on the computer, depending on what works best with your child.

Story Starters

I am going to include this as a My Obstacle Course station activity to use with my laptop so we can write and print out the short stories or paragraphs that he comes up with. I probably won’t do this daily but will set out 3 or 4 numbers, have him choose a number and that will give us the story starter for that day.

Something like this is difficult for Andrew (and lots of other children) since it requires him to think beyond what he is doing in the present moment so I’m not going to pair it with something else that he struggles with – handwriting. I am going to work with him, type as he talks, start sentences for him to finish, perhaps guide him back to the topic if he gets distracted or starts chatting about ceiling fans. (I can just hear his response to the story starter shown above – “I think people should take more time to…photograph and videotape their ceiling fans. It would be great for them to email them to me or post them on YouTube so I can watch them.” This really could be his response! I’ll let you know what he actually says 🙂 .

If you have a child that can do something like this independently, I suggest allowing them to pick out a special summer journal notebook or if this is something that you will be helping them with on the computer, perhaps a binder that they can decorate. I think something as simple as this could make it more meaningful, especially if you have a reluctant writer. Andrew is always more motivated to do something if he gets to run to the printer to see his work printed out. We will definitely be decorating a binder for him to collect the work he does this summer!

If your child has difficulties getting started with the writing process, go slowly! Work with them on brainstorming first, looking at the topic to see if there are any personal connections that they can make.

Sample conversation for the story starter “If I had my own robot…”:

Well, what do robots typically do? Help make work easier or do things that people don’t want or like to do. What are some things that you don’t like to do but have to do? Oh! Make your bed? Wash your hands? Brush your teeth? Put your clothes away? So, if you had your own robot that could do whatever you didn’t want to do, what would you have it do?

  • This could be expanded to why they don’t like to do the task or what they could do with the time saved by not having to do what the robot does. It doesn’t have to be perfect! Just have fun with them, maybe share your responses with them. What is important is to encourage them to make connections and think about how to relate topics to themselves.

After brainstorming, start out with encouraging them and helping them write a few sentences about the topic. From there, move to picking a sentence (topic sentence or main idea) that they can expand on or describe with more details to create a paragraph. Writing is difficult for many children and by progressing slowly and giving the process meaning within their own lives, they will begin to translate the process to things that maybe they don’t have personal experience with.

Note: You don’t need these cards in order to do an activity like this. I just saw them and looked like they would be great for a My Obstacle Course station. You can make up your own or even google search story starters. When I did that, I found this Story Starter Machine from Scholastic. Pretty cool and free!

Engage, Encourage and Empower!

The Nap Mat…Not Just For Napping!

Ahhhh…the nap mat! How I would love to have a mandatory nap time. Perhaps I’ll carry this around with me and when I get tired whip it out and take a nap. Wouldn’t that be awesome!!

Perfect for forward rolls!

This is something I picked up two years ago at the beginning of the school year for Andrew to use during nap time. This year, they had quiet time but not nap time so the nap mat stayed home. As I was setting up a My Obstacle Course and was looking through my closet to see what sort of fun physical, OT- like stuff I could incorporate, I decided that the nap mat would work perfectly!

At the time he was somersaulting everywhere, in fact his preferred mode of transportation in his classroom was by flipping and somersaulting. Having taught for 9 years, I must say I was stumped by that conversation I had to have with his teacher!! Anyways, I decided that his body must be needing this sort of input and incorporated this by using the nap mat as a station, allowing him to somersault his way from one station to the next. He was thrilled and even snuck in a few additional rolls.

As with most things, he eventually moved beyond the somersaulting and on to loving just being upside down. We’d find him hanging like a bat on shelves, something I don’t recall reading about when I read, “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” but then again, most things I’ve encountered with him weren’t in there 🙂 . I incorporated this as well by using the mat to help him do head stands,

Andrew using the nap mat to do a headstand against the closet door.

hand stands and wall climbs (He places his hands down on the mat and walks his legs up the wall/door until he is doing a handstand. I’d suggest a door to a closet or something that can be cleaned easily with a Clorox wipe or something similar unless you’d like feet marks up and down your walls :). Speaking from experience here!).

Andrew using the nap mat to walk up the wall/closet door.

It folds up nicely for storage in our closet and requires only about 1 second of set up time. Gotta love that!!

Nap mat folded up.

Engage, Encourage, Empower!

 

Make Your Own Counting Book

I wanted to work on the math concepts of “How many ___?” and “How many in all?” with Andrew. While my first preference is to use objects or manipulatives, I also realized that it would be helpful for him to be able to count things on paper. I wanted to see how he would do discriminating visually between objects, counting only the things he was asked to count and see if he’d miss any or double count some things.

Counting pages which were then made into a book. Here he is at age 4 counting.

The photograph above shows what the station looked like. So easy to make yet helped him build his counting skills and helped me get a good idea of his counting skills. I simply took a sheet of paper and got out some stickers. I began with each page having just one kind of object for him to count. I also included a number sheet so he could point to the number. This was important because at that time he was not using any consonants so when he counted it sounded a lot like, “uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh-uh, uh, un, uh.” While I could understand his intonations and inflections, as slight as they were, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t putting an answer on him by thinking I heard something I didn’t.

We did it this way for a while and then when I felt like he got that, I added two different objects for him to count. I placed a few of one color star sticker randomly on the paper and then a few of some other colors.

Counting stars page.

I wrote out the questions:

  • How many green stars?
  • How many purple stars?
  • How many red stars?
  • How many stars in all?

I created several different pages using different stickers and different amounts.

Some textured sparkly stickers used to create this page.

I would recommend choosing stickers that are the same at first before moving on to stickers of like items.

I put the pages together by placing the pages into sheet protectors and placing those in report covers. If you are using construction paper, you will have to cut the paper down a bit so it’ll fit in the protectors. These could also just be stapled together.

He really enjoyed doing this activity and loved the fact that he could “read” the book on his own.

Engage, Encourage and Empower!