Want to become a better person? Join Lindsey and Renee for an extremely helpful and enjoyable episode. Learn practical games and activities to keep children engaged and help them build their fine and gross motor skills. From sock hockey to drawing watermelons this is a fun and informative episode. Just be forewarned that after this SPEDtalk, you will want to reconsider your current discipline and decide to become an occupational therapist.
Lindsey:
Good morning Facebook. How’s everybody doing today? I’m so excited to be here. Welcome to our show, SPED Talk. I’m your host, Lindsey Kucich, Global Teletherapy’s counseling and school psychology coordinator. Thank you for joining today’s show and discussing Move It, Don’t Lose It. So who is ready and watching, I want to know. Comment and tell me where you’re watching from, and feel free to ask questions throughout the show because we want to hear from you. So hi Ethan, hi Elana. Thank you guys so much for joining. Janet, all my favorite followers. I love all of you guys. So before we get started, take a minute right now, share this video so that way we can reach as many viewers as possible. And definitely to all my replay fans, I love it when you watch, so comment hashtag team replay.
Lindsey:
If you’ve missed any of our awesome shows, you can always find them on Global Teletherapy’s YouTube channel. And you definitely want to subscribe on our YouTube channel. So if you can stay up to date on all the tips that we share, just click that red subscribe button and you will get those notifications.
Lindsey:
Also of course, follow our Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn accounts, because on all of those accounts we have different information. So you want to stay plugged in with us. Just search for Global Teletherapy. And really exciting news, we actually just launched a new blog. It’s a video log. So, you want to check it out, go to the website, www.globallyfocused.com. So it’s a great, awesome place for you guys to get more information.
Lindsey:
We have series of videos. The first series is about virtual assessments. This is definitely something that is all the rage right now and so you really want to take a look, especially if that’s something that’s going to be coming up that you have to do this school year. So see what our experts have said on it.
Lindsey:
So everyone else, thanks so much for joining us. So without further delay, I want to introduce you to our guest. It’s our very own Global Teletherapy occupational therapist, Renee Matthews. So Renee has been an OT since 2016, and she’s worked with GT the last year. She has worked in inpatient rehabilitation centers, school-based settings, with a variety of disabilities so she really has a wonderful array of experiences to discuss with us. She has tackled the world of teletherapy with her creativity and she even jump-started a very integral YouTube page and Instagram page. So it has amazing therapy related information activity. So I’m actually really excited because she’s going to share more of that with us today. So are you guys ready for our fabulous guest and discussing our topic, Move It Or Lose It? So, hello Renee, thanks so much for joining us.
Renee:
Hi, good morning.
Lindsey:
Good morning. How are things on your side of the coast? You guys staying safe over there?
Renee:
Yes we are, and things are going really well. The weather’s gotten a little bit cooler, it was pretty hot for the last week.
Lindsey:
I know. We did have a crazy heat wave, though I’m not complaining. All my California friends, we are not complaining that it did hit a hundred when the rest of the world is melting. But this was really important for us because when it gets hot, sometimes we want to be more sedentary. We don’t want to get up, we don’t want to move, we have to be really intentional with our efforts.
Lindsey:
So moving and making sure we keep these skills is something really important. So I want you to tell us, is it important though for students to intentionally practice their skills over summer?
Renee:
Yeah, so I think it’s definitely important for students to practice their skills, especially over the summer during any break in educational programming. I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with the phrase practice makes perfect, I like to say practice makes better. In the OT world, we’re really striving for our students to become more functional, more independent. So not perfect, but functional, through whatever means that may be. Through adapting, modifying, things like that.
Renee:
And the more a student practices, the more automatic a skill becomes, the more fluid it becomes, the more precise it becomes. And the more automatic it becomes, the less energy it takes to perform a task. And you can also talk about generalization, where generalization also helps to increase retention of skills, and that’s basically a term to describe a transfer of skills across contexts, across different tasks. So the students that were learning maybe about visual perceptual skills and how they relate to school-related tasks through reading and writing, generalizing those skills would be generalizing it maybe over the summer to maybe they’re reading signs as they’re on vacation walking around or driving in the car.
Renee:
And now they have to use those visual perceptual skills in different environments and contexts. So it definitely is important to practice those skills, but I think it’s important also to note that you don’t want to make it intentional in the sense of it being work. So you don’t want to say, “Hey Johnny, nine o’clock every day over the summer we’re doing handwriting.” Johnny’s not going to be too happy. I wouldn’t be too happy, but you want to integrate practice of those skills in a fun way.
Lindsey:
Yes, oh for sure. And I know you’ve got some fun ideas that we’ll talk about a little later, but first, what are some common skills that would regress over the summer, and how does that affect them when school does start back up?
Renee:
Sure. Well, I think it’s really dependent on each individual student or child.
Renee:
So the children that are really active and jumping on the trampoline and playing tag with their friends and swimming and doing things like that, they’re working on a lot of really great gross motor skills, and the students that are maybe helping mom and dad out with cooking or gardening, or maybe they’re manipulating toys during imaginary play, they’re working on fine motor skills.
Renee:
I think it becomes more of a concern with the students and children that are more sedentary, maybe just watching TV a lot or staying inside and playing video games. That’s when you have to pinpoint the areas and give recommendations to parents to have skills to work on, and how to integrate them during the summer with different types of activities. But in general, I think the main area that I see regression in is with handwriting. And I actually just happened upon a research article through the American Journal of Occupational Therapy that did a replication study about handwriting and how much it’s addressed throughout the school day.
Renee:
And they found out that about three-ish to 18-ish percent of the school day is… Handwriting is addressed three-ish to 18-ish percent during the school day, so that’s really not much at all. And then if you take into consideration distance learning programs where the students are typing with maybe using the typing keyboarding, and they’re not really using a lot of handwriting, or they’re typing up their assignments and interacting through the computer, it might be less. And then even less maybe over the summer when there isn’t a formal school program.
Renee:
So that’s one of the areas that I see a lot of regression, but even though this digital era is growing and this technological era is growing, handwriting is still a very important skill. It does incorporate a lot of different skill areas, visual perceptual skills, visual motor skills, different kinds of motor coordination, letter recognition, memory, crossing midline, lots of really, really great skills, and their brain imaging in research has shown that handwriting plays a large role in letter recognition, learning those letters, and also it connects multiple areas of the brain and activates different areas of the brain which helps increase neural processing.
Renee:
And there is also research to show that handwriting helps with the absorption of information more as opposed to typing, where typing’s more efficient, handwriting you really have to process what you’re writing and it helps you to absorb the writing and absorb what you’re learning. So it’s still a very important skill to learn and it’s very important to still address that over the summer because that’s one of the main areas that I do see regress over the summer.
Lindsey:
So now I’m seriously looking at my life and wondering, “Is that okay?” Any other therapist going, “I’m not writing as much either, oh my gosh, what am I doing now as an adult?” And I’m thinking of when do I pick up a pen besides to sign my name, which is not legible, and then I’m like, “Well, grocery lists.” And then I’m like, “Well, no, because my handwriting is not legible.”
Lindsey:
I do have dysgraphia, but I will just blame it on that. But I’m like, “Nope, I type everything.” And I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness. So who else does not… Do you guys practice handwriting, anybody out there?” Don’t make me feel like I’m the only adult out here that’s all like, “Ah, digital age.” But let me tell you, my thumbs can get a workout and I can text you all day long.
Lindsey:
I’m like, “Gosh, well, I know how important being an example is.” And so before we even dive into any ideas to creatively incorporate these exercises that are not work into our daily routine, I really feel like adults, especially that are around children, find ways to evaluate what they’re doing to role model. So really take a look at what your daily activities do. Are you writing things? Are you demonstrating that writing is necessary? I think all of those things are super important and I love like, okay, so Elana, thank you. You say journaling. Yes, oh my gosh. So I do that. Again, I type it out.
Lindsey:
So I’m thinking what are my ways to overcome all these written tasks? So I want to make sure that we look at ourselves too, and I like this idea of journaling, GT, writing all day. Of course, there’s tons of paperwork that goes on. So some of you might just be at your desks and you just like to write things down, but really taking an inventory first and that way we can be great role models for our kids. Would you agree with that, Renee?
Renee:
Yes I would. I think also it’s important to note too that the students that do struggle greatly with handwriting, typing is absolutely a wonderful option and also the speech to text programs as well. But you don’t want it to be a sole focus, you still want to teach those skills even a little bit. And it is important functionally, because I remember working in the hospital, all of our power went out and we had to hand write all of our notes, and they had to be legible so that the doctors could read them, other therapists could read them.
Renee:
So things like that happen and it’s still a functional, usable skill in the world.
Lindsey:
Yeah. No, you make a really good point that we really should still make sure we teach and we incorporate. I’m sure my mom who’s watching, Hi mom, has lots of stories about all the arguments we had when we were writing, when I was a child. I’m sure she’ll post a comment about that… Because we do want to make this work for kids, and we don’t want them to be tortured.
Lindsey:
So what are some ways that students can incorporate these exercises in their daily routine without it looking like work? So I know you’ve got a couple of handouts, and so we’ll go through those and you can just tell us what great tips and tricks that you can share with us.
Renee:
Sure So with this handout specifically, the first thing that I address are some tips to improve motivation. So one of the first ones is incorporating motivating items. So that can be a child’s favorite TV show, favorite movie character, even favorite color, just incorporating that into the activities can make a world of difference.
Renee:
Also offering incentives like rewards. So maybe after everyone does an activity together we all go out and get ice cream. That can be very motivating, of course, for any child. Incorporating non-preferred tasks into preferred tasks. So what I mean by that, for example, so a non-preferred task would maybe be handwriting, and a preferred task maybe a game. So you might want to incorporate handwriting into an obstacle course. So maybe putting a handwriting station in an obstacle course where they have to do a handwriting challenge before they move on to the next stage. And also using multisensory methods, so using various textures, maybe handwriting specifically, handwriting and various textures, air writing in the air, using your body, making letters out of your body.
Renee:
These are all different types of multisensory methods that could help pique the interest of the child. Also changing the scenery, so instead of just doing tasks in the home, maybe go out to the park, go to the beach, go to the pool and do things in a different environment. Just change up the scenery a little bit.
Renee:
It’s also important to give the child control, some sort of autonomy. So I like to tell parents to give them a choice, don’t give them too many choices, but maybe give them two to four choices of activities and have them choose the activity that they want to do. And also you could make the activities competitive. You could try to race the clock to do an activity, you can try to compete against a sibling or an older adult, that can make it more fun for the child, and also getting the whole family involved.
Renee:
And the parents or the family needs to try to seem excited about the activity, because if everyone else is excited and everyone else is engaged, most likely the child is going to want to be engaged in the activity as well.
Renee:
So those are just general tips to improve motivation. And then I’m going to just go over a few ideas with different areas such as handwriting, gross motor, fine motor. So for handwriting in general, handwriting is a non-preferred task for many students, understandably it’s not the most fun thing in the world. So I try to sneak in handwriting however I can, wherever I can. So one idea is practicing air writing when traveling in the car.
Renee:
So mom or dad could practice forming letters in the air and have their child practice while they’re sitting in the backseat. You could also have the child use dry erase markers to write letters or words or numbers on the windows, on mirrors, and they can just wipe right off. You can incorporate letter or handwriting into games.
Renee:
One of my favorite things to do when I see a student face to face is writing letters or words or numbers on Jenga pieces, and when the student pulls that piece out they have to write that letter, number or word before they put the Jenga piece back and stack it back on the tower. You could make or decode secret messages, you could have your child make a secret message out of different symbols and have mom or dad try to crack the code. That’s really fun.
Renee:
You could also incorporate letters or numbers into fun little activities like this. We recently made… We’re working on the letter D. Is this the right way? No, it’s this way for you guys. It looks backwards for me. So forming the letter D, and then we turned it into a watermelon. And then also we made a little pineapple where we were working on our V’s and W’s.
Renee:
So that’s a way to… Just a fun way to incorporate some handwriting as well. And then with gross motor ideas, there are tons of things inside the house that you can use. Blankets, pillows, cushions, chairs to make an obstacle course. You can make a chalk obstacle course outside where you draw it and have the child follow along with different directives on the chalk obstacle course, you can make a duct tape laser course. That’s one of my favorite things to do, where you put duct tape across in a hallway and challenge the child to go through without touching the duct tape. You could do various tossing activities with socks, throwing socks into bins, transferring socks using your feet and transferring them into the bins, playing floor hockey with a broom and a ball.
Renee:
So those are all different ways you can incorporate gross motor ideas. And then on the second page, we have fine motor ideas. So the first idea that’s listed is incorporating small treats and manipulating small treats. So putting maybe M&Ms, jelly beans, little pretzels into an ice cube tray and using tweezers to try to take them out, to work on those grasp skills, and also manipulating those items in your hand and then dropping them back into the ice cube tray. It’s a little bit more motivating when they have a treat or something to look forward to eating after.
Renee:
Also you can create structures or mold animals using play dough. Play dough is one of my favorite tools to use because you can do so many things with it. You can form different shapes to work on visual perceptual skills, you can work on fine motor strengthening, you can work on fine motor coordination, all different types of activities you can do with play dough.
Renee:
Another idea. You can make origami. There are tons of videos online that are directed toward children to make different animals, origami animals. There are simple to more complex origami-making videos so you can definitely check those out online. And also you can trace your hand and turn it into an animal. So sometimes we’ll trace our hands, working on some great, fine motor visual motor skills and bilateral coordination and all that kind of stuff to trace our hand, and then turning that maybe into a peacock or an octopus, or something like that. And then visual perceptual ideas playing I-Spy in the home or wherever you are, if you’re… Even if you’re in the car, just trying to point out, “Oh, okay. I see something red, I see something blue,” and trying to see if your child can find whatever object that you are thinking of.
Renee:
Also replicating different designs with common objects. So taking a few pens or pencils and having your child try to copy a shape that you made or that you drew out, that’s working on some really great visual perceptual skills. And for visual tracking, this is the original cup game that I’m sure many people are familiar with, where you have three cups laid out and then you put a ball or an object under one cup and move the cups around and your child would have to track and use those great visual tracking skills to track the ball to guess what cup the ball is underneath.
Renee:
And also just doing puzzles or mazes, that incorporates a lot of great visual perceptual skills as well. And then finally, last but not least, some sensory ideas. So for tactile ideas, making sensory bins. There are so many different types of sensory bins that you can make with rice, dried beans, sand. You can put kinetic sand in there, there are tons of things and you could throw all sorts of different objects in there that your child would like to put in there and that they could use and feel and dig through. And it’s very fun for them.
Renee:
You could also make homemade putty or playdough. There are also a ton of recipes out there. There’s fluffy dough, there’s edible playdough. There are tons of different playdough recipes out there that you can check out.
Renee:
Also for tactile proprioceptive input, you can encourage your child to help out with cooking tasks. So kneading the dough if you’re making pizza or something like that. Mixing, molding, that’s working on a lot, not just sensory skills, but a lot of different fine motor skills and gross motor skills as well. And visual perceptual skills. Also encouraging the child to participate in different proprioceptive activities like climbing on a jungle gym at the park, jumping on a trampoline, crawling up the stairs, doing animal walks and making it fun and just kind of integrating that into the daily routine, or whatever you may be doing throughout the week.
Renee:
And also for breathing and oral motor sensory motor skills, you can blow bubbles. So blowing bubbles, who doesn’t love to blow bubbles? That works on a lot of great oral motor skills and you can also translate that into relaxation techniques. So making sure they take a deep breath in and then blowing the bubbles out as long as they can. So you can translate that into some really great relaxation techniques. So these are just a few ideas, there’s only so much you can put on a few pages of different ways to motivate the child to practice these skills.
Lindsey:
I think those ideas are absolutely amazing. And everybody who watched, I know you’re going to want these handouts after the show. So don’t worry, there’ll be available. To get the handouts, you do need to be a member of the Therapist Hub, which is Global Teletherapy’s page for a therapist.
Lindsey:
You must be a therapist to have access to this hub, but everybody, if you’re a traditional or virtual, feel free to join it, we’d love to have you in our group and get more resources.
Lindsey:
But after all of that information Renee, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that was like, “Oh my gosh, I should be an OT.” This sounds like… I absolutely loved those letters, turning it into the watermelon and turning it into the pineapple. What a great and creative way to do that. So as therapists, if there was something that you saw off that list that you either currently do or that you want to start doing, put that in the comments, I want to know what you guys are doing. And then I’m like, “I think I need to find a way to incorporate this into my mental health sessions.”
Lindsey:
I’m sure there’s overlap and we can do lots of things. I think doing cross-discipline activities is really helpful for the child, really help generalizing, so I’m sure all my other disciplines could steal ideas from that as well. But those look like so much fun.
Lindsey:
Now, if all of you were like, “Wait, I need more than just a list. And I need someone to tell me how I should do this because sometimes I don’t do directions really well.” So Renee has these amazing videos on her YouTube channel. So after the show, Renee, definitely post in our therapist hub or in the comments of this video where they can find these awesome, awesome YouTube channels. What’s the name of your channel?
Renee:
So my YouTube channel is just Miss Renee OT, and then my Instagram is Miss Renee underscore OT. So you can just research that way.
Lindsey:
That’s awesome. So you guys definitely go look for that, support Renee in that because those ideas and those videos are going to be absolutely amazing, you’re going to want to incorporate those. You could also share those with your parents, that way the parents can make those activities and that’s a really important piece of this as well, is that they have to do more than just outside of your session.
Lindsey:
They got to keep doing it throughout the day, not just your once a week. So it’s a great resource for your parents to utilize as well. So this is wonderful. And of course, we’re focusing on this term summer slide, which I’ve heard before, you kind of alluded to it, but now with students being out of school for months, and then we don’t even know what’s happening next year, we’re also talking about COVID slide. So can you explain what these terms mean and what that looks like for our kiddos?
Renee:
Sure. So the summer slide is basically a term to describe a student’s decline in skills over the summer break when school’s not in session. And now it’s kind of transitioned into the COVID side. Now it’s not just the two or three months over the summer, now it’s all stretching all the way back to March, so now it’s like six months of a slide. And there is some conflicting information in the research about the validity of the summer slide. It’s really dependent on the students, the individual student, the subject material, the age of the student, the student’s socioeconomic status, but it’s still nonetheless a fear with parents and educators in general. And it’s still something that we should address.
Renee:
And I think specifically for this new COVID slide now, I think the brick and mortar schools unfortunately were hit a lot worse than the distance learning programs. I think being in a distance learning program, we were a lot more fortunate because we already had our program and our platforms established prior to this COVID pandemic where everything shut down.
Renee:
So personally my schools were shut down for about a week and then we jumped right back into it. And unfortunately the brick and mortar schools had to run around and create their programmings and find different platforms, and the students weren’t prepared and they weren’t familiar with it, where our students were already familiar with it and they knew the expectations and things like that.
Renee:
But nonetheless, even our students in the distance learning programs were affected by stress-related factors that contributed to absenteeism such as illness, stress from a parent job loss, change in living circumstances, psychological factors, all those sorts of things. So that all contributes to this term the summer slide or COVID slide as well.
Lindsey:
Now those are fantastic things. So when we know that these things are going to happen, we can better prepare for it and we can better help the student by assessing during the slide or shortly thereafter. But obviously our standardized tools are not standardized for this type of situation. So using those or informal assessments, what should therapists be doing to look and assess the skill level during the situation?
Renee:
Sure. So I think in the beginning when we started out with this COVID slide, I think it’s first very important to be aware of the different factors that could contribute to a slide or regression with our students, and understand that there could be a potential regression due to other factors. That’s I think the number one priority. And then also just preparing and being proactive for it. So luckily in the distance learning programs, we still had some time in school before the summer break.
Renee:
So what I like to do personally is I like to send out a worksheet to my parents, or not a worksheet, more like an informational handout to my parents, addressing the skill areas and different types of activities that they can work on with their children over the summer to carry over some of those skills over the summer. And I make it very simple. I make it no prep or low prep tasks with activities, that they may have in the home or… Sorry, resources that they may have in the home already. And that’s a way to prevent that regression and give the parents the tools that they might need to help during this hard time of inconsistency.
Renee:
Also, I think it’s important to take solid baseline data prior to specifically to summer break. So I personally take a new baseline at the end of the school year prior to summer break, and then I can compare that to the data that I collect at the beginning of the school year. And I give the students a few weeks in the beginning of the school year because they’re still getting back into the swing of things.
Renee:
I don’t want to take data the first day that they’re back, they just need to get comfortable with being back in school again. So I wait about a week or so and then reassess and see where they are, and see if they progress, if they maintain their skills, if they regress a little bit, how much they regress, and then you can modify your programming dependent on all of that information you took.
Renee:
And I think also you want to keep an open line of communication with the parents, be interactive with them. Parents and teachers, if you’re still in school, being interactive with the teachers, the case managers, all that, all of those different people so that you can be updated with the information and what’s going on with the child, and maybe what areas they’re starting to struggle more in during this slide, or how we can prevent the slide from getting worse.
Renee:
And I think… So specifically talking about giving some recommendations of activities and things to do over the summer with parents, I actually had a parent who reached out to me. I always tell the parents there’s always an open line of communication, you can reach out to me whenever you want if you need anything. And a parent actually requested specifically if I could form a little program for lack of better terms for them over the summer of different things to do, like a calendar of things to do over the summer because she said that her child really works well in a structured environment and with a structured routine.
Renee:
So I gave different areas to work on and then I had a list of activities that the child could choose from, and just basically put in the calendar morning and afternoon, fine motor skill activity, visual motor skill activity, as she said, it’s been working out really great.
Renee:
So that’s another idea that you can do. And I do a little happy dance when a parent reaches out to me and asks me for more resources and things to work on with their child, I don’t mind at all doing the extra work if it helps to benefit the child. So these are all ways that you can help to assist or assess during the summer slide.
Lindsey:
I think that’s fantastic, and I absolutely love the parent involvement. And I think you bring up a really important point. Our parents want to be involved, who doesn’t want to be involved in their child’s life? Of course these parents do. But we also have to remember that we’re trained, we know what to look for, so we have to help these parents identify what they should be looking for.
Lindsey:
All they know is that there’s an issue, sometimes they don’t even know how to describe it. So if we can give the language to the parents and then the ideas that go with it, I think that would help more engagement, less frustration, and more success for the students. So really that open communication, so important. I’m glad this parent was on top of it and they’re like, “I know I need something,” and they might not know what they need, so this is where that assessment piece comes in.
Lindsey:
We know how to assess. So let us do the assessment, find those holes, find those weaknesses, and then explain it in terms where the parent can understand along with helpful strategies that again don’t look like work, to really keep these skills engaged over the summer when those sessions aren’t occurring regularly.
Lindsey:
So Renee, thank you so much for giving us all of these amazing tips and for being such an awesome therapist, especially in the teletherapy world where this is just blowing up, and we’re going to need as much support as possible. So I really appreciate you taking the time and joining us on the show.
Renee:
Sure. Thank you so much for having me.
Lindsey:
All right, friends. I am so excited that we’ve had another amazing show today, and guess what? We’re going to be back next week. So I know, right? What is this? Two weeks in a row? We took some time off. So join us next week on social skills and teletherapy. I’m going to have an amazing guest on our show to go over that with us.
Lindsey:
So thanks again for watching and always remember, what are we trying to do? We are trying to be kind first. In these times where we are in such a flux of up and down, this COVID rollercoaster that we are riding, always remember to be kind, but be kind first. Because all of our friends out there need to show a little love and a little care. So remember to do your part. Thank you again for watching. We’ll see you again next week.
