Please check out this fabulous article, that I was interviewed for, of ideas from all different professionals on how to set up the ideal homeschool space
How to Set Up a Virtual or Homeschool Learning Space for Kids by Michael Crouch
Boost learning at home by setting up a brand new space for your child that will help them feel focused and comfortable with these organization tips and homeschool room ideas
In our ever developing digital age, many children are highly motivated by screen time. I have found a great way to “sneak” in basic handwriting training for letter formation through a variety of different apps. These apps are excellent to introduce to children, especially those that have a strong dislike for pencil-paper tasks.
Parents & teachers are often asking which are the best handwriting applications to use on iDevices. Here is a list of apps, starting low – high in price order, for the iPad that I suggest for you to explore.
Little Writer Tracing App $1.99
Zaner-Bloser Handwriting $1.99
iWrite Words $2.99
Touch and Write $2.99
Letter Workbook School Edition $2.99
Dexteria $3.99
iTrace $3.99
Writing Wizard $4.99
Letter School $4.99
ABC Pocket Phonics $6.99
When using these apps a child can use their finger or a very small square piece of a dry kitchen sponge, which promotes the development of a tripod grasp. Please message me and let me know which apps you find most helpful!
– Sari Ockner, OTR/L
Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have a difficult time concentrating on the simplest daily tasks, such as brushing teeth or remembering to grab their backpack on the way out the front door to school. While a child without ADHD may be able to mindlessly complete these tasks, the hyperactivity of the ADHD brain often creates a completely different scenario for a child with such attention challenges. The attention span simply fails, the mind gets distracted quickly, and their impulse desire has no off switch. This is why it is important to set up a conducive home environment that surround our kids with ADHD to help augment their daily successes
The importance of a clutter-free home cannot be stressed enough! Keep it simple.
⇒ Reduce the number of toys your child has available. Go through all the toys in your child’s play space. Throw away those games with missing pieces. Donate the ones to
charity that your child has out grown.
⇒ Rotate toys out every four to six weeks. Placing those toys that were used away and retrieving stored toys. Limiting toys also simplifies the cleaning process for the kids.
⇒ Toys & books should be labeled in bins, boxes, and on shelves. All toys have a place where they belong and need to be placed in their designated area. Check out some amazing ideas on Pinterest.
⇒ Backpacks should be situated somewhere near the entrance/exit to your home. This way your child never leaves the house without their school supplies.
The type of room or environment used for different activities is extremely important to outline. It is important to give a specific place or areas to complete work, sleep, eating, and play.
⇒ Eating. All eating should happen AT the kitchen table, not on the run as your child walks out the door to school or chasing around the child who has a hard time sitting down with their food.
⇒ Playing. Toys should be stored and played with in another room besides the bedroom.
⇒ Sleeping. A bedroom is for sleeping. It is nice for a child to have a selection of a few books to read with a caregiver prior to going to sleep. A white noise machine or a device to play meditative music can be very beneficial.
⇒ Visual Schedules. Using a daily and weekly visual schedule in a place where your
child will see it often, such as the refrigerator or near the bathroom mirror, is extremely beneficial to help him or her have a time reference of the things that will occur in their day and over their week.
⇒ Preparations for big events. Some examples would be birthday parties, family trips, or parent travels a week ahead of time on the family calendar
⇒ Preparation for Transitions. Discussing or priming your child prior to a transition, especially if it is an unexpected event. While at times this cannot be avoided, quick changes can disregulate your child
One common challenge amongst children with ADHD is their challenges with organization, mostly their homework (finding it, completing it, making sure it gets back to their teacher the next day)! Try these strategies —
⇒ There should be ONE consistent place a child places their backpack when they arrive home from school.
⇒ Wall organizers next to the spot where a child places his backpack with one for “Unfinished Homework and the other for “Finished Homework”. Moving the homework from one bin to another helps the child feel a sense of accomplishment and helps the child maintain much needed order.
⇒ When homework is too effortful and time consuming, talk to your child’s teachers to adapt homework assignments.
⇒ Timers! Set a timer for tasks such as brushing teeth. Remember, the ADHD brain is constantly moving. At times, watching a timer count down while brushing teeth may help the child focus.
⇒ Promote independence in getting your child’s dressing routine. With the child’s input select clothing to wear the night before and lay out for child.
⇒ Set up a visual checklist (photos or words) of the order the clothing items a child needs to put on their body each day.
⇒ The child’s bedroom should be free of clutter, including toys. I often suggest to parents that only books should be in a child’s bedroom.
⇒ Visual schedules and / or discussions of so the child knows what to expect before school and after school the next day. This is also important during unstructured days on the weekends.
⇒ Consistency with an evening routine is really important.
⇒ Calming or meditative music or a sound machine can help to relax and settle you’re your child.
⇒ Avoid tablets and other iDevices, television, video games at least one hour prior to bed. This hour should be focused on self-care and bedtime routines. Reading and light yoga stretches are excellent ways to help your child wind down
School is out for the summer! Children should continue to practice their handwriting basics when enjoying their time off from school. Here are five fun, multi-sensory ways you can easily incorporate handwriting into your child’s daily summer routine. These activities include a variety of sensory modalities that will allow children to practice their letter formation without pencil and paper.
Have your child fill pails with water and dump them onto the sand to make their canvas. Have their little hands flatten out the sand making a smooth surface. Practice writing letters with their fingers or with a stick or a seashell in the sand!
Have your child help you knead and roll out cookie dough to strengthen their hands. Then separate the dough into 2-3 inch balls. Next, have your child roll out the balls into long cylinders with their fingers. Last, have them use each rolled strip to form different letters. Bake. Decorate. Enjoy!
Using sidewalk chalk your child can practice writing numbers by setting up a hopscotch game. Hangman is another great game to play where your child can practice his letters and draw a person too.
Forming letters with shaving cream or foam soap on the walls during bath time is a great tactile activity.
5. Bed Time!In the dark, your child can write letters on the wall using a flashlight.
Just a few simple & fun ways to incorporate different sensory modalities to keep your child interested and caught up on their handwriting basics over their break from school!
— Sari Ockner, OTR/L
Before a child can experience success with a new skill, like using scissors, they must be developmentally ready to attain that skill. Here are some simple & safe pre-scissor readiness tips to get little hands ready for using scissors by tapping into the development of eye-hand coordination, bilateral hand skills (using hands together in a dominant-assistant fashion), and the ability to isolate and/or combine movements of the thumb and opposing fingers to allow for opening and closing scissors with control.
Using tongs help to teach separation of the radial (thumb) and ulnar (pinky) sides of the hand that is necessary when a child starts to use scissors. It also works on strengthening the muscles used when opening & closing scissors. Some favorites are Patch Bed Bugs and Learning Resources Super Sorting Pie.
Tearing and pasting projects are great for small children. Tearing the paper into small pieces helps develop bilateral hand skills. Tree collages work great in both the Spring & Autumn. In the spring, I have children tear pieces of tissue paper, crumble them, then glue the “blossoms” onto tree branches. In the Autumn, I have children tearing small pieces of orange, green, brown, and yellow paper and gluing them onto tree branches and falling to the ground.
Lacing cards promote eye-hand coordination and bilateral hand skills. Melissa & Doug make a variety of fun lacing card sets. You can also make your own lacing cards by laminating different designs or shapes and having a child help you use a hole puncher (great for hand strength) around the perimeter then use a string to lace through.
Playing with Play Doh has so many benefits! Having children pinch Play Doh between their fingers works on isolating finger movements and strengthening the little muscles in their hands.
When your preschooler is ready for scissors, the scissors I recommend for little hands are called Fiskar scissors that can be used for right or left handed children. Choose the ones with the rounded or blunt tips.
Some simple guidelines as to what ages early scissor skills develop are snipping paper (2 years old), cutting across a piece of paper (2.5 – 3 years old), cutting on lines (4-5 years old) and cutting out simple shapes (5 years old).
Try these printable scissor work sheets for children to practice their early cutting skills.
–Sari Ockner, OTR/L
Throughout the holiday season I am often asked by parents for suggestions for gifts, especially for children with special needs & sensory issues. The holiday season is a great time to get children excited about using sensory tools. Check out these perfect little stocking stuffers to help satiate our lil’ oral, movement, and tactile seekers!
Some children seek intense oral input. These are the children that chew on the collars or sleeves of their shirts, suck on their fingers, or bite off the eraser tips of their pencils. The mouth is a powerful organizing center, just think of how a baby soothes himself by sucking on a pacifier. Children with sensory needs often find chewing allows them to focus better on tasks and a way of remaining calm during times of stress.
ChewiGem offers really fun & stylish chewable jewelry that discreetly serves the need to chew. Great for older children!
ChewEase Invisible Pencil Toppers fit right on the top of a pencil and are an excellent sensory strategy to use to improve your child’s work productivity and concentration. Great for environments where chewing gum is not allowed. A lifesaver for homework, too!
Proprioceptive sensory input can be calming for a child who is constantly “on-the-go” and seems to be moving around constantly. Activities that involve pushing, pulling, squeezing, and engaging in heavy work are examples of proprioceptive sensory input that help to modulate a child’s activity level.
The Handee Band Exercise Kit is a fun strengthening and sensory based exercise kit for kids ages 3 and up. Have your children work on upper extremity & core strengthening and bilateral coordination skills while allowing a great deal of proprioceptive feedback from the resistive bands used in these activities.
Fidget toys can be a very effective self-regulation tool for children and adults with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders and other sensory needs. There are a variety of tactile fidgets toys for calming or alerting, to promote focusing and attending, and to increase tactile awareness of fingers & hands.
These gel squish grips are my favorite & can help offer sensory feedback to satiate tactile needs during writing tasks by giving children textures right there on their own pencil.
The Tangle Relax
fidget toy provides great proprioceptive & tactile feedback. It certainly will keep little hands busy!
-Sari Ockner, OTR/L
Play is the foundation for skill development connected to all domains of physical, sensory, cognitive, and social development. Selecting the appropriate toys for your child is key in supporting his learning and growth. Many skills develop during the toddler years and do so at various paces. Each child is unique and therefore develops at their own speed. There is a wide range of what is considered typical development. With this in mind, it is important to choose toys that best fit your child’s skill level, rather than sticking to an age range that you may see on a box. Additionally, you may want to buy toys that have longevity, those that will foster emerging skills your child is displaying. Below you will find toy suggestions suited for toddlers in various developmental stages from infancy to age three.
Socially, one to two year olds mostly engage in solitary play. As their awareness of peers evolve, some social interactions between children begin to emerge. Cognitively, they discover the functional and constructive use of toys and objects. They throw, stack, dump, fill, put together, take apart, open, and shut. They recognize and are interested in cause-effect relationships. Physically, their balance improves and they start walking, squatting, climbing, throwing, and running. Fine motor skills start to develop that allow them to point, push, and manipulate smaller items such as pegs, blocks, and crayons. Toddlers learn about their bodies in space from sensory motor experiences. They explore with kinestetic and prorioceptive sensations like standing & falling, pushing & pulling toys, and having adults turn them upside down and whirl them around. A toddler’s attention at this age can best be described as very fleeting (a few seconds to a few short minutes).
| Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn: Learning Piggy Bank |
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| PlaySkool Explore and Grow Busy Ball Popper |
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| Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Baby’s First Blocks |
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| Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Corn Popper Push Toy |
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During this next stage, toddlers mostly engage in parallel play and transition into more associative play. Gross motor skills you will start to see include the development of more complex, whole body movements like jumping, standing on one foot (briefly), running around obstacles, climbing larger apparatuses, standing on tiptoes, and maybe catching a large ball. Fine motor skills become finer, especially isolated motions of fingers and eye-hand coordination that allows for success with small knob and basic interlocking puzzles, crayons, and stringing beads. More advanced coordination of both sides of their body develops, as to assemble a screw toy using one hand to stabilize and one to perform the action. Dramatic play starts to pique and you will see actions like imitating adult routines (i.e. kitchen sequences, playing doctor) and personifying dolls (i.e. feed doll, pat it, put to bed). Attention to task ranges but can last up to 30 minutes!
| Alex Toys Wooden Stringing Set |
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| Smart Snacks Sorting Shapes Cupcakes |
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| Melissa & Doug Alphabet Express Floor Puzzle |
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| Fisher Price Little People Fun Sounding Farm |
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Toddlers across the board like BOOKS, so you can never go wrong with gifting books. When they are younger stick with the cardboard page ones (little ones love to make a mess and tear up the pages). Dolls, puzzles, musical instruments, bath toys, and ride on toys are all great ideas too. I have just selected a few toys and there are SO many more!
Happy shopping and don’t get rid of all those boxes that your deliveries come in so quickly, as toddlers love to get into just about everything!
– Sari Ockner, OTR/L
Refer to these sites for more toy ideas for children of different ages: YoYo.com for top toy, book, game, and music recommendations for different age groups Allison’s Picks for toys that support language development Parent’s Choice Award Winners (Fall 2012)
Shopping season for the holidays has arrived! Parents (and my own family members and friends) keep asking, what are the best toys to give to their child. When choosing toys for children it is best to see what a child is currently capable of doing and what skills are emerging, rather than using the strict age guidelines you see on the packaging. Below you will find a few selected toys for infants in different developmental stages over their first year. Each toy has characteristics to match a child’s developmental stage of physical, intellectual, and/or social development.
During the first few months, a child’s “purpose” in play is all about sensation – to see, hear, touch, smell, and mouth. An infant’s motor skills include following objects with their eyes, responding to sounds by turning their head, or grasping an object when put into their hand. They are interested in people’s faces and voices. Visual acuity is in the early stages of development and studies show that newborns prefer high contrasting colors (black & white patterns) but it is good to expose them to more subtle objects, like your face and eyes and their own little hands and feet. Babies are born with a more developed sense of hearing versus sight. They respond to familiar voices and are soothed by rhythmic sounds that mimic sounds they were exposed to in the womb, like a mother’s heart beat. A newborn’s sense of touch is especially developed at birth, particularly around the mouth. As adults, we notice that babies put almost everything in their mouths. This oral seeking behavior is not necessarily an infant’s response to teething, it is often the baby’s way of exploring or a means to self soothe.
Mirrors such as the Sassy Crib and Floor Mirror
Board books full of high contrast patterns like Look, Look! by Peter Linenthal
Manhattan Toys make a few great toys that are easy for small hands to grasp such as the Whoozit, which also has high contrasting patterns, little noise makers, and different fabric textures.
By four to six months more gross motor skills begin to develop like propping themselves up on their arms, placing objects in their mouth, reaching to grab objects, kicking their legs, and sitting upright.
There are a variety of activity mats out there, such as ones made by Baby Einstein, that are great for tummy time and placing toys on the arcs for the baby to reach for or kick when lying on their back. The positioning of the hanging objects can be adjusted depending on how you want to stimulate these developing motor skills.
Sophie la Girafe is a big crowd pleaser! She is easy to hold onto, safe to chew, visually stimulating with her dark contrasting spots, has a distinct sweet smell, and squeaks when squeezed.
While seeking out sensations will continue to guide play throughout infancy, within a few months an infant is stimulated by starting to learn the relationship between an action and it’s effect. There are many “cause-effect” toys that will stimulate motor and intellectual skills. As infants become more physically active you will begin to see higher level gross motor skills develop like sitting with better balance and maybe reaching outside of their base of support, pushing up onto their hands and knees and starting to crawl, pulling to stand, cruising furniture, and walking. Their fine motor and object manipulation skills become more refined, as they move on from earlier stages of mouthing, shaking, and swiping at toys to using their fingers to poke at, push, or pick up small objects. Socially, they start to interact more meaningfully, show humor by laughing and in anticipation, and initiate play activities (show and give objects to adult).
Toy Smith’s Wiggly Giggly Ball
Fisher Price Star Stacker is an all time favorite of mine for new independent sitters.
V-Tech’s Sit-to-Stand Learning Walker this activity center grows with your child from sitting to standing and taking his or her first steps.
Blocks are a simple and fantastic toy for all these stages of development. Beyond developing motor skills and eye-hand coordination to stack them, they have a cause-effect and natural social component where you build and baby knocks down causing lots of reactions and laughs!
Two suggested options for infant block play are:
B. One Two Squeeze Blocks and IQ Baby Knock-Knock Blocks
There are so many great toys out there and these are just a few of my favorites based on all my years working with infants…and being an Aunt that loves to buy great gifts!
Enjoy & happy shopping!
– Sari Ockner, OTR/L
Occupational therapists help children with special needs build the underlying skills necessary to promote their success and independence in daily activities. This includes building their physical strength and endurance, while regulating their activity level, behavior, and emotions. Additionally, occupational therapy facilitates and feeds each child’s creativity and imagination.
Now lets talk yoga.
If you are a yoga enthusiast, such as myself, you can likely already imagine all the benefits of incorporating yoga into a child’s life. I have recently been trained and certified by Shana Meyerson, owner of mini yogis®, to teach yoga to children. I have started to incorporate yoga activities within my typical OT sessions, and WOW, not only do the children love it but I clearly see progress in each child with a few simple additions to what we were already doing.
Yoga promotes physical strength & muscular endurance, encouraging children to use all of their muscles. It helps to build balance, coordination, flexibility, and body awareness. Almost every position or asana incorporates the use of the core muscles, which ultimately promotes better posture. Yoga also teaches a child how to feel their breath and how the breathing physically impacts their bodies.
Yoga positions incorporate using the body in different ways and across all planes of movement. Repetition, an important key in building new motor skills, is incorporated to help children master new movements. An important part of praxis or motor planning is coming up with novel ideas. Yoga encourages ideation skills and imagination, as children assist in picking different asanas and stringing together different sequences.
Yoga can help to build a child’s self esteem, as no positions or ideas can be “wrong”. Unlike many physical activities, there is no winning or losing when practicing yoga. It is fun and playful!
So many of our children with special needs have difficulty regulating their arousal level, which leads to hyperactive and perceived aggressive behaviors. Yoga incorporates teaching breathing techniques and poses that require stillness. Yoga teaches a child to become more self aware of how their mind and body are connected and what it feels like to be still and calm.
Yoga teaches individuals to be thankful, present, and kind to others. When building sequences children take turns and can build upon the ideas of others.
There are a variety of ways to work with children and incorporate yoga. Yoga with kids, especially younger ones, does not look like an adult class. It is all about incorporating a variety of fun tools to entice a child to be an active participant. Such components may include toys, games, songs, story books, or an obstacle course.
A session may start with sitting in a cross legged position and working on breathing, what a fabulous time to bring out whistles or bubbles to give that child sensory feedback on how their breath works! Maybe creating a sequence on how a tree grows (leading up to a one-legged tree asana) or how a super hero flies around the world to save his friends from trouble (flying on stomach with legs and arms raised high). A child’s yoga practice in this context is not “acting out” the actions but using yoga poses in a sequence to tell the story. Lastly, often the best part, shavasana. A time for stillness & teaching children an appreciation for quiet time, a skill necessary in school during teaching instruction or when going out in the community to places like a movie theater.
As the school year begins and parents are deciding which after school activities are best for their child, yoga is a fantastic option. Its fun, creative, and active!
Namaste!
– Sari Ockner, OTR/L Shana Meyerson founded mini yogis® yoga for kids in March 2002. A pioneer in the children’s yoga community, Shana has taught teachers all over the world how to teach children in a fun, safe, and mindful way. Her intuitive and integrative approach to teaching allows her to positively change the lives of both typically developing and special needs children. Trained in classical yoga by one of the world’s most renowned yogis, Sri Dharma Mittra, Shana considers her teaching an offering to the sweet innocence of children and the lives that lay ahead of them. You can find out more about Shana’s mini yogis program and sign up for her yoga tip of the week by visiting http://www.miniyogis.com.
Occupational therapists find creative ways to adapt tools & toys to address the development of fine motor skills. Here are a few ideas:
Use metal tongs (strawberry pickers) in the game Kerplunk to grasp the marbles and colored sticks. By incorporating the metal tongs in this game, the child needs to maintain enough pressure to sustain a closed grasp on the game items as he or she manipulates them. This simple addition is an excellent way to increase intrinsic hand strength.
Similar to the idea above of increasing intrinsic hand strength, especially for the fingers that hold a pencil, try using a clothes pin to grab and release checkers when playing the game Connect Four.
Weighted pencils may help a child that writes too lightly. These can easily and cheaply be made: use rubber washers and rod shaped coupling nuts found in a hardware store for just a few dollars.
Adhere a popsicle stick to the lower part of the fishing pole in the game Lets Go Fishing. The popsicle stick provides a wider base for finger placement to promote a proper tripod grasp in preparation for writing tasks.
A Z-vibe pencil elicits slight vibration that “wakes up” little muscles in the hand and tends to decrease muscle fatigue when writing. By adding a pencil grip, such as the CLAW (see photo) a child’s fingers can be placed in a more efficient grasp that leads to increased motor control when writing.
Add a dice to a game such as the Hungry Dog Motor Skills Game. Have the child roll the dice to see how many bones they get to feed the dog for each turn they take. Encourage the child to cup his hand (only do one hand at a time) and shake the dice within his palm without it falling out for 3 to 5 shakes. Cupping the palm in this way works on developing the arches in the hands.
Hide the robot body parts in the appropriate resistive Theraputty. Have the child use his or her fingers to pull out the pieces and then assemble the robot. Using the Theraputty in this activity adds a hand strengthening component to constructing the Robot Bits.
— Sari Ockner, OTR/L
** Please note that I have no financial connections to the companies or products mentioned above that are linked for purchase in the Amazon store. I am part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and each purchase provides a small percent of profit for advertising fees. Any earnings collected each month are continually donated to various charities that support children with special needs.
