Evil Octopus OT Teamwork game in progress

Waiting for school to start so I can try my new evil octopus teamwork game. This game consists of hiding multiple pieces of the same letter around a room (so for example, there would be like three letter "A" hiding together) (8 letters total) and the kids have to explore to find the letter. Once one finds the letter, they have to tell the others so that they can hurry to get their own same letter piece  (Hey over here! I found the A!) and then they have to all bring it to the evil octopus for one of its legs....each time, one of the evil octopus's henchmen (a monster) guarding a leg gets thrown in the dungeon, ultimately the octopus has no henchmen left and the octopus is destroyed.

Something like that. It's a work in progress. Ideas?

Norway haul...and OT rant

This is just the so-far pile of stuff I got for my upcoming trip to Norway and the South. Wow. I went a little nuts today. Most of what I got, especially for the new babies, is OT-related or can be used in an OT way. Well I guess technically AN YTHING can be used in an OT way when you think about it, right? Seriously. ANYTHING. Read the like, ten posts below to see a bunch of OT stuff I bought today on my random OT shopping spree. I'm a little crazy about getting toys for my OT kids......I do make most of it academic based seeing as how I am a school OT but we do always have a little warm-up, or cool-down, or free choice, or bribery/rewards (cough), etc :) Okay this is the end of this blog blizzard. I had to just do it now or I never would. I have NOT forgotten about all the conference posts that I am still working on! I have a pile! Really I should be working on OT paperwork now and just procrastinated. And dang this is a long caption. I wonder if it will be size 2 on my blog. Guess we are about to find out....and.....PUBLISH!

More random Target/Party City ideas for OT

A few more random items. A Connect Four version or something similar USING FREAKING CANDY, basically little sweet heart candy. Genius. And a cute crayon gem :) And gel clings, my kids like those a lot. And some thick trivets meant for cooking but good for push pin work.

Other OT ideas from Party City and Target

Party City stirrers (I keep wanting to write strippers?) anyway - we will likely stick these in styrofoam and put large beads down them, or sort them, or use them as make shift stencils, etc. Different patterns.  Also a laser pointer - I will be careful to not let the kids flash in eyes - but to point at things/scan/track. Also some magnets...and in the upper right corner, some dry erase board that has the middle line dotted and red, just like I like it, as a lava line! :)

Eyeballs, gems, crayons, etc for OT

This caption thing is driving me nuts. It better work. More Target stuff. The Mike & Ike Outrageous Reds are for my kid who loves bloody stuff. "Blood pills" lol. The duckies are to go with my sharks - a water game. Use the grabby sharks to eat the poor swimming ducks....the glow gummies come with little tongs to eat them with which glow through the worm. Also self-stick gems and eyeballs. And these super beautiful double pointed crazy crayons, I can see my OT kids loving those. :) And we're going to go searching for "faces" around the school to stick eyeballs on! :)

Fly swatters + balloon = instant OT

Yes these are fly swatters, brand new. Blow up a balloon and use these instead of hands to swat at the balloon. Hard for many of our little kiddos.

I Spy In Your Clear Take out Container....BUGS and ALIENS...yay OT

So I like to collect clear take-out containers when I am eating out, because I think it's sometimes fun to store stuff in them where the kids can see it. I guess it could become like a giant I Spy thing.

Frog poppers, Glow in dark aliens, wooly balls, finger skateboards, insects, OT

I hope these captions work. Blogger is weird. And I am not the smartest blogging cookie. Anyway, flavor packs from Target and/or Party City, I forget. Glow in the dark aliens, Frog Poppers, Wooly Balls, glow in the dark insects (INCLUDING A GLOW IN THE DARK SNAIL SUPER EXCITING...LOVE SNAILS AS MUCH AS SLOTHS) and some finger skateboards. I may have them use the finger snakeboards to go down pathways, must experiment. Tonya of TherapyFunZone.com awesomeness, have you tried using these with all your road ways?

Finger puppets for isolating fingers, OT

Finger puppets...notice the bumblebee...he will get used in my lava/worm/bee paper. I bought several. Tonya, I'll be sending you one shortly in your promised package. Libby - you may have to beg me, solely because I freaking hate putting packages together. :) From Party City. Can use to isolate finger..

OT, Kids, and Bugs = Perfect Combination

All my kids love bugs/insects. I use most of these for tong/tweezer activities, and sometimes as characters for our games, if it's just the two of us, to make it more interesting. Went a little bug-crazy today. Hey whatever works to keep our OT kids interested :)

Dollar Target Bins, OT dreams do come true...

All from dollar bins at Target. Lots of sticker books, sketch pad and writing pads...

Pictionary, Tangoes, and Dot to Dot, for OT

So I finally gave in and bought some Tangoes. For the visual perceptual/visual motor piece. And then a big ol' pad of Dot to Dot, to make patterns and have the child copy it. These will be quite challenging though, so I'll be grading it down in difficulty. Also a special version of Pictionary where you use pre-assembled pictures rather than your own. Hmm.

Finger Sports: Bowling, OT

Sometimes Blogger perplexes me. So I'm adding a caption since I can't figure out how to write text. I have never tried this, but finger sports/bowling seems like it might be cool :)

Update in July: I have tried this and it's not that easy for my little ones. I think this was a relatively cheap purchase, luckily. They do better with tossing it almost rather than trying to "flick" at it. I do like that this has a fine motor component as well as a visual motor component, having to precisely put the pieces up without knocking them all over, eyeing and projecting where your ball will go to hit the pieces, etc. 

Squinkies for OT

Squinkies ...never heard of them until today. I don't have kids, and I live under a rock. But these seemed super cute. Basically tiny figurines in little pod things. I'll definitely be using this as a tong/tweezer task....

Squishy balls for OT

What else can I say. Squishy balls. All were a dollar or so at Target. I try to pick them up when cheap (Gosh I probably have like 20 + now) since often they are like 4 or 5 dollars.  Good for throwing/catching and sensory stuff. :)

Star Wars and OT :)

Star wars haul. I may have gone a little crazy here. Party City and Target. BUT Target was having a SALE on Star War thingies and that NEVER happens, Star Wars crap is always super expensive. So I got a bunch of stuff - a lot of tiny characters that can go in little circle pod thingies - can use with tongs, or for a 5 minute "free choice", or who knows. Many options.

Super Mario for OT...mostly bribery in this case

I am sure there are awesome ways to use super mario bros in therapy (my kids love it) and I am sure I'll work on it but for now - SNERDLES - are little tiny fruit strips wtih mario stuff on them (those question mark boxes all are filled with snerdles, plus I have some loose ones. HOLY COW MY CAT JUST KNEADED BISCUITS ON ME WITH NO WARNING AND DREW BLOOD THANKS  LOT STRAY CAT ANYWAY also Mario stickers. All of this is reward stuff. Not that you should use candy as a reward ::straight face::

Angry Birds, OT style :)

Angry birds haul from target and party city.

I may or may not (emphasis on MAY) have had a shopping spree today, for no good reason other than being totally stressed out about paperwork, and wanting to end the year with a bang. Here is my "angry birds" haul from Party City and Target - all for occupational therapy purposes of course. The Angry Bird game requires you to build the house thingies for the piggies which will fulfil my visual-motor piece, and I will scatter the plates on the ground and have them throw the birds to try and get on the plate, etc etc...

Random OT tidbits...

I just pushed my 20 year old cat off me for the tenth time so I could write this. And then I deleted it by accident. Thank goodness i had only written a sentence or two or I would be P-I-S-E-D (hahaha, who gets that joke?) Anyway.

I am going through tons of paperwork due in a few weeks. I was pretty good about it in the fall, not so much in the spring. But in early Spring I had a lot of stuff going on personally and my grandmother died (I miss her so much!!) so I guess I got behind and never quite caught up, especially in the redundant documentation area. So. A few weeks to get it all done. I came home around 940pm tonight from a friend's house and did about 2 hours of work - I also did hours yesterday night as well. I'm CLOSE to being done with paperwork for one of my four schools. The smallest, easiest, school, but hey it's a start right? :)

I like to keep EVERYTHING as a sample including my part in it, so I usually end up with one piece of paper with a few of my own words, plus their paper. I need to be better about re-using paper instead of grabbing fresh each time. But I also need the paper to be clear and uncluttered. I found one paper where I had randomly taught a 4th grade girl how to draw a three-dimensional cube. In a million years I could not draw one myself except that I was taught how once (two overlapping squares, connect the lines). On another one I was showing a child how to draw a star. Sometimes putting aside your plan for a minute and showing the child something to increase their confidence is really important and helpful because it lets the child fit in better. :)

I'm attaching a few random pictures. I wanted to include a specific one but alas, I did not find it, so I threw in some funny ones. And one is my grandma with my Alabama cat.

I love this blog because it helps me reflect. Some minutes, hours, days, weeks I feel like a bad OT, and other times I feel like an awesome OT. Getting to write about OT, share about it, think about it, helps me love my profession more and more. I wish I could swallow a magic OT pill that would magically give me another 30 years of experience and knowledge. But since that doesn't exist, guess I'll just keep chugging along. I JUST started my second year of school OT practice last month, which is technically not even true considering summer vacation, but we'll go with the flow. Plus one year of adult physical dysfunction work before that. It feels good to finally have a year or two under my belt. :)

Blah blah blah, its almost midnight and I am delirious. Tomorrow is a new day....a new day to do paperwork, haha. Hope everyone is having a lovely holiday weekend.

Get through this without touching any of the web 

Random Occupational therapy Tidbits....

1) http://www.theappacademy.org/        iPad and autism. Check it out if you're a school OT working with autistic kids and have access to iPads. In our district, EVERY teacher and speech therapist got ipads except the OTs and Adapted PE. Sad.  No bitterness. Except the cloying taste of almonds.....jk

2) I got some seamless socks to sample. Keep in mind if you're one of those people with kids who can not STAND seams....a lot of websites now exist to help you with that problem. Obviously it's more expensive than Wal-Mart, but at least a solution exists. Note: I was over 18 before I went to Wal-mart for the first time. It was not part of my childhood experience. But I spent a lot of time there in Tennessee and Georgia, lolol. People of walmart dot com? So true. Go at like eleven at night for the "best" experience :)  I shouldn't drink haterade though, they are the ONLY place that has my beloved rectangular firm corkboards....

3)  My stray cat has found his voice. His name is Stray Cat because he is a stray. But we've been feeding him for about 5 years and he regularly sleeps on my bed, so, well, I dunno. But anyway, he has started Meowing. It's driving me nuts. I prefer mute animals. Last night, I was up at LEAST five times between midnight and 6am with these two cats (Stray Cat and Black Cat - who is my 20 year old fragile cat). Meowing, or opening doors, or checking on them, etc etc. Guess I know what it's like to have to wake up a lot for a baby......speaking of which I just heard a meow and it's our NEWEST stray cat, White Cat, peeking his head in my bedroom to eat their dry cat food. Oh, and the racoons eat it. And the black crows. Fun times. That wasn't an OT tidbit, but I'm an OT dictator, so you have no choice but to bear it. Sorry.

4) Today we had an incident and a cop was in the principal's office - I could see him through the window taking notes and my first comment was "He has a pretty good pencil grip". I love when parents complain about their child's handwriting and/or grip in the IEP meeting, then I watch them sign the IEP sign-in and their grip and HW is horrendous. THE APPLE DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE!!!!  That is of course not always true. But sometimes when I meet parents I am like "ohhhhhhhh". Then suddenly a lot more things make sense. I really enjoy meeting the parents. I'm super big on regular communication with parents.

5) I'm still in paperwork hell. I got through two annual IEPs today - 3 more annuals, 3 triennials, and 3 initials to go in the next 11 days of work. Not to mention treatment and evaluations for those triennials and initials.

6) For those of you who are not into school or pediatric OT....if you hit around BEFORE march 2009, in that 9 months before, I had three three-month rotations. First in outpatient pediatric clinic in semi-rural Mississippi which included home visits and satellite expansion, then an acute care hospital, and finally a locked geriatric psych ward. Fun times, I tell ya. So you might find stories from back then.

7) A lot of the OT students who started following me years ago...are now OTs themselves. Super fun to watch their journey!! Love it!!

8) I have lots of OT paperwork to get done before June 8th....but I will have several days without a car, stranded in an empty house, in Alabama, after June 8th, where I plan to go through my emails etc from the blog.

9) I'll stop now. Although as soon as I stop I'll remember something else to say.

what a lovely article

An OT student, Bill Wong, posted this on his Facebook profile. What an amazing story.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/23/health/human-factor-burn-victim-rana/index.html

Nearing end of OT school year

Quick poll - if I were to do some give-aways, like for example, making a comment about why you want to be an AOTA member, and then one lucky person gets a free AOTA membership for the  year......would y'all be interested? I typically only get like two or so comments, so I don't want to do a comment giveaway with only a few comments, lol. And I'm not sure AOTA wants to do that with me either with such a small comment base. So....shameful begging here - please, leave a comment telling me what kind of give-aways you would like, and if I can get a bunch of comments, I can go tell AOTA, check it out, yo, let's do a membership give-away. This is, of course, assuming the bigwigs go for it. But I think they would with enough interest. So. Just sayin'.  PS: I moderate comments because the spam is unbearable otherwise, so if it doesn't look like it showed up...it didn't because I have to moderate it. No need to repeat yourself. :)

Woo-ie! Only 13 days of school left for me. 4 more days this week, 4 next week because of Memorial Day, then 5 more. My last day is June 8th - a week early - because I'm heading to Scandinavia for a month! Starting with a surprise party for my host father (I was an exchange student for a year - my junior year of high school) in Denmark, then to Northern Norway and Oslo and Aamot, a tiny rural town about an hour and a half southeast of Oslo, where I lived. We don't typically treat kids the last week or so anyway since it's a lot of celebrations, etc. (I guess you still might if you have really low level kids) ANYWAY,

In the last 13 work days, I have FIVE annuals, 3 triennials, and 3 initials. At least. That's barring any panicked parents calling last minute meetings. Annuals mean I have the yearly IEP meeting with the team about a kid. Triennials are the 3-year review evaluations, and initials are well, yeah, initials. The triennials and initials mean I have to evaluate the child and write up reports along with the IEP part. Annuals are just the IEP part. And then I have to annotate all the goals of my kids. And get all the paperwork in. Especially for billing. Etc. Gonna be a busy 13 work days...and I'm sure weekends and nights as well. Gotta get crackalackin'.

Today I hit 3 schools, was there by 7:20. Left around 4. Didn't stop for lunch until around 2:30 when the kids were out. Had to give out sensory processing measure (SPM) questionnaires, observe children, check in with teachers, do treatments, etc. My day got kind of uh, skewed because of multiple plays at multiple schools.

Today after school I was sitting in the learning center and one of my little first graders enters and brightly says "Hi Miss Karen, are you going to steal me today?" It was super cute. I laughed. I am bad about using that phrase, "Can I steal you for a little while?" because I forget that my little hyper linguistic kids are going to pick up on that!

I have to admit I've hit a new low in email life - 485 new emails in google, not to mention about 1,000 to go through again that I've looked at once, and then 2,000 to file in my work box. I'm pretty good about getting the important stuff done, but the little things get forgotten when my boxes are that full, boo. Last summer i had over 1,000 and I got it down to under 100 - so I guess that will be this summer's goal too.

Well, I'm trying to blog daily, even if the daily blog ends up being informal (ie my reflections for the day) rather than one of the many posts I need to finish writing about conference etc.I have 3 weeks to get my life in order before I am gone for about 5-6 weeks (hey robbers: the rest of my family will be home, don't get excited) - let's hope I get motivated. Today was a long busy day so I guess I'm going to not beat myself up for not doing more paperwork/blogwork tonight.

Stroke Rehab, Jan Davis Fan Club

For those of you in stroke rehab, Jan Davis is a MUST-know....google her. I just saw this link on her Facebook page,

http://www.icelearningcenter.com/files/uploads/documents/workbooks/fti-t-sample09.pdf

I started scrolling through it and I wish I had it when I was doing physical dysfunction! Amazing sample. I love Jan Davis. :)

Every day I'm O-T-ing... (every dayy I'm shuffffflinnnnggg)

Today I gave a presentation to the 2nd grade teachers, very similar to the one I gave recently to K and 1st at that same school which I discussed recently. [Insert angst here in terms of me not going back to find the link, sorry, I feel guilty, but not guilty enough to go find it.]  We covered the same things, although I went faster over the pieces that didn't pertain as much, and focused on some of the more applicable pieces, SUCH AS - ERASING!!!

When you see kids just writing darker over writing, or doing a poor job erasing, you probably just think the child is being lazy. BUT for the most part, it's more likely the child genuinely has trouble erasing. Watch the child erase and I bet you will see he does it an inefficient angle or in an awkward manner which makes it challenging. (Or maybe even just turning the pencil around is inefficient - kids who use their chest or other hand to turn their pencil around, or drop it on the paper and pick it back up, etc) Eventually, they often give up and just start writing darker over their mistakes. We assume that by older grades, a child just naturally knows how to erase. Not always true. Do eraser exercises - writing letters, rotating pencil within their one dominant hand, and then erasing at an efficient angle/manner. TEACH THEM. SHOW THEM. Do NOT assume. And OTs - I think  that erasing is an area we tend to forget - at least I historically have - but erasing is pretty important too! :)

I also talked briefly about quiet fidgets (like a pipe cleaner, a piece of string, etc), DESK ORGANIZATION (another REALLY important area that gets overlooked), and OFFICE SUPPLIES - exposing the kids to rubber bands, staplers, paper clips, folding, etc etc.

My two main points were this.

1) Kids today may be little academic geniuses because of all their educational screen time, and know how to do all these advanced skills quite early, but developmentally,  many of them are the lowest they've EVER been (in comparison to past years of classes) in terms of their physical strength, gross and fine motor coordination, ocular motor skills, eye-hand coordination, etc. This is of course a quite sweeping generalization, but most of the teachers I speak to express concern over the increasing rise of children coming through that are lacking basic foundational skills, as they were skipped in order to achieve academic skills.  So, AWARENESS that they might be in 2nd grade, but still need to be taught things like how to erase properly - and that it's less likely laziness and more likely ignorance.

2) I realize that teachers today are really stretched for time - it's not like 2nd grade teachers have time to just work on fine motor skills. So everything I talked about included easily accessible and cheap materials, most of which could be incorporated into "fun time" activities without the kids even realizing the point behind it. And/or activities that can be done while waiting in line, taking a 15 second break, etc - just tiny little things they can incorporate into their day due to awareness of its importance. Or they may even be doing these things and not realizing what they were working on....so again, AWARENESS.

Tomorrow I'm hiking up a mountain with some friends from work for a birthday party! Guess I should try to get some sleep. Must work on a new product review this weekend + some conference blogging as well. Yes, all those papers are still waiting for me to deal with them.

Oh....someone said something recently in a comment that made me go Ooooh. I have been so bad about posting about OT in a more global sense, instead of just pediatric school OT. I will try to remember to occasionally post more about other areas - and if anyone who reads this wants to do a GUEST posting, just like Ravi did a few days ago on disability rights, it is certainly appreciated.

Picking up small things with that funky 3 finger pencil grip. Genius.  Thanks 2nd grader for figuring that out. 

OT and Disability Rights

I asked Ravi to write a piece for my blog as I thought it would be interesting, considering his historical perspective of OT. We've been corresponding since I first started this blog in 2007. Thank you, Ravi, for taking the time to write this. :)

My background with Occupational Therapy is rather idiosyncratic. Although born with spina bifida and requiring crutches and leg braces to ambulate, I had no surgeries after age 11. Raised by a mother who was a paediatrician and a father who was an engineer, we did not spend much time in hospitals or medical clinics in my childhood. And so when I acquired a disability rights consciousness as an undergraduate and in law school, I assumed that occupational therapists were more or less the same as physicians or PTs: i.e. pain inflicting authoritarians who require crips to strip on command and uncritically follow orders. I can distinctly recall going to a movie in the 1990s that was being shown on campus in a space that was later devoted to an OT conference and wanting to tell off all the arriving OTs about the social model, i.e. the proposition that it is structural barriers that are at the root of the problems faced by people with disabilities.

Some years later, when I was doing my doctoral studies, I met some OT students who were members of an accessibility committee on which I served. I became friends with one and was soon in for a huge shock. I expected her to defend the medical model as I understood it: segregation and all the horrors that accompanied it like sterilization. Much to my surprise, I learned that OT is client centred and the more I learned, the more I became convinced that most OTs work in a paradigm that is not that different from the social model. As a lawyer, the practical dimension of problem solving in OT appealed to me. The purely abstract aspect of disability studies has always been problematic: yet another dissertation about the portrayal of the sex lives of women with disabilities in Jane Austen's novels is not going to necessarily advance the movement for accessibility for people with disabilities today. As I met more and more occupational therapists during my career as an academic and also as a client, it was also remarkable how virtually all OTs had more or less the same caring personality, i.e. extremely happy like Karen Dobyns but maybe without quite the same degree of eccentricities. Many are as passionate about disability rights and equality for people with disabilities as disability studies scholars.

And yet today I think there remains a deep divide between scholars who identify with disability studies and those who identify with rehabilitation. It does not need to be this way. Each discipline can learn from the other. OT is a deliciously innovative discipline (although I am still waiting for a device that will allow crutch users to get through ice and snow) that can truly benefit from engaging in respectful dialogue with disability studies scholars as equal partners. We need occupational therapists to come to disability studies conferences with an open mind. Even ten OTs who chose to attend the Society for Disability Studies conference in the United States (coming to Orlando June 19-22, 2013) and the Canadian Disability Studies Association conference (coming to Waterloo, Ontario at the end of this month) would make a huge difference, both financially and more importantly in terms of intellectual cross-fertilization.  These conferences generally have low registration fees and are open to all. And I would hope OT conferences would make more serious efforts to invite disability studies scholars and advocates to their events.  In the short term, even informal meetings over cookies and cake can generate valuable results. The key is to have a dialogue.

 Ravi Malhotra is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a disability rights advocate. He may be reached at ravi.malhotra@uottawa.ca

 

Miss Karen is NOT an alligator. In case you needed clarification.

 

I have this one child with autism who once introduced me as "This is Miss Karen, and she is NOT an alligator." Well, I thought that was a great introduction. Very clarifying. AHAHAHA loved it. Anyway, sometimes when he sees me now he'll say "Hi Miss Karen, are you an alligator?"   His aide confirmed he asks no one else this question, just me. Not sure where that link came from but I love it. I don't have an alligator hat, but I think this hat is pretty awesome (it belongs to my mom)....maybe I can switch him over to a shark or monster or whatever this hat is.  Karen Dobyns, occupational therapy shark.....

Typing skills for children in OT

 

This is one of my lovely (and few) girls. Her mother granted me written permission to use her hands in this video (waves at my boss). This was an occupational therapy session where we focused first on origami (note a piece of it in the corner under the computer) and then on typing. The origami was a visual-motor challenge for both of us.... ;)

 I wrote in washable non-toxic marker on her fingers ASDF and then JKL; so that she didn't have to lift her fingers to find the right key; we played a free typing game on the Internet focusing on beginning, home row only, ie words like sad. The point of the game was to type out words which made these space things dissapear....we had a little trouble with her isolating her "S" finger but overall she did phenomenally. :) I was so proud of her. I highly recommend writing on their fingers when first working on learning home row. I know they make typing gloves etc too, but so far this low-tech/low-cost way has worked for me, and the kids don't mind at all (I obviously ask permission, lol). Anyway....hope this video works and doesn't show up just as a photo. Guess we are about to find out! (I am publishing through Picasa). Note: It came through as a photo so I went back and had to export the video etc. Boo, technology, lol.

Conference Flashback...Me, Erik Johnson aka Army OT Guy + Virtual OT Anita Hamilton...

 

So I needed to dump my photos onto the computer from my iPhone so I can take pictures today, so then I got into a quick photo spree of Picasa to Blogger....but now it's time for me to join my mummy. We're headed to lunch, then dessert at Fruitlandia for pico de gallo (a fruit salad), then travel Scrabble, then TWO different Mother's Day walks in a row. Yep, that's love. All her choices. So gotta go. But wanted to say bye for now, many many many many more pictures to come! Plus many posts!!! And product reviews! And etc etc etc etc!!!

Preparing to write about AOTA conference stuff

 

A picture is worth a thousand words, eh? I seriously have about twenty saved posts in Blogger with titles of stuff I want to write about from conference.

Word Search for Mother's Day

 

Not my proudest sample of handwriting, but the activity was challenging - we came up with a bunch of possible words to describe mom's, then wrote them in and then added them into a bunch of nonsense letters to make our own word searches....

Foot fidget in action :)

 

The foot fidget made a huge difference to this kid that day! He was able to stay in the room for an entire academic session. He thanked me for it. :) I told him I couldn't take a picture of his face so he stuck his hand in the picture to say hi.    From classroomseatingsolutions.com (they gave me a free one at conference!)

CRAZZZZZY radical OT ideas.....

I want to go back to the basics with my kids when I start this next school year with my elementary schoolers. I intended to do it THIS year but um, it was my first time starting the school year (I started a year ago in April)  and things were overwhelming and I just didn't do it as planned. I want to make sure A) each child knows my name, my title, and why I am working with that child. B) Each child can tell me "Today is Month, Day, Year" C) each child can tell me how their engine is running (ALERT program language) and how their day is going , and then we can determine our schedule for that session - with several "mandatory" things from me as needed, but some discussion on the other things based on frustration level for the day, etc.

Here is my thought process before you scoff.

A) I bet you (invisible) money that if you ask most of the kids on your caseload, even ones you see all the time, and this includes speech therapy, PT, APE, etc, that many of them don't know your name. Don't assume. Flat out ask.

B) I bet you if they know your name, they still don't know your role (or they think you are speech) or why you work with them.

C) Many of them have NO clue as to their day/time orientation and that includes when weekends are, or breaks, etc.

D) We all have good days and bad days, and days where we can handle more than others. I want kids, even kindergarteners, to be able to discuss with me, on a very basic level, how they are doing. That doesn't mean a kid can opt for "Breaks" and easy stuff every time, but we can certainly discuss some of what we will do based on their engine level/frustration level. (IE maybe we don't tie shoes on a day that's having a lot of frustration!) I want the child to be able to start working on identifying their own body/mind cues and how it can affect their output. Perhaps lofty but I am optimistic.

For the record, many of my kids do know my name/title/date etc, but I want ALL my kids to get these concepts down, ASAP, next year....at least start the process. I'll have visuals, scripts, etc. I wouldn't spend a ton of time on these things depending on the child's goals, but at least want to have them addressed at some point early on. I want to work with speech on these things too of course. I recently shocked a speech therapist at one of my schools by pointing out most of the kids don't know her name the way she assumed they did!

Here is a conversation I had recently with a 5 year old new to my caseload.

me: what's my name?
child: (thinks) Miss Karen
me: what do I do here, what is my job?
child: playing with kids


So...I love that he thinks my job is playing with kids, but I need/want him to understand why I work with him....as should all of them.

Its 1130pm..I wanted to write more  (note to self - dance, handiwriter, calendar) but I am getting sleeepy. Tomorrow morning I am blocked in by a tri-athlon running through my area, so I guess maybe in the morning I'll write???  we'll seeee

Karen

Gotta love Pinterest for OT

I lied. After almost 3 hours of working out after work, a baked portobello mushroom, and some bed i'm um, ready for bed. but i have been glancing at http://pinterest.com/pediastaff/handwriting-strengthening-prewriting/  for a while today, I want to memorize every idea...lol. super cool link. BEDTIME at 930!

kd

Dear OT recruiters...

Dearest OT recruiters,

If you're going to call us, please, for the love of God, do your best to find out what area the person lives in. And make sure the location is current. I got a phone call at 6am this morning from a rehab company in Florida. Not appreciated. And it's happened at least four times that I've gotten a phone call before 7am by rehab recruiters.

Even though I love my job, even if I didn't, the whole "6am" phone call thing wouldn't be a great start.

Love,
Karen, MOT, OTR/L

How to make a million dollars in OT.....

Just kidding, thought I'd give the spam-bots a little tease. For some reason I am always wildly uninspired when it comes to OT topic subjects. Anyway, here is my plan for the week......post product reviews for PenAgain, Dycem, and Foot Fidget with a few days between in each one. Also post about conference little by little. My floor is covered with conference stuff I want to discuss. The other day two fourth grade girls decided they wanted to know my age. One guessed that I was born in 1890, and the other guessed 2008. Both were serious. And both need math help, LOL. I just couldn't stop laughing at either guess. :) I have four meetings to go between now and the end of this week.  Have some new ideas to try - got one idea from Tonya's "cage" on therapyfunzone.com. We'll see how it goes. I'll report back shortly lol. PS: I was born in 1982!!

Ugh I kind of have a headache so I am going to stop writing now......tomorrow is Weds. My plan is to work, work out in a double whammy of craziness where I may or may not want to throw up, lol, and then rest/relax/do the Dycem product review/conference post. Let's see if it happens.

I heard from a blog reader today who is using lava/worms/bee paper with success. Any of you out there tried it and if so has it been helpful? I want to make some new types soon. So many ideas, so little time! Boo!

Hope you all have great weeks, lovely people :)

Daily Living Skills Worksheets: Product Review

I want to review "Daily Living Skills Worksheets: Reproducible resources for teaching independent living skills", by Linda Harrison. She sent this to me (free) to review and while it has taken me a while to write this up, I am happy to report that Linda's book of worksheets is AWESOME. :)

The book is intended to be used with teens and adults who are (as the title says) learning independent living skills. Speaking of which I need to teach my cat some of those skills, he is driving me nuts walking on the keyboard as I type this.
She has sections on goal-setting, time management, money management, household management, personal care, memory/safety, leisure/productivity, communication, meetings, problem-solving/reflection, and recording thoughts & feelings. Her desire was to be able to have worksheets she could use with adults that were simple to understand/use, and had a simple layout. I also like that the font size is always size 14 or higher with great contrast.

All the worksheets are simple to use - you photocopy whatever is applicable to your client and it saves you from having to write it all up yourself. For example, a check-list of "Things I will need for my new place" broken down by rooms. I think this would be an especially valuable book for therapists working with people with intellectual disabilities and MOST ESPECIALLY, MENTAL HEALTH! Yep I said it, MENTAL HEALTH! Did you hear that, world? Yes occupational therapists can work in mental health. It's less common these days but OT can rock in mental health when done right. I know when I did my three month psych ward rotation, there were some depressed people I worked with who could have benefited from worksheets like these....and I would have benefited as well with having it all outlined for me.

Here is her blog if you want to check it out: http://www.lindasdailylivingskills.com/

She posts updates regularly with her musings, reflections, advice, thoughts, etc.

The book can be bought on her website, www.dailylivingskills.com, for approximately $45. I think if you work with populations (ie teens and adults) that are working on basic independent living skills, that it is totally worth it as you can reuse the resources and also not have to reinvent the wheel! :) Seriously, this book can save you SO MUCH FREAKING TIME!

PS: I think if I were a student doing a mental health rotation or a rotation involving transitional/independent living skills, I would buy this book and impress my supervisors/co-workers with my awesomeness...just sayin' 

Insert random OT blog here

I was super productive today...well kind of. Mostly. And I may or may not have accidentally referenced "ball massage" during an IEP meeting. I was referring to using a textured ball on the child's back, but um, it didn't quite come out that way. Whoopsie doodles...I was at just two schools today. Multiple meetings, lots of paperwork, and some unsuccessful attempts at seeing children for direct services. I did get to see some fun stuff though by being in the learning center at a different time than normal. I got a FOOT FIDGET at Expo to review, and I must say so far it seems to be awesome...I will review it quite shortly once a few more days have passed.

I had a 30 minute "boot camp" circuit (6 exercises, 4 sets, 40 seconds each exercise, 20 second rest), augh....and then I checked the oil in my car as it was suspect, worked on cleaning out my car, showered, cleaned my room, watered my adorable baby epiphytes, watered the cats, etc etc....in other words, SUPER PRODUCTIVE FOR ME. A typical day after work consists of me crawling into bed and playing on Facebook till I pass out. Yeah. I know. So I am quite proud of myself today. It's 9pm now and I'm only semi tired....I'm sitting here in the dark with my screen dimmed and a cat purring against my arms under my 30 pound weighted blanket....anyway the whole point of this was to say that I have LOFTY goals for this weekend, when I am not out with friends......for this blog anyway.

I want to: write up my full reviews for Linda's awesome book, Dycem products, and PenAgain; start the write-up of the Foot Fidget; write about conference - share the presentation and details - write about Expo - etc. So....check back this weekend okay? I kind of maxed out my brain power tonight so this is all for tonight. Sorry. And oh yeah. I talked to my grandfather Nacho for a long time, and I talked to Libby, awesome awesome OT, about inventions and presentations etc. I decided me, Libby, and Tonya Cooley of TherapyFunZone.com need to do a google+ meet up as we are all crazy school OTs with lots of inventions and ideas.

Oh, and Libby used the lava/worm/bees paper today with great success... :) If any of you use it will you let me know what you think? Remember the key is DRAMA...it's a GAME!
www.pinterest.com/funkist/ot-ideas to find it and other ideas...

Lava journal paper

Posting it on my blog so I can post it to Pinterest. The Lava/worm/bee paper in journal form.