Occupational Therapy

We had a great session at occupational therapy today. Ethan did a lot of great things. He usually doesn't like swinging, but today he sat crisscross applesauce and swung forward and backward as well as side to side. He also swung while on his tummy and did a puzzle that way also. This activity was great because he was not only doing a fine motor task (puzzle) he was practicing visual perception(puzzle and where the pieces would fit) proprioceptive and vestibular sense(how he moves in space, and where he feels his body is in space/ swinging) It also helps strengthen the muscles in his hands that are weaker by holding himself up and moving to reach the pieces he needs. I'm sure there are even more areas of development that this activity helps but that's all I figured out.

One thing that seems to help Ethan, due to some of his Sensory Processing issues is using his muscles doing heavy work. This can be anything from carrying things, chewing gum or standing while doing his work. After doing an activity using his muscles, he seems to be able to attend to other types of learning activities better. Sometimes, just giving him a piece of gum to chew can help him focus, and also help him deal with stressful situations.

First, we made the letters in the air with our finger, then drew them on the wall. We are working first on the capital letters that only have vertical and horizontal lines in them, like T L I H E. Those are easier to learn first. Letters with diagonal lines or curved lines are harder to learn when you have trouble crossing the midline (bilateral integration) like Ethan does. That means that if he's doing something on the left side of his body, he will generally use his left hand, and if on the right use his right hand, instead of using both sides together. At times, when writing or drawing, he would draw the right side of the picture with his right hand and change hands and draw the left side with his left.

We were supposed to be just doing the letters that we did in the air, but Ethan decided he needed to write his name also. To help him with the positioning both on the paper, left to right, and with each letter, we make boxes for each letter. Here, he made his own boxes then wrote each letter of his name in each box.