Blog Archives

Introducing Effortless Art Crayons {REVIEW}

31/7/2017

Encouraging a tripod grasp and a child's interest in drawing can be difficult. As an occupational therapist, I am often asked to see these children to help them with their first steps in holding a "drawing implement" and to help them to make meaningful marks on the page.

We use the term "tripod grasp" to describe a grasp of the pencil or crayon with three fingers of the hand (thumb, index and third finger). Ideally, movement and control of the implement also comes from the muscles of these fingers. By about 4 years of age, a child can be encouraged to use a tripod grasp. Not sure if your child is holding the pencil or crayon the way they should be? Refer to this article HERE which talks about developmentally appropriate pencil grasps, inefficient and functional grasps.

Introducing "Effortless Art Crayons" by Two Sparrows Learning Systems. "Effortless Art Crayons" are a uniquely shaped crayon which was originally designed with input from an occupational therapist. They are short triangular shaped crayons that may be used at either end. There is also a small raised section in the centre which may be used to assist grip (but doesn't need to be). This unique shape works well for children of all ages.

I found that the young OT kids whom I see (who are yet to develop a tripod grasp), held these crayons comfortably. I encouraged these children to "pinch" the crayon, although the triangular shape lends itself to be held with one finger on each surface (ie. a tripod grasp).

There are six points of contact of the crayon to the page from the triangular ends, rather than the traditional one rounded end of a crayon promoting success in those beginning to marks on the page. The crayons glide along the page easily, which explains the "effortless" in the name of this crayon. Children do not need to exert much pressure onto the page which is really helpful if they have poor hand strength and poor control. Read about more tips for those who have difficulty with pencil pressure HERE.

We also found that the crayons could draw a controlled thin line or a thicker shaded line (the "art" aspect of the crayon). My daughter, Miss 10 years especially enjoyed using these crayons to create! According to her, they are the "best crayons ever" as they give her the control that she would otherwise have from pastels or coloured pencils but with the shading and depth of colour of a crayon. {I have a feeling that I may have lost this set of crayons to her!}

Two Sparrows Learning System is a family owned business owned by Nancy and Jason. Nancy is a former special education teacher. The company vision is to "create learning products for all ages and abilities that are intuitive, inclusive, and environmentally conscious in design". The "Effortless Art Crayons" are their first product and are hand made from 100% recycled crayons! This is a terrific initiative where old crayons are collected (and saved from being dumped in our environment) to produce these unique products.

"Effortless Art Crayons" are currently only available for shipping in the USA, however follow Two Sparrows Learning Systems on Facebook or Instagram to be kept up-to-date with new products and initiatives.

What is your favourite crayon for those developing a tripod grasp? Have you tried these?

Cindy Chuan is a registered Occupational Therapist practising in Sydney Australia. She has two young children who are a constant source of inspiration and learning. Cindy loves working creatively to help children to reach their potential, finding opportunities in everyday living and making learning fun.

Cindy is the author of the Occupational Therapy blog Your Kids OT

Disclosure: This product was gifted to Your Kids OT for the purposes of a review. Reviews and endorsements of products will only be made based on my expertise and personal opinion; and deemed worthy of such endorsement. The opinions shared in sponsored content will always be my own and not that of the advertising company or brand.

How to Use a Metronome to Increase Attention, Coordination and Motor Planning {Guest Post}

31/7/2017

What a privilege to have another guest blogger with us today at Your Kids OT! I feel like I am a student constantly learning from others and love reading what other OTs are doing in their practice! Today on the blog, I would like to introduce Casey who is an occupational therapist whom I "met" on Instagram! She shares so many creative ideas! Today, Casey shares with us "how to use a metronome to increase attention, coordination and motor planning". Be sure to follow the links through to her you-tube videos which provide a great demonstration of her activity suggestions here!

Have you used a metronome in your OT practice? Have you considered using it in the classroom or at home?

Wanting to increase coordination, attention and motor planning for your kids? Have you tried using a digital metronome to help with this?

Let me tell you how!

A metronome is used for keeping beat. It is often used in music for helping a musician maintain tempo. Today I want to share with you how it can be used in therapy, at home or in your classroom! To demonstrate the many ways to use it, I downloaded a metronome app on my ipad. You can access it for free here.

The metronome creates a beat. This beat can be utilized at various speeds providing auditory input for the neurological system to process. Creating a sensorimotor activity that uses the beat (clapping on beat, stomping a foot on beat, bouncing a ball against the wall on beat) causes the brain to process and communicate messages between multiple senses It makes the brain process all of the messages passing through to get in rhythm! Think about listening to a teacher, taking notes, while maintaining posture in a chair. Or listening to your coach tell you how to adjust your stance, while holding bat in proper position in the batter's box and readying yourself for the next pitch. Multiple avenues of brain communication are needed to complete these tasks in congruence. What better way to exercise the attention, focus and motor needed to do this than to add some rhythmic auditory input.

Here are some examples:

Line Jumps - This involves jumping forward, backward or sideways. You can have your child try to land on target lines or have them land between the lines as I had this child do in my demonstration. With each jump, the child should be landing on the beat. I recommend starting between 50-60 bpm (beats per minute) when trying out the metronome for the first time. You can adjust speeds later to increase the challenge. In this example, I used 56 bpm and you can check it out here.
Figure 8s - There are lots of great sources out there sharing how the lazy 8 is a great brain gym activity. I love to use it in therapy as it helps to integrate right and left side brain communication. You can use the metronome to have your child walk the figure 8 while clapping, marching or doing cross crawls to the metronome beat. This can be challenging, but also lots of fun!
Cross Crawls - This activity incorporates good communication between right and left sides of the brain. It is a great activity I use regularly to help with warming up the body/brain and facilitating coordination. Adding in the metronome increases the challenge and allows for even more brain communication with all the senses. You can start with your child touching opposite hand to opposite knee on beat while marching. Then you can increase challenge with opposite elbow to opposite knee! You can do this one behind the back with arms out to the sides, and bringing opposite toe up to opposite hand behind your back. You may want to practice this one first before adding the metronome! You can see a demo of this by clicking here.

Ball Drops - This activity involves dropping a ball on a target in rhythm. This can be graded in so many ways with different size balls or location of target. you can have a child passing a ball, bouncing it off a wall or many other ideas.
Reading charts - With this activity you will simply have your child read charts to you. You can adjust the pattern they read such as horizontal, vertical, right to left, top to bottom, etc. You can use pictures, letters, numbers or shapes. I have also used arrows and had the students clap their hands in the direction of the arrows on beat while stating the direction (up, down, right, left) to increase body awareness. This is a great activity to include some academics (pictures, letters, numbers, shapes) and you can check out my demo here.
Step ups - This is a good one to add other motor tasks (clapping, reading charts) or adjust temp to have the child respond and adjust their speed to stay on beat. You can have your child do it up/down in forward direction (see photo) or you can also have them go side to side if you have a single step.
Clapping - In this activity I have the child listen closely and adjust to the beat as I increased or decreased the beats per minute. This is a great exercise to practice attention, focus and motor planning.

Dealing cards - Now of course I had to come up with a few fine motor activities that could incorporate the metronome. Dealing cards is a great bilateral skill that you can have do to hep build fine motor control and helper hand stability. You can check out my demo of this activity with the metronome here.
Making dots/poke art - I like this activity for your kids who are needing some good fine motor control practice. They can work to stay on the boundary and stay in rhythm like in this demo! In addition to this idea, you can also do poke art which requires you to use a picture on a cork board and poke holes into the lines of the image with a push pin, which is another fantastic task that includes fine motor control and hand strength. Supervision of course is required when having a child try poke art.
Hammering - I have enjoyed the posts from FundaNoodle using the activity I can Pound which includes fine motor coordination and bilateral skills for hammering. This made me think of those hammering toys as well that my daughter has. I decided to share this idea with using the metronome and hammering on beat. You can increase difficulty by having children follow a color pattern and hammer on beat. You can see a demonstration here.
Hop-scotch- This activity is another that can include academics with numbers, letters, shapes, words, etc. It also encourages single leg and two foot jumping which is a great gross motor coordination skill. If your child can't do single leg jumps yet, you can also do feet together on single blocks and feet apart on double blocks (also called straddle jumps). This is a great introductory way to start working on the motor skill for jumping jacks (which is another activity you can do with a metronome!! Side note: When I teach kids jumping jacks, I slow the beat down really slow so they won't rush through. We practice quality movement first and then increase the speed! Takes a little more patience, but it is fun and the kids enjoy the final outcome!) Check out my hopscotch demonstration here.
Leg jumps - You can do running man (same arm and same leg and switch on beat) or contra-lateral skier (opposite arm opposite leg forward and switch on beat). These are great for increasing right and left brain communication and coordination.

What I love about this - is it is so easy to implement! This is not just an idea for therapists! Parents, teachers, paras... anyone working with kids YOU can try this too. I love implementing these activities for brain gym/brain breaks to stimulate the body and brain! They would be great activities to do during the school day or before homework! I hope this inspires you and gives you a fresh idea to implement in your home school or therapy session!

Ready to Grow - Casey

About Me:
I’m Casey. I am a pediatric occupational therapist working in the school system. I have a passion for helping people and sharing ideas for those who are nurturing children everywhere! My blog OTandGrowWithMe is a place I like to share ideas for parents, teachers, therapists and those who are so lucky to get to play, learn and and grow alongside the children in their lives!

Visit my website: www.otandgrowwithme.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/otandgrowwithme/
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Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/OTandgrowwithme/

Fun Ways to Build Ocular Motor Skills! {Guest Post}

23/7/2017

Today on the blog, I would like to introduce Kim who is an occupational therapist whom I "met" on Instagram! She shares her favourite toy and activity ideas to support learning through play on IG and her website Preferred Therapy Toys. Kim is sharing with us about "ocular motor skills" and she has some wonderful activity suggestions to address these skills! I'm looking forward to trying these out with my OT kids this term! Thanks so much Kim for sharing this with the YKOT readers!

As an Occupational Therapist working in the school setting, we support many children with their ocular motor skills, as these skills are important for reading and writing development. Ocular motor skills are your "eye movement skills" including:-

visual tracking/visual pursuits - ability for eyes to follow a slow moving target,
saccades - ability for eyes to jump/move from one target to another and
convergence/divergence - ability for eyes to move together (eye teaming) inward and outward when following something in towards body and out away from the body.

I also like to look at "visual fixations" - ability for eyes to maintain visual attention to a stationary item.

In the school environment, ocular motor skills are important to address because they are foundational skills for visual motor skills (hands and eyes working together to complete tasks) and also are essential when reading, writing and copying from the board. If your child seems to be having difficulty with their vision/eye skills, I would first recommend having their vision checked by an optometrist or ophthalmologist, to rule out the need for glasses/acuity issues.

Here are some activity ideas to work on ocular motor skills; some of these activities address visual motor skills as well, as they often go hand in hand.

1. Popsicle Stick Reading - Put different colored circle stickers, or draw circles with different colors down a popsicle stick (see picture below) and have student hold this vertically. They can say the colors they see in order from top to bottom, you can also then turn the stick sideways and read from left to right. Try to have kids keep their head straight and not use their finger to hold their place (only hold finger at tip of popsicle stick). You can work up to letters or even sight words as well with this activity and start with wider popsicle sticks and move to thinner popsicle sticks.

2. Ball activity with letters on ball - Get an inexpensive medium sized ball (I usually get mine at the dollar store) and write letters on it (see picture below). Put a target on a wall (could mark an X with painters tape or use a large sticker) and have your child toss the ball with both hands to hit the target. Then when he/she catches the ball, say the first letter they see. you can also use the ball to have the child move the ball to find the letters of the alphabet in order. This activity works on visual motor skills with tossing/catching the ball as well as visual fixations and saccades.

3. Scarf Toss/Catch, Popping Bubbles, Balloon Volleyball - These fun activities are great for younger kids or children that have trouble with ball skills. These activities work on visual tracking and visual motor skills/eye-hand coordination in a play based environment.

4. Alphabet or Number Sequencing Activities - I love using the alphabet or numbers, either by using puzzle pieces or putting numbers/letters on sticky notes and spreading them around on the wall (or floor for puzzle pieces). I then have my students find these in order. This works on visual scanning and sequencing.

5. Slap Tap Game - This is a fun yet tricky game that takes some motor coordination as well. Movements are complete in correlation with the letter presented:
p - right arm up
b - stomp right foot
q - left arm up
d - stomp left foot

These letters are then placed in rows and students complete these together reading from left to right i.e.:

p b q d d b p q

You can also make also make it trickier and do two body part motions together (see picture below) or you could incorporate music with this activity.

6. Ipad/Tablet apps -

Vision Training 1 - This is a great app that has a variety of options to work on visual pursuits/visual tracking skills - follow arrows, upper case letters, lower case letters, in a variety of patterns (I prefer left to right as this is the pattern needed for reading and writing) and use your finger to touch the lit up item. It also keeps track of your most recent highest score.
ABC touch - Pop balloons in alphabetical order that are mixed up on the screen.
Dexteria Jr.- 3 activity options "Squish the Squash" and "Pinch the Pepper" are great for ocular motor and visual-motor skills.

7. Games - I love games to work on ocular motor skills in a fun way! My favorites are Elefun (great for visual tracking skills to follow paper butterflies out of an elephant trunk and into your net) and Spot it (finding the same picture on two cards great for visual scanning skills). Also beading activities and tweezer games help with working on visual fixations.

8. Worksheets - Mazes, dot to dots and word searches are great activities for working on visual motor and ocular motor skills. There are many free printable worksheets available in these areas.

Accommodations - Accommodations are supports that help your child to complete a task more easily with use of adaptive strategies. If your student has trouble with copying information from the board, offer copying from near point instead and use a marker item to hold place when copying (ie. eraser, paper clip, tongue depressor). When reading, you can have your child use their finger or index card to help with keeping place.

I hope this information has been helpful and that you have found some new activity ideas for ocular motor development. :)

By Kim Heyer (OTR/L)

Kim has been practicing Occupational Therapy for 17 years. She specializes in Pediatrics and works in both the school and clinic setting in San Diego, California. She has a pre school daughter who she enjoys watching grow and loves trialing and testing new toy and activity ideas with her. You can find her at www.preferredtherapytoys.com and on Instagram @preferredtherapytoys.

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Disclaimer: The information on this site is general in nature and should be used for educational and entertainment purposes. The activities are safe for most children, however, you should consult an Occupational Therapist or health professional to address specific movement, sensory or other medical conditions. This blog does not replace formal therapeutic professional advice given by a health professional or medical practitioner. Reviews and endorsements of products will only be made based on my expertise and personal opinion; and deemed worthy of such endorsement. The opinions shared in sponsored content will always be my own and not that of the advertising company or brand. Content, advertising space or posts will be clearly identified if paid, affiliated or sponsored. Affiliate links may be found throughout this website in advertising. This means that if you follow through with a purchase from these links, Your Kids OT will receive a percentage of the sale. Your Kids OT undertakes to meet the requirements of the "Social Media Policy" as published by Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Further information about this policy can be found here.

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Hi, I'm Cindy and I am an Occupational Therapist. I enjoy working creatively with children to see them reach their potential. Read more about me here.

Introducing Effortless Art Crayons {REVIEW}

How to Use a Metronome to Increase Attention, Coordination and Motor Planning {Guest Post}

Fun Ways to Build Ocular Motor Skills! {Guest Post}

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