Therapy

Sometimes I feel like I live in a therapy center!

Here is a short video of one portion of our daily therapy.

This part is working on spelling rules for c/k

Spelling Rules are much easier for her because they don't require the verbal motor planning that reading does.  So she can know how to spell and write and spell much easier than read.  This is due in a large part to her Apraxia (which is a speech disorder).

It is the same speech issue that Twinkie Boy has...but she has "graduated" from speech therapy.  However reading /str/ blends is still very difficult for her to articulate.

This is a clip of THE GIRL reading nonsense words.  This way we make sure she is REALLY reading and not simply memorizing the shapes of words, which is common, with children with dyslexia. 

 

AnYWAY....that was a snippet of the easier part of our therapy....

Speaking of Twinkie Boy.....

He not only has Apraxia of Speech....he also has some fairly significant fine motor issues.

So I try to incorporate fine motor stuff everyday.  His therapy is usually so fun the rest of the crew joins in and he doesn't even know he's working.

Today we made Christmas Cone Trees!

The one RULE which drove Twinkie Boy Crazy was that they had to place one decoration on at a time.  They couldn't grab a handful of candies and dump it on.  So he had to use his pincher grasp which he hated!

Which was fantastic for his fine motor.

Peeling the Twizlers apart was great for his hand strength.

Wrapping the tree with the twizzlers also took a lot of fine motor control.

We are also working on his establishing hand dominance.  Since he is left handed we want that hand to get the most practice.....so we constantly remind him to use his left hand.....

However we LOVE to see this.....His left hand working with his right hand sneaking in to assist with its job....stabilization.

If you notice the picture below...He is icing with his left hand (like The Girl is in the background with her right) but his right hand is not stabilizing the tree it is just there.  Notice The Girl is doing what most people do with their non-dominant hand-using it to assist.  However Twinkiei Boy is just letting his hang out.....BUT if you also notice his non-dominant hand does have icing on it so he did use it some for stabilization.....so it's improvement....he is beginning to show some bi-lateral integration.

Again this picture shows his "lazy hand".  It's actually under the table....

I know this is more then you ever wanted to know about fine motor skills!

Another simple motor activity that we did this week was painting.

However the trees had very small ornaments that had to be painted....and we didn't use paintbrushes.

We used Q-Tips that were cut in half.

So Jack had only a small area to grip which made it very difficult not to use a proper grip.

However as the Twinkster got tired he somehow managed a lazy grip....but at least his stabilizing hand is creeping in to help out!

So we kept pushing those extra fingers back and picking up that lazy hand and putting it to work doing its job- stabilizing!

Why do we do all this.....So his writing will be legible!

His grip here is pretty good....but he's still missing his stabilizing hand.  It's under the table!

This is his favorite grip.  Using all his fingers and not using his stabilizing hand....

However....we are occasionally seeing this now!

Fairly decent grip with stabilizing hand!!!!

LOVE PROGRESS!

So anyway.......that was a small peek into some of our daily therapy!

It is often MESSY

ALWAYS Interesting

And Usually A LOT OF FUN!