The Challenge Floor Puzzles

Floor puzzles was introduced to me by one of our formers EI therapist.  At first I thought that would be too challenging for him and that he would not be able to do. But again is all about seen the toy with other eyes. He doesn't do what we suppose to do right now but he will but while this we work with collaboration, waiting, sharing, turn taking. All this you can accomplish with floor puzzles.

With him is all about patience and collaboration we don't want them to do the puzzle by themselves because of course they can't but it's about asking for help, waiting ..

So at first he cried a lot I think was frustrating for him, he knows is something harder than what he is used to. But we encourage him to help us, basically we doing the puzzle and he just kind of helping pressing down the pieces. 

For Speech we can say things like my turn, help me, we are almost done, your turn.

Of course here you can see we used Thomas because always is a extra encouragement. With time using the puzzle again we notice a decrease in the complaining and the crying. But you have to keep it up so they don't loose that skill. And it's great to improve memorization.

Here are some ideas:

This one is great quality and so many opportunities I actually bought to give his Speech Therapist so she could use not just with him there but with other kids, she loved it !

This is the one we have from Thomas

This is another great one for the alphabets with Thomas

And here some other ones that are on my wish list:

thanks

Handmade Fine Motor and Attention toy

Here is a simple way to exercise fine motor skills with things that you have at home, I got great tips on Laura's tip of the week. I washed a cashew bucket from target and got some straws there on the craft section .
This activity gave Lucas also a opportunity to practice concentration I never thought he would enjoy so much and stay for such a long time, he loves so much he wants to grab all the sticks out for a second and third time.

A activity that I use as well for speech is asking him to clean up and teaching him to open the jar. Sometimes counting as we clean and teaching turn.
I say : my turn to clean - I put in
I say your turn or Lucas' turn

So cheap and help the kids so much.

The Importance of Fine Motor Skills

Well there is many articles out there to talk about the importance of fine motor skills, what is Fine Motor Skills, why is so important. I think myself as  a parent is very tricky thing to catch because we don't really think about that when we don't have that problem. We kind of take for granted. So we have to pay attention how our kids grab things or how they do small tasks so we can prevent. Most kids with Autism have some weakness with fine motor development, usually Occupational therapy helps with that and there is a lof things out there that we can do at home to help.

We want to prevent this to happen.

As you can see here my son is grabbing the fish with the wrong finger which he should use the pointer the difficult he has with that reacts in many other things like his inability to point. But it's a constant work and training the brain. We've noticed that one hand is better than other so correction helps and hand over hand and soon he was doing the correct way which made grabbing the fishes easier for him.

here is the correct way

We have to see toys sometimes with other eyes, my husband at first thought this toy is for older kids. But when I see a toy I don't always look for the age level because many times I won't use the toys as it's  suppose to be, which makes the toy have a longer use because right now he does't get the concept of this game in a group but later we can play together, for now this toys I use for color matching, and fine motor skills and visual skills (when turning on the table it goes in a circle motion). Later we can even use for math skills. So this is what I'm learning is to see the potential and if the toy can help him with something because there is many toys out there that really doesn't teach anything and are just noisy.

Other toys that are great for fine motor.

Jana

The fear of hair cut

Well some kids but specially  kids with sensory issues have a hard time cutting the hair.
I can just speak for my son, I think when we try to use the machine (which we stopped) literary freaks him out. Then what happens is his hair cut gets even worse because he moves and fights and scream so much.
It  would be a dream to take him to a salon and have someone do the job: yes but this is not our reality so
the way I do now is what is giving me the most success.

First I went and got things that would really distract him in the bath tub, things that he is really into right now in his case Thomas of course and abcs and pots to transfer water and bubble bath and thicker soaps.(the ones like shaving cream)





This Thomas boat is really cute and really got him distracted





What I do than is get my scissors and cut little by little each day some days he lets me cut more some days less i do it real fast and he gets annoyed I play more and cut more, I get the chunks on my hand and put in the trash so not all goes to the bath tube.
So far has been working and the important thing here is the association with cutting with good things, the problem I think in insisting on cutting when the child is screaming is that he or she associates with something bad. And we don't want that.
Another ideas of things that helps and which also you can work with speech while giving a bath.




Hope that helps
Jana

Learning with Cupcake trays

Here is another simple idea that should not cost you a lot of money, it was brought my Lucas' DI I thought was a good one and at the end if they eat it they have rewards, you can use the colored cheerios like fruit da loops and make color sorting, cut labels for the end of the pin. And do sorting.

How could we step it up if you child already know colors sorting:


- Use this same thing to learn numbers instead of colored backgrounds make it numbers or just ask the child to put one, two and so on.

- Use if for patterning, create a sequence of 3  in the top and ask them to repeat in the bottom.

- Buy other small objects like small tiny cars, animals and so sorting by shapes.

- Work the sensory use dry pasta, beans any that your child has a sensory issue.


Possibilities are endless !

Have fun !

Internet helping with ideas to teach

It's no news today that the internet is a great resources for us parents to help our kids, recently one that has been the best kept resources of links and visual ideas for me in Pinterest.
Think as the source of visual pins and bookmarks but the great thing about Pinterest is that we can categorize and also follow boards from other people that have been pining things that we like.
In my never ending to acquire ideas for Lucas and Autism therapy I made a board Autism Therapy, which you can follow as well. HERE, of course you can follow all my other boards but this is to give a example of the power of the internet nowadays for parents in participating more actively of their children treatments. Ideas are never enough many time I know something that I see is not right for Lucas right now because of his age but I know as he grow older he will need different things.
So browse Pinterest and have fun !

Learning the Cheap Way

This is a great idea and so cheap for a seasonal activity, one of Lucas DI' s (Development Interventionist) brought this and it was so cute. Dollar Store tags buy couple of each and laminate them I have a laminator it was a good investment that I got a long time ago to laminate some pictures. She just laminated the tags in a blank paper than the tags by themselves.Voila you have a matching game.

He is doing excellent now with matching I can see that he develop this skill really well now, in the beginning it was not so easy now it's beautiful to see how he scans the paper and find matches. The same with wood puzzles.
Matching is good for the brain, develop pre requisite for reading and math. Also we work with speech in this game as we can work with any game.
Say the name of characters if the kid is older like Lucas and have speech problems it's important to try to make the child say before giving the tag, if the child is younger you just model saying the name.


I hope you have a great 2012.
Jana