When we arrived, he was BOUNCING off the walls. BOUNCING...literally. I had to pull him off the walls. When Ms. Renee arrived, she immediately said, "WOW! You desperately need some input!" - Yeah...ya think??
She took him back and set up the tire swing. Oh joy...this outta be a hoot.
Equipped with his headphones/music, Turbo had to work on crossing mid-line while batting the "asteroid" (aka a ball hanging from the ceiling).
The next swing was just a simply playground swing, but definitely beefed up. He was to lie on his tummy while trying to hit the ball. This activity is full of input.
Proprioceptive: Hitting the ball with the bat and running on the floor.
Vestibular: Spinning and twirling.
Cognitive: Crossing mid line while trying to hit the ball hanging.
Visual Stimulation: Concentrating on the ball so that he can hit it will receiving all this input from the senses above.
I'm sure there is more to this, but this is all my brain can receive to make sense of!
HERE IS A VIDEO OF THIS ACTION!
Afterwards, we needed to have an activity that helped him to SLOW down. So she asked him to sit on the swing and retrieve small stuffed animals with his feet, while swinging and return them to the zoo. This was to help him fine tune his hand-foot-eye coordination. Again, he is getting a lot of input while trying to cognitively focus on something - because he is so VISUAL.
To help him with this visual process, she had him swing in the swing while sitting on it and going around in circles. As he did this, he was to focus his eyes on me to see how many fingers I was holding up and say it aloud. At first, he would stop in mid-spin, look at me, say the number, and proceed to spin again. Ms. Rene stopped him and explained that he was to continue spinning but to move his head so that he could always look at me. Again he tried it, but desperately wanted to stop and look. He did it a few times, but you could physically see him keeping his head straight forward so that he had to stop and look. After awhile, his eyes started moving...you know the way they get when you get dizzy...yep that's what happened. No mess, but I bet it was coming soon!
Finally, time for a slow game. We played the game where him and I had our backs to one another and had to cross mid-line while touching each other's fingers. We went from high to low and then back again. It was difficult as he got lower because he had to bend over and reach across mid0line to touch my finger. Giggles happened a lot, but you can tell he has trouble with this.
Another game, in the same say, he had to pass a small stuffed animal from between his legs while I passed it over our heads back to him. Again, the movement of his head and body. He did better, but struggled keeping his balance!
To move to our final activity: story reading, she had him get into the wheelbarrow position and "wheelbarrow-ed" him to the tent to read a story. LOADS of input in this position. He laughed, but as much as I think he is coordinated, this proved me wrong!
Of course, meltdown in the car ensued, and when we got home, he went directly to LEGOS to build and really wanted nothing to do with me or Tank. He ate an ENTIRE Totino's pizza and went to bed happily. This OT stuff is wearing both of us out!
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