Nerf Gun Spelling

Being the end of the school year, Turbo is getting pretty tired of table top work. In fact, I am getting tired of table top work.

So this morning, I decided to shake things up a bit. Using our BOB Books, I put about 12-15 different letters used in the books and asked him to use his Nerf Gun to shoot the letters of the word given to him in order. Then using the window crayons, he was to write the words on the window.

OT: Day 9/30

Friday was Pirate Adventure Day in OT. To begin with, Ms. Renee had him swing from a rope to land onto the pirate boat. Although, I am pretty sure that this was not a part of her plan, Turbo's impulsivity paid off and served a good purpose. Later, she told me that having him jumping and swinging was a good way to set things off. First off, he received the proprioceptive input by bouncing, vestibular input by swinging and then worked on his hand strength by holding onto the rope which will help improve his handwriting.


As his boat (actually a swing) floated near him, he was to commandeer the vessel and climb aboard to hunt for pirate's treasure. This was another way for him to have fun with lotion (or cream as he refers to it). She had placed a number of lotion tins around the swing and he was to open them and fish out the gold coins. At first, he wasn't too keen on the idea of putting his hands in the cream as they would get messy. But the idea of getting treasure was too strong and he overcame his desire to be clean and not messy. While he was doing thing, she was swinging the swing slowly to help calm him down after swinging on the rope.



Keeping with the pirate theme, she created an obstacle course for him to go through to save the animals in the ball pit from the evil pirates who kidnapped them from the zoo. Using his pirate's lens, he was to spot the animals (really just an eye exercise), overcome the obstacles in his way, dive into the ball pit and rescue animals and bring them back to his ship. He had a great time, but of course, you can see all of the Sensory elements coming into play.


To help with Tactile Differentiation (Semantic agnosia: Those with this form of agnosia are effectively 'object blind' until they use non-visual sensory systems to recognise the object. For example, feeling, tapping, smelling, rocking or flicking the object, may trigger realisation of its semantics or meaning - Turbo struggles with this. Because he is so visual, he is very dependent upon looking at something to find it, see it or identify what it is, rather than using other senses to identify it), Ms. Renee asked him to dive into the balls (again a lot of proprioceptive and vestibular feedback/input) to find the animals. This way, he would use only his sense of touch to find the animals.

After that, she introduced him to the rock climbing wall. This proves to be a calming activity, almost a GREEN (Just Right) activity because of the feedback Turbo gets on his joints or the deep pressure. This has the potential for Turbo to be a RED activity, but with constant redirection and supervision, it can be GREEN. The idea was for him to climb up to find hidden animals to rescue, and then climb back down. This also encourages him to look before he moves, which helps with impulsivity, as well as to devise a plan for his next step.



To help bring him down to a BLUE activity for the ride home, she gave him a weighted lap pillow/blanket and had him wear a weighted vest while blowing bubbles. Breathing exercises help calm him, while wearing weights provides deep pressure.






She told me that there is an older lady who volunteers her time and sewing abilities who makes these vests for kiddos for specific weight amounts and fabric choice for $25. But looking at it, I think I can sew one myself...ehem...I mean...show the picture to a friend who is a seamstress and buy the material myself. For those of you who really know me...my sewing machine and myself DO NOT PLAY NICELY TOGETHER!

OT: Day 8/30

One of our goals for Turbo is to get him to do self-care items without a fight or meltdown. Two self-care items that we struggle with are the use of chap stick and lotion.

In order to do this, Ms. Renee used different items to help desensitize his lips so that when chap stick was applied, he was able to "handle" it and not wipe it off. Although he did wipe it off, he was able to handle it being on his lips for a good amount of time.


Her recommendations are to just keep making this part of self care fun and to rewire his brain so that it isn't an event that has a bad feeling or bad memory attached to it. (Which I am quite sure that I was a part of...insert bad mommy guilt feeling here).





**NOTE: SUCCESS!!**
As of this entry, tonight at bath, Turbo put on lotion all over his body as well as let me put it on his face! At first he didn't want to because he didn't want to "GET MESSY", but he let me put it on because I used a little bit for a his leg, then while he was rubbing it in, I proceeded to add more, and more, and more without him shying away!

Our next stop was an obstacle course. The goal was for him to receive a lot of different input while coupling it with a cognitive activity. We set up bolster pillows and equipped him with a "car". Which I am not sure what it is, but the picture shows it. He was to maneuver his way through the course, pick up an alphabet pillow, take it to the end, (without crashing into things - which was to help him with his impulsivity of needing to hit something (proprioceptive) while or after a swaying motion (vestibular). Then he was to write with a wax crayon on the mirror, what the letter was that he picked up.



Moving into the next room, Ms. Renee worked on slowing his engine down to a BLUE or a GREEN level by having him sit on a spinning board. This allowed his energy level to calm down so that he can moving into a learning mode, if you will. They played catch an alien and flew to different planets. Although to Turbo it was a game, to Ms. Renee, it was a test. She wanted to see if how is tracking was. She would move the alien in all directions and asked Turbo to watch it with his eyes without moving his head. This was a struggle for Turbo as he doesn't move his eyes, he moves his whole body/head. She also was looking for how smooth his tracking was. In the video she talks about what she was looking for. She also told me that by lying down on his side, moves the fluid in his brain around that will affect his tracking abilities, thus making them stronger.




After ALL that spinning, Turbo NEEDED some deep pressure to balance him out. Usually he would seek it out on my furniture, his brother, the walls, me, friends, ANYTHING that would give him that feedback that he so intensely needed. So, Ms. Renee loaded up the "Jedi" game and had him track the lights while banging them out with a ball. See, for yourself...it is such a cool game and with the lights off too!


After all the movement, Ms. Renee took him into an enclosed "cave" (really just underneath a slide area), gave him some bubbles to blow (a calming activity - BLUE activity and read him a book). His weighted lizard was on his lap to help with the deep pressure and she spoke in a calm, slow voice. By being in an enclosed environment or tent, it closed out any visual activity that was going on (because he is so visual any and all stimulation while trying to be calmed would just override each other) as well as sound. (So I have actually found a USEFUL activity for his tents - you know - other than to annoy me!)

OT: Day 7/30

I'm a day late...and a dollar short...but what are ya gonna do?


Yesterday at therapy, Ms. Renee worked a lot of visual stimulation. We have all noticed that Turbo blinks excessively, but we could never figure out the reason. Her thought is that his occular movement isn't strong enough and that he gets fatigued easily.

We began the session with some hardwork to create a safe environment for him to "work" in. She suggests that any time that he can do "hard work" is good for him because it allows him to receive a lot of input on so many different levels. He was to drag HUGE pillows that were very large to the area where he would be playing. He did this excessively and drug 5 of this pillows to the play area...but whatever.

Next, he hung in a hammock but she inserted what to me looked like a diaper changing pad that goes on a table. Guess I have baby on the brain; or at the very least, dirty diapers...but I digress.

She gave him a TheraBand to use to help him swing while he was equipped with is music (which I have forgotten to mention that not only does it play music at certain decible levels, but it also vibrates on the top of his head stimulating that vestibral lobe...bunch of guru talk I know but somehow it makes a difference :) ), while sitting on his belly. She asked me to pull on the rope while he swung back and forth (proprioceptive/vestibular input) while she stood behind me with a dry erase board writing letters. He was to say the letters/sounds while moving. This was to help him keep his eyes locked on an object while his body was moving. It was to help strengthen his occular movement while helping him to stay focused while his body was moving. Something he struggles with. He did really well, but you could tell that after 5 or 10 minutes of it, he was becoming fatigued and began blinking, then he politely asked if we could stop.



Our next task was to strengthen his upper body and hands. I don't think that Turbo intentionally puts up a fight when it comes to writing, coloring, cutting or pasting, it is just that he gets tired and fatigue sets into his hands so he gives up. The obstacle course that she set up was to help strengthen his upper body and hands and to give me ideas on how to do some more work with him at home.

She gave him a small trampoline to use to jump on to jump up and hang onto a trapez bar (Hand strength/Proprioceptive). He was to swing 3 times (Vestibular) and then fall into the pile of pillows that he made (Proprioceptive). He was to crawl on his belly to a scooter board (Upper body strength) and climb onto the board. Then using only his arms (Upper body strength) he was to collect puzzle pieces and put them into a pile (Upper body strength/congitive/visual). Then he was to do it all over again.

Check out the video of him doing the course.




Afterwards, he continued lying on his belly on the scooter board and put the puzzle together. Again, he was conditioning his upper body as well as focusing on the puzzle in a position that wasn't the "W" leg position. He wanted so badly to get up but was encouraged to lie on his belly. He successfully finished the puzzle while on his belly...Good job! (This whole activity was so that he could come back down from a TOO FAST activity to a JUST RIGHT activity - he did great in the transition).

When he saw the ramp and the scooter boards, the plan when out the window to use the climbing wall. So they altered their plans in the book, and set to work building a wall of cushion blocks for him to ride the scooter board down and crash into the blocks. See for yourself the video.



This was a really good session, and I walked away with a couple of things to do at home:

1.) Have Turbo hang from the monkey bars, hubby's arms, or have him do pushups with daddy at night to continue to build his upper arm strength.

2.) Consider having a different range of activites for school that has to do with the floor.

3.) Ask really, really nicely if hubby can make a scooter board for us, or swallow the 12 bucks it costs to buy one at a specialty store.

OT: Day 5/30

As we get deeper into OT, Ms. Renee is finding more things that we need to work on. Good in some ways, daunting in MANY! I know that by the end of these 30 session (with the hope of no more), Turbo will come out on the other side for the better, but the journey is tough, tough, tough.

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!