Adapting a Regular Activity

(Haven't posted in a while bc I had foot surgery on 10/09, so I took a little break...) 

It seems that OTs and educators are always looking for new tasks and activities to try with our students, if anything just to find something new and novel for them to do instead of the same things over and over.  Plus, I always love to look for find a good bargain!  Most toys are geared toward typically developing kids, and parents/educators may not know how they can also be used for their kids who may not be typically developing.  Before school started this year, I happened upon some clearance items at Michael's http://www.michaels.com/, and I found some felt activity boards for $4 a piece: 

So, of course I bought 2...  I was very happy that I found a dinosaur one, because that is a special interest of several of my students with ASD!  

Now, how can I use these with some of my students in a way that promotes some learning and engagement and addresses what I am needing to work on with them??  It's kind of like doing an "activity analysis" like some of us had to do back in the college days when we were learning about choosing appropriate tasks for our "clients."  What are we wanting to achieve, and how can this particular activity accomplish that?  Well, here are some ideas and ways that I came up with that I can use these boards with my little friends:

1.  Take a picture of a board that you have assembled, provide your student with that visual (follow the picture on the iPad or print out a visual for them), and have them replicate it themselves on the board (save yourself some time and make several visual scenes, laminate them, and keep them to use repeatedly). :

This promotes imitation, motor planning (choosing the correct pieces, knowing where to place them), sequencing (placing the items in the correct order if they over lap), eye hand coordination and visual motor integration (picking up the pieces, looking at the visual and then placing the piece on the board), fine motor skills (picking up the felt from the table top to place on the board), etc.  You can make the task fairly simple (just use a few pieces) or more difficult (add more pieces to the picture).  

2.  You can add some learning of concepts and more advanced motor planning to this activity by giving specific directions for your student/child to follow...

-place the volcano on the right side of the board

-place the triceratops in the middle of the board

-place the pterodactyl in the upper left corner of the board

3.  For kids who have more limited cognition or who are working on motor control, position the board on a vertical plane and have them reach forward and place the felt anywhere on the board to work on active grasp/release, reaching and placing, grading their movement/motor control, etc.  This can also be done on a desk or table top.  

4.  Let the kids be creative and build their own scene.  Have them tell you about their picture when they are done.  Or, have them make a scene, take a picture of it with an iPad and let them have YOU reassemble it from the visual (they love the reversal of roles, trust me!).  

With a little bit of thought, you can make adaptations or make pretty much any toy or activity applicable for a given situation.  If you have something fun and are not sure how to make it applicable to your child or student, ask your OT or another team member for ideas on ways to do so.

Want to find yourself a felt activity board?  Here is a link to several kinds on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_5?url=search-alias%3Dtoys-and-games&field-keywords=felt%20board%20sets&sprefix=felt+%2Ctoys-and-games%2C171

Teaching With Visual Work Tasks

Well, what can I say about this subject?  Lots.  Too much.  Too many things to address.  I could go on and on.  But...  The kids who seem to have difficulty grasping the regular (or even special ed) curriculum are baffling to those that teach them.  These are often visual learners, the ones that don't easily grasp the auditory format that is in most classrooms.  I have had several kids on my caseload that just didn't seem to be learning much, but that attended school every day.  The paras that worked with them were really at a loss, they didn't know what they could be doing with their student while the rest of the class learned the regular curriculum.  (Certainly the paras rely on curriculum assistance from teachers and special educators, but sometimes educators aren't familiar with structured tasks or how to make a task more visual.)  Now, of course there are kids who are in the regular classroom who are learning through their own adapted curriculum.  But the students that I am referring to are those kids who need emphasis on the visual aspect of being taught, and that need to master work completion and independence.  Structured work tasks are a very good place to start.  Work tasks should have a clear beginning and ending.  They should be clearly laid out and visually organized. This type of format emphasizes the visual learning style of the student, and alleviates the need for auditory processing.   Certainly these work tasks are great for kids with autism, but I also use them with kids with developmental delays because the steps to the tasks are predictable and concrete. Below are a couple of structured work tasks that I have recently used with some students that I am working with.

This is a sorting task that is also functional-  putting silverware away is a task that everyone does at home.  The student sorts by utensil, obviously; sorting is a task that speech therapists use often.  I bought the baskets at the dollar store, and the "silverware" is plastic, which can also be bought at the dollar store.  You can also buy an inexpensive utensil tray to sort into.  This is also a good task for perceptual skills and reaching and placing- one of my students has difficulty rotating items to fit into a space.

This is a sorting task by size- big and small.  These activities can be simple, or you can add other elements, such as choice making using PECS cards, adding a math component, using 1:1 correspondence, etc.

Below is an excellent resource for visual work tasks, "How Do I Teach This Kid? Visual Work Tasks for Beginning Learners on the Autism Spectrum," by Kimberly A. Henry.   It contains information on how to make task boxes and activities.  It also includes category content such as motor tasks, matching tasks, sorting tasks, reading tasks, writing tasks and math tasks.  I am currently working jointly with a speech therapist and co treating a student using these types of tasks and this book for guidance.  It has been working out great, I highly recommend this book as a resource.