Journal of Practice by

Heavy Work

gward4_8 — 2025-04-29 18:41:07 UTC

This can include weighted blankets or bags, pushing and pulling objects, and carrying heavy objects. From experience, there were gallon bags filled with rice, corn, or beans and were tossed back and forth with the students or forced to move from one spot to another. This can be used when they need to relax some muscles on order to focus more on specific tasks. This method is also very cost effective as you can use materials that you find heavy.

Vestibular Input

gward4_8 — 2025-04-30 23:16:29 UTC

Vestibular input for kids involves activities that engage their sense of balance and movement, helping them process information about where their head is in space. This can be achieved through various movements like swinging, spinning, bouncing, and rolling.

Swings

gward4_8 — 2025-04-30 23:22:39 UTC

Swinging provides vestibular input, which is crucial for developing balance, body awareness, and motor planning. The back-and-forth motion of a swing stimulates the inner ear, providing information about movement, direction, and spatial orientation. This input helps the brain regulate balance and coordination. These swings can be bought on various websites such as school related, sensory related or amazon. They can also range in price from $60 on amazon to $500+ depending on the type of swing. In order to have a swing in the room, you will need to check and make sure it can be safely installed as well.

Proprioceptive

gward4_8 — 2025-04-30 23:41:15 UTC

Fine motor and proprioceptive activities can be integrated to enhance both fine motor skills and body awareness. Activities like using theraputty or playdough, can all provide both fine motor and proprioceptive input. Both of these are very helpful to help the students work out those fine motor skills. These have been used in classrooms that I have been in and have been very effective as the students find these very enjoyable and fun. You can also put small beads or objects in the theraputty to allow the students to squeeze and search through. This is a cost-effective sensory object as well. A 20 pack of playdoh can be purchased at walmart for $15 and theraputty can be purchased from the special supplies store in a pack of 4 of different strengths for $17.

Fine Motor

gward4_8 — 2025-04-30 23:48:03 UTC

Fine motor skills are the small, precise movements of the hands and fingers, crucial for daily tasks like writing, buttoning, and using tools. Developing these skills in children through various activities is important for their overall development and independence. These can be very cost-effective or free using household items. This can include doing tasks such as cutting, crunching paper with one hand, small activities using beads and tools.

Tactile Play

gward4_8 — 2025-04-30 23:58:05 UTC

Tactile play for kids involves activities that stimulate their sense of touch, engaging them with various textures, materials, and objects. This type of play is crucial for early childhood development, fostering cognitive growth, motor skills, and emotional well-being. This can also be very cost-effective with sand, beans, rice or even water. You can also put toys in these to allow the children to play more effectively and add more elements to the bins.

ALERT Program

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:07:32 UTC

A "sensory diet alert program" combines elements of sensory diets with the Alert Program to enhance self-regulation and sensory processing. This approach focuses on providing structured sensory experiences throughout the day to help individuals, especially children, regulate their arousal levels and improve focus.

ALERT program resource and information page

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:11:58 UTC

Regulation Zones

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:14:28 UTC

Students and children need to have stations and resources to go to when they feel overstimulated and need some regulation. They also can be printed out for students individually and as a class.

Brain Works

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:25:03 UTC

BrainWorks focuses on developing cognitive skills for learning. It can also be a program designed to help students understand their sensory needs. This link provides a lot of information for teachers and parents to be able to use it as a way to create routines and activities for children. It also allows you to download and create an app as well.

Sensory Diet App

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:27:13 UTC

More App Resources

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:28:19 UTC

Sensory Profile 2

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:34:32 UTC

This kit can be purchased from Pearson for assessments provides standardized tools to help evaluate a child's sensory processing patterns in the context of home, school, and community-based activities. Depedning on the kit that you want to be purchased, depends on the price. It ranges from $3.00 to $300.

Sensory Processing Measure

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:38:14 UTC

The Sensory Processing Measure (SPM) is a standardized assessment used to evaluate sensory processing abilities, praxis, and social participation in children and adults. It's designed to help identify individuals with sensory processing difficulties and inform intervention strategies. are many different books and kits that can be purchased. It is quite expensive and can range in the $300+ range.

BOT-2

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:40:51 UTC

The BOT-2 is a standardized assessment used to measure fine and gross motor skills in individuals aged 4-21. It provides a comprehensive measure of motor proficiency by assessing various areas like fine motor precision, manual dexterity, and balance. The test is administered individually and used by occupational therapists and other professionals to evaluate motor development, identify potential difficulties, and inform intervention strategies. This can be purchased on Pearson ranging in very cost-effective prices. This is so each material can be purchased as needed.

Peabody Developmental Motor Scales

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:43:04 UTC

The Peabody Developmental Motor Scale assesses gross and fine motor skills in children from birth up to five years of age, the PDMS focuses on six main areas of motor skill development: reflexes, stationary control, locomotion, object manipulation, grasping, and eye-hand coordination. It can be purchased on Pearson for $46. This is a very cost-effective assessment tool.

Clinical Observations

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:44:07 UTC

Clinical observations for sensory processing involve systematically evaluating how individuals react to and organize sensory information. These observations can be structured or unstructured, and they help therapists understand sensory processing difficulties that may be impacting behavior and motor skills. For example, therapists might observe a child's response to different textures, sounds, or movements, looking for signs of over-responsiveness, under-responsiveness, or sensory-seeking behaviors.

School

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:48:19 UTC

To implement sensory into teh school day routine, teachers can use sensory breaks with videos and moving activities. The classroom can also have fidget toys, flexible seating and different movement or transition routines.

Home

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:50:45 UTC

Sensory needs can also be implemented into the home of the children. This would include structured routines, sensory input with using some of the objects and tactics that have been suggested, integrating movement into chores and even having a safe place that is quiet for them to go to and calm down.

Community

gward4_8 — 2025-05-01 00:52:38 UTC

While out in the community, sensory needs can also be implemented. Noise-canceling headphones can be a great use for children. These are very cost effective and can be purchased very easily. Taking small calming kits with fidgets and visuals is very helpful so the child knows what to expect or need.