Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) RSS feedThis is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

How to Draw: Using Progressive Drawings from a Website
My OT kids are motivated to use a website to learn how to draw. We've had success usinghttp://www.do2learn.com/activities/artprojects/howtodraw/index.htmThere's only a limited amount there - 13 drawings to be exact - but my OT kids are more willing to use it and follow it than the similar progressive drawings I have on paper.              Since I'm left handed and my OT kids are usually right handed, it works out to draw a line down the middle, and then we both use the same piece of paper...I draw the first step, then my OT kid copies....we just keep following that website till we finis...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 23, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Figuring out What to do at Conference
As I blogged about here: http://blog.missawesomeness.com/2013/02/come-to-aota-conference-i-beg-you-i.html, PLEASE Come to AOTA Conference. if you feel like stalking me there, I am copy/pasting what I hope to be doing, not for the purpose of stalkers, but because I want you to see what it looks like. What I did was go through the conference booklet and (messily) in Word write up the courses and posters that most appealed to me so that I could get a sense of the time. If I were a better dork (or a nerd or a geek) I'd have done it in Excel. But I'm not so this is as good as it gets. At least this early in advance. I...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 21, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Come to AOTA Conference, I beg you, I love you...
The American Occupational Therapy Association's (AOTA) Conference is this April 25th through April 28th, and CHECK IT OUT, it's in SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA!!!!!This happens to be my hometown, which means I am definitely going to it. :) The keynote speaker this year will be Aron Ralston, who wrote "Betwen a Rock and a Hard Place" - remember the movie 127 Hours? His Story. Ouch.If you aren't a member and still want to go to conference, you can save 15% on membership and 30% on registration by signing up for both.I love AOTA conference because it gives everyone a  boost of confidence and inspiration that we are in a gr...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 19, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

How to Not be a Crappy OT (Learned the Hard Way), Lesson #1
Edit: I've posted this several times, then unposted it. It makes me feel so weird to share one of my most shameful moments, even though I realize that this may not seem like a big deal for some people. But I feel guilty for not posting much in a while, so I looked through the NINETY ONE draft posts I have to find one I could put up. I hope it resonates with some of you. And I want to thank one of my readers, EJS, for sending me an email about how my blog has helped her. It really made me feel wonderful at a time I really needed the encouragement. I'm hoping to get back onto the OT blogging bandwagon soon! Two things I've r...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 19, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Real-Life Dexteria: Practicing Finger Isolation with Popsicle Sticks
I like the program Dexteria, and have blogged about it here, but it is too fast for some of my elementary schoolers (and I bet for others with cognitive impairments or recovering from certain types of hand or neurological injuries). I'm hoping with a future upgrade they allow a setting where the sequence can be slowed down or press-dependent rather than by time. In the meantime,  I made my own physical version in 3 seconds by grabbing some colored popsicle sticks. By having my little OT kid practice with these popsicle sticks in real life, I'm hoping it will speed her up and carry over so she can do the i-Pad version ...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 17, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Robot Space Caterpillars: Coloring inside the Lines
        As an elementary school OT, to practice coloring inside the lines (when working on fine motor skills, keeping the wrist still and just moving the fingers, visual attention, distal control, etc) we make "robot space caterpillars". We use small grid paper and practice outlining the shape before coloring it in. We usually do about 5-6 boxes at a time.It's definitely more fun to make robot space caterpillars than to color in boxes. :) (Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G))
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 16, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

The "Love Potato" : Quick and easy OT Valentines Day Craft
Last night I said I wasn't a good OT because I wasn't going to do any Valentines Day Crafts with my kids. I perused Valentines Day stuff on Pinterest, and kept seeing the same things over and over again. Lots of hearts, lots of candy, lots of red. It just all looked the same to me. The only thing that even remotely interested me was lovebug stuff. Lots of it was super cute and awesome, I'm just a weirdo. So I made the executive decision that (some of) my OT kids are going to make love potatoes. That's right. We're going to cut out potatoes, put up to 9 googly eyes on it, and handwrite "I only have eyes for you, Be my Valen...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 12, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

The Cricket Symphony: Surviving Childhood Without Social Skills
Every cricket had a job all throughout my childhood. Each time my mouth opened, the symphony began. People would look at me quizzically, alarmed by my nonsensical humor and lack of social understanding. One time, during Peter Pan practice rehearsal (I was Tootles, one of the lost boys), a girl complained of a mosquito bite. She reached over to scratch it as I laughed. What I wanted to say is “I am sorry you hurt your leg. That must really hurt.” But what came out was a short, tight, laugh. She looked at me with a pained expression on her face, noting out loud that I was weird. I felt bad, but I grinned at her exaggerat...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 10, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Mat Man: Teach a Child How to Draw a Person Using Handwriting Without Tears
  I had a first grader come in and I asked him to draw me a person. He did. It was the one on the left with the orange strip (which hides his name). So then I pulled out "Mat Man" with some slight modifications to his face since I was missing some pieces, lol. We went through "Mat Man", which was developed by Handwriting Without Tears, and we talked about his body, his arms and legs, his ears, etc etc etc...then I drew Mat Man while he watched and I explained. Finally, he drew Mat Man, see drawing on right.  This lesson was probably 10 minutes long. Pretty impressive, huh? To go from that left drawing to right ...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 7, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

The Hidden Poignancy of the MMSE
  The MMSE or Mini Mental State Exam is a 30-question exam that asks very basic questions and is designed to screen for cognitive impairment. I did a lot of them while I was doing a 3 month fieldwork as a Level II OT Student in a geriatric psychiatric ward in Tennessee back in 2009.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%E2%80%93mental_state_examinationIf you want to read a little more about it, I linked to the Wikipedia (I know, I know, poor source...sue me...I skimmed through it, good enough)What I recall most about this exam is the poignancy of the responses when I would ask them to write me a sentence, any sentence th...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 5, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

A feline SOAP Note
This is a re-post in honor of Ravi. I think this is the one he said he liked...http://blog.missawesomeness.com/2007/07/nikki-feline-soap-note.html (for original, including amazing picture, although meat of it copy/pasted here) Initial evaluation with Nikki, a 17-year-old Tortoiseshell feline, home visit. S: Nikki voiced her complaints of of arthritic pain in her joints as well as stated she always has a generalized sense of anxiety. Reports hobbies of watching ants, biting butts, sitting in windows, and meowing. O: Nikki was observed taking Amytriptline to calm herself. She raced from room to room, meowing, as her ...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - February 2, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Guided drawings via Angry Birds
      I have a kid who hates drawing but loves Angry Birds. He needs a LOT of work on drawing. Not because it's important that he become an artist, but it's important he know how to follow basic instructions and draw basic shapes so he can follow along with instructions in geometry, art classes, basic projects. We went shape by shape and did a guided drawing together. His angry bird is on the left. We had tried guided drawings together earlier and it was like pulling teeth. Once we switched to drawing together with angry birds, he did much better. :) (Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G))
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - January 30, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Working on cutting long-term...
  I have a kid who is working on cutting. He tends to not cut carefully.  Each session he has to cut out several shapes very carefully (you can still see a few mistakes though, cough) and then glue them onto this one sheet of paper we keep. We have it going in "Mario style" (hence some of those question marks from the game) and then he gets to add a Mario sticker. He really likes this. I probably should have put dates on the shapes in tiny pencil too. Hindsight is 20/20 right!But for those of you working on cutting...consider keeping a single sheet of construction paper in their folder that you just keep adding...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - January 28, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Here's what I want someone to develop...
I want someone to develop a bunch of scratch off "lottery-style" tickets where you can buy a batch of them. Then you give one to your OT kid near the end of a session as a reward. They have to scratch it off with a quarter (a great fine motor/strengthening/visual attention task) to get to the code underneath. Then they have to input the code (like X3A-4BX-2AY) into a website at www.otreward.com or something (a great copying task). Then, a random silly thing happens once they input the code, like a 3 minute song or dance or funny joke.It would obviously be a lot of work so it would never happen, but wouldn't it be cool? :)&...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - January 26, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs

Using stuffed animals in OT sessions...
Today I had one of my kids absolutely cracking up. I had forgotten how much a stuffed animal can help us out. I had Mr. Octopus join us. Mr. Octopus showed us how he likes to color. He only knows how to scribble (I demonstrated Mr. O scribbling really badly outside the lines). Then my kid and I took turns showing Mr. Octopus, using grid paper, how we could outline a square then carefully color it in using just our fingers. After we each modeled a few squares, Mr. Octopus took a turn. GUESS WHAT! HE DID A GREAT JOB! WOW! We taught him how to color!!! We gave him a lot of high-fives, seeing as how he had 8 arms... :)  Tha...
Source: Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(G) - January 25, 2013 Category: Occupational Therapists Source Type: blogs