Adapting my New Toaster Oven

The indicator line on the dial of my new toaster oven is the same black as the dial and oven and I can barely feel it. this is difficult for anyone to use even if the person does not have low vision. Adding a dab of orange nail polish is an easy adaptation. The photo below shows the toaster setting clearly.....

 
 
 

Activating Switches

I have long had an interest in using switches to activate sensory materials and was thrilled to recently see the arrival of many new products at my job.  One young lady knew immediately how to keep her hand on the yellow switch to make the pillow vibrate. she is nonverbal but laughed to indicate she enjoyed controlling the activation.

This young man is blind and I didn't know if he would like the fan or not (he did). It is harmless to touch the blades but I still wanted him to learn to avoid touching it, but tricky since he can't see. For the first time using this I brought out a cat bed I had adapted for a different purpose. I sewed a cloth bag to the bottom of the cat bed and filled it with a heavy bag of sand. At first he was confused but then seemed to like the feeling of having it tucked around his lap. Then I was able to stabilize the fan with a sock filled with sand. First I put the switch on the arm of the chair, then I moved it inside so that he only needed to feel the round boundary to sense what was sitting on top of him. I set this up with an on/off  switch so that he needed to press it only once to turn it on or off rather than having to continuously press to activate. He clearly wanted it on!!!

Relaxing Sensory Play

One of the staff at the wonderful adult services program I work at is very creative and understands the sensory needs of people who frequently get overstimulated-leading to maladaptive behaviors.

 These photos show 2 sensory set ups he created where a person can roll their hands over ping pong balls with option of putting objects in or out of the crate and manipulating bottle caps.

Left Neglected

I became a fan of author, Lisa Genova several years ago when writing my book "Still Giving Kisses: A Guide to Helping and Enjoying the Alzheimer's Victim You Love. She is a neuroscientist with an uncanny ability to give insight into the character's soul. We accompanied Alice on the depressing but insightful journey as she regressed through the stages of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice was fictional but the impact on family, friends of her rapidly changing world was all too real and familiar as I watched my mother lose functional skills. Fortunately for me my mom always knew who I was, even when nonverbal.... she was still puckering her lips to kiss my cheek.

In Left Neglected, Sarah is a super type A, brilliant, Harvard educated mother of 3 with a talent for multi-tasking and loving, humorous personality that enabled her to survive her modern marriage of equality and stress. Then one day fatigue and distraction caused a car accident that left her with right brain damage and left neglect. Anyone interested in a book filled with neuroscience 101, cute children, overcoming adversity and a happy ending will love this book. As an occupational therapist who has never worked with a brain injured adult with left neglect I was fascinated with the descriptions of PT and OT sessions and the adaptations Sarah used. Much was familiar to me since I worked with vision impaired adults- like placing orange tape on walls to increase awareness and training to turn her head left to scan the left side of the room with her right eye.

Sarah wore jingly jewelry to increase left side awareness and used the same reading guide her young son with a learning disability used to focus on small sections of print and move the eyes all the way to the left border of the page. Left Neglected was in my pile of holiday vacation reading and was amazed that even though I flew to Florida for a week of sunshine and an OT break, I enjoyed learning about Sarah, left neglect and why she gave up skiing to snow board.
Happy New Years !!!  

The Many Uses of Sensory Pull Handles

Source: Sensory Pull Activity for Children with Autism or Sensory Processing Disorders by RecyclingOT

This is one of the easiest therapy tools I have ever designed and made and I love it because i can use it in numerous ways.  Its also small,  light and quick to make out of detergent bottle handles and a strip of fabric.  Simply cut the handles as shown int he photos. Thread the fabric through the center handle (white in the photo) and tie ends to the other two bottles (green and red in the photo) .

If your goal is to develop a palmar grasp present the handle to the person and help him to gasp and pull while you  hold the white center handle. The person will experience the immediate success of pulling so that the fabric moves a short distance. This works very well in a small group activity where you take turns moving from one individual to the next. The children (or adults) have minimal demands placed on them since their turn is brief and they get to watch others have their turns.

I have used this activity while children are sitting on a horse facingforwards, sideways or backwards and while kneeling and standing on top of the horse. I have incorporated pulling the handles while they do sit-ups and while prone-moving into prone extension. You can do similar reaching activities that challenge the person's postural control using a swing or bolster.

Pulling hard on anything provides proprioceptive stimulation to muscles and joints. I discovered that some individuals are quite strong and can pull to the point of ripping the fabric. So I have used extra wide and strong materials to use this in an activity between older individuals who benefit from pulling hard while at the same time following my directions to let go of their handle (i.e. red) while the other person takes a turn pulling (i.e. green handle). This set-up promotes social skills ! 

One of the videos shows a client swinging on a hammock in a sensory room. He learned to maintain his grasp while I pulled hard enough to move the swing.

I also reinforce directionality concepts when I tell clients to pull upward or downward, left or right, even diagonally. Then I position the handle so that they don't have an option other than to follow my directions.

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Motor Planning to remove shapes from long flat strips

I love this activity because it develops many skills and can be used in different ways according to the child or adults abilities. I cut the long white strip from a large bleach bottle by cutting in a spiral direction and then cutting again to even it out and make smooth. The shapes can vary in size and have 1 or 2 notches.  They are inserted onto the plastic strip in much the same way as one would string beads. But the flat shapes are easier to grasp and manipulate and do not roll away. The notches can be extra large if you need to make this easier. The notches can also be small and snug so that the person has to use force to pull them off- nice proprioceptive sensory stimulation....Very young children or older individuals with developmental delays can simply remove the shapes to insert into a container with a slotted lid. This works on skills to use the hands together and develops eye-hand coordination needed to insert the shapes into the slot. It also works on motor planning since as you can see in the video it can be challenging to plan how to move the shape closest to the end where it will be removed. Attaching the shapes that have 2 notches is a bit like weaving, only easier because there are only 2 notches to weave through. Some individuals will be able to create a color or shape pattern as they weave the shapes in a sequence. One woman who has higher level skills enjoyed weaving them on so that a gentleman sitting next to her could pull them off to insert into a container.  She enjoys having the helper role, so this worked well for her. The gentleman loves to insert pennies into a bottle slot and does that every day. This new activity is similar and familiar enough to give him comfort but it is more cognitively challenging, more interesting since he has to sequence removing each shape before inserting them. this is a perfect example of creating slight variation to a familiar task.   

 

You can also see how removing shapes from my "Weavable Toys" shapes worked on similar skills.

This is also a great activity to promote upper extremity reaching and exercise for people who spend a lot of time sitting.  

The History of Weavable Toys