Rhythmic Movement Training and RMT Courses

Rhythmic Movement Training and RMT Courses

What is Rhythmic Movement Training (RMT)?  It is a movement based, primitive (infant or neo-natal) reflex integration program that uses developmental movements, gentle isometric pressure and self-awareness to rebuild the foundations necessary to help overcome sensory, emotional and behavioral challenges for children and adults. (this post contains affiliate links)

Who provides rhythmic movement training?  Pediatric occupational and physical therapists can become trained in rhythmic movement training.  Other practitioners can also be trained such as speech language pathologists, parents, teachers, etc.

How does RMT help children develop sensory motor skills?  The active movements facilitate bilateral coordination skills, muscle strengthening, mid range control and balance skills.  In addition, the repetitive, rhythmic movements provide vestibular input which many children find very calming and relaxing to help prepare the body for learning new skills.

Where can you get trained in RMT? Move Play Thrive is currently offering an online RMT course with open enrollment until 10/31/17. This online training will help you to learn in-depth, extensive tools to facilitate effective neuro-sensory-reflex movement programs for all ages. Find out more at the Move Play Thrive website.

Reference: Rhythmic Movement Training International.  Retrieved from the web on 8/31/17 at http://ift.tt/2eJ4Y2q

 

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Double Doodling with Paint My Wings by Toca Boca

Are you familiar with double doodles?  It is a Brain Gym® bilateral drawing activity to help with eye hand coordination, spatial awareness, right/left discrimination and visual discrimination skills.  Here is a new app that facilitates double doodling called Paint My Wings, from one of my favorite developers, Toca Boca.  Of course it is cute and colorful like their other apps.  This app allows you to paint your butterfly on one side and the symmetrical paint will appear on the other wing automatically.  You can draw with both hands at the same time creating double doodles.  You can vary the colors and the type of paint used ie thick line, thin line, dotted lines, etc.  Granted it will only pick up one hand but it allows the children to try and follow with the other hand is doing.  Just a tip - this app is not meant for the children to color inside the lines it is just fun to doodle different designs.  Definitely a fun app to play around with and guess what?  It is FREE today as of 6/5/2015.

And bonus, Toca Doctor is also a great app and free today too!  Toca Boca Doctor  is a great app for young children.  It challenges visual perceptual skills, visual motor skills and eye hand coordination.  It works well as a reward - complete a certain number  of tasks and the child is rewarded with a mini game that only lasts less than one minute.

You can check it out here (affiliate link)  https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/app/paint-my-wings/id432858701?mt=8&uo=6&at=1010l7q

Cross Crawl Bilateral Coordination Exercise with Video Modeling

Here is our latest freebie from a new ebook entitled 25 Bilateral Coordination Exercises.  It is an instructional hand out on how to perform the Cross Crawl exercise, including a QR code to link to a video demonstration of the exercise.  You can download the freebie here - http://yourtherapysource.com/bilateralcoordinationfreebie.html

If you are not familiar with QR codes, they are a black and white image with squares, that stores website links for reading by the camera on a smartphone.  Therefore, when you hand out these bilateral coordination exercise sheets, the child can simply use a QR code reader to take them immediately to the demonstration video.  This allows children to watch the video over and over again if necessary to learn the skill.  It also helps parents and teachers, so they can check if the child is performing the exercise correctly.

Research has shown that video modeling can help individuals with moderate intellectual disabilities to learn gross motor skills (1).  Video modeling has been shown to be effective in teaching skills to children with autism.  The research indicated that a child should watch the video 1-3 times before attempting the task (2).

Get more information on 25 Bilateral Coordination Exercises here http://yourtherapysource.com/bilateralcoordination.html

References:

1.  Linda C. Mechling and Catherine O. Swindle Fine and Gross Motor Task Performance When Using Computer-Based Video Models by Students With Autism and Moderate Intellectual Disability J Spec Educ November 2013 47: 135-147, first published on January 19, 2012 doi:10.1177/0022466911433859 .

2.  Shipley-Benamou et al. (2002) Teaching Daily Living Skills to Children with Autism Through Instructional Video Modeling. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions July 2002 vol. 4 no. 3 166-177

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Easy Quick Pick Brain Break for a Group

Here is a super easy brain break for a large group.  Have all the children stand in the middle of the room.   Designate one side of the room to be a certain activity i.e. running in place and the other side of the room to be a different activity i.e. squats.  Explain to the children that you will present them with two options and they need to choose what they like best.

For example:

Have the children choose from pizza or cheeseburgers.  When you say the word pizza point to the running in place side of the room and when you say cheeseburgers points to the squats side of the room.

The child quickly picks what option they like best, moves to that side of the room and begins performing the activity.

Once everyone has picked their favorite, bring everyone back to the middle and present a different choice i.e. gym class or recess, video games or watch television, camping or hotel, bowling or dancing, baseball or football, fruit or vegetables, Sponge Bob or Spiderman....

Want to review academic material?  Ask true/false questions.   Do multiple choice and have activities in each of the four corners of the room.

Mini Movement Breaks: This download is a collection of 60+ quick sensory motor activity cards. The mini movement breaks are quick and require no equipment. The movement breaks can be done indoors. Most of the movement breaks can be done with one child or a group of children. It does not get any easier than this to encourage sensory motor activities in the classroom or home.  Find out more at http://yourtherapysource.com/minimove.html

Brain Gym Warm Up Video

Found this Brain Gym video over on Pinterest.  This video offers some great visuals for bilateral coordination warm ups that require no equipment.




Need more ideas for bringing movement into the classroom?
Check out , Imagination Action Journeys and Classroom Activity Posters.