Free Calendar Work Printables

Free Calendar Work Printables

These FREE calendar work printables, created by school based therapist Occupational Therapist Thia Triggs, provide differentiated instruction for students to participate during calendar time and morning work. This freebie is great for individual, group and contextually based therapy sessions. Reinforce your student’s IEP math and ELA goals while focusing on your own therapeutic objectives.

These printables are from the Calendar Bundle 2017-2018.  The bundle includes 3 levels of calendars – blank, start dots and traceable and all the materials to create a calendar notebook for 2017-2018.  Find out more details here.

Download your FREE calendar work printables here.

Need more activities to help with number writing and counting?  Check out Multisensory Number Writing Bundle, Number People Craftivity, and Cardio Skip Counting.

The post Free Calendar Work Printables appeared first on Your Therapy Source.

12 Month Blog Series by OTs and PTs on Functional Skills for Kids

During 2016, I will be participating in a series written by occupational and physical therapy bloggers on developing 12 functional skills for children. Each month we will discuss the development of one functional skill in children addressing the many components of that skill.

Parents, teachers, therapists, and others can learn about all the activities and tasks that children perform throughout the day.  Each month, we will discuss different aspects of functional skills for children including developmental time lines, fine motor considerations, gross motor considerations, sensory considerations, visual perceptual considerations, accommodations and modifications, activity ideas, and more.

Meet the Occupational Therapists and Physical Therapists on the Functional Skills for KidsTeam:  (Follow each therapist on social media for developmental information, great ideas, and creative community!)

Colleen at Sugar Aunts | Facebook |Twitter | Pinterest 

Cindy at Your Kids OT | Facebook | Pinterest

Margaret at Your Therapy Source | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Christie at Mama OT | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Jaime at Miss Jaime, O.T. | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Heather at Growing Hands on Kids |  Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Tonya at Therapy Fun Zone | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Anna at Kids Play Space | Facebook | Pinterest

Lauren and Claire at The Inspired Treehouse | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

Functional Skills of Childhood series begins January 20th!

Our first post where we dissect a function of childhood goes live on January 20th.  Be sure to stop back then so you can see all of the links related to our first topic!

This page will be updated each month.  You will be able to see each childhood function as they are posted each month, and have easy access to getting all the information you need for each functional area. This is going to be an fun series and I’m excited to share it with you!

January – Gross Motor Skills, Positioning and Handwriting

February – Gross Motor Skills and Toilet Training
March - Gross Motor Skills and the Development of Play

Blog Carnival on Readiness

Therextras recently hosted a blog carnival on recognizing readiness (If you are not familiar with a blog carnical, it is when a topic is suggested and people submit blog posts on that topic).

First of all Therextras is a great blog to follow. The author is a pediatric OT and PT who offers excellent blog posts on neurology, functional skills and more. Make sure you read the comments where you will be directed to many more informative, first hand accounts from parents of children with disabilities. Why not start out by checking out all the submissions for Recognizing Readiness? Well worth the read.

Read my entry - Ready, Set, Go!

I also highly recommend that you read this winning post entitled Knowing When To Back Off. For children who will experience regression in skills this is a must read from a parent of a daughter with Rett Syndrome who has been there (not to mention her blog is awesome too - Adapting Creatively).

Free Online Training Materials - Developmental Disabilities

The Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities offers many FREE online training materials that offer educational resources on developmental disabilities. There are many video to watch and learn from including topics on:

Strategies for Teaching Functional Skills (Parent guide)
Assistive Tech for Individuals with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities
Neurodevelopmental Approach for Babies
Visual Processing Deficits in Fragile X and Autism
And many more...

All are free to watch and some are even in Spanish. Take a look here.

Functional Skills of Children with Cerebral Palsy

A cross sectional study of 562 Swedish children with cerebral palsy (ages 3-18 years) was performed from 1990-2005. The researchers analyzed data regarding how a child sits, stands, stands up, sits down and the use of assistive devices.

The results indicated the following:
- 57% of children used standard chairs
- 62% could stand independently
- 62% could stand up without external support
- 63% could sit down without external support
- 42% used adaptive seating
- 31% used external support to stand
- 19% used external support to stand up
- 13% used external support to sit down

Combining the children who used external support (including adaptive seating) with the children who could perform the skills independently the results indicated the following:
- 99% of the children could sit
- 96% could stand
- 81% could stand up
- 81% could sit down.

The Gross Motor Function Classification System was a good predictor of the ability to sit and stand. Children ages 3-6 years old used support more frequently.

To read the full text article go to BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders.

Reference: Elisabet Rodby-Bousquet and Gunnar Hägglund. Sitting and standing performance in a total population of children with cerebral palsy: a cross-sectional study BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2010, 11:131doi:10.1186/1471-2474-11-131