Therapeutic Activities You Can Do at Home
Therapists can apply years of training and experience, and roomfuls of appropriate equipment, to the care of your child, but you have one advantage that they do not: constant access. If you feel your child could use more help than he or she can get in the hours spent in a therapist's office, here are some sites that offer ways to help your child without leaving home -- from organized therapies to fun activities with therapeutic benefits to catalogs that offer helpful equipment. Need more ideas? Ask your therapist.
Finding the time to play with your child can be tricky, when you're also under pressure to do therapy and strengthen learning skills and bolster development. Try one of these eight play opportunities that do double duty, helping you both have fun and do good.
If your child gets speech, OT and PT at school, vacations can cause a slide in skills. Keep the progress going with these at-home techniques for four common school-based therapies.
Can't afford the fancy therapy items in sensory integration and speech therapy catalogs? Make or find your own using these 20 easy suggestions.
In an excerpt from "Act Early Against Autism," author Jayne Lytel explains how she would interact with her son using AVB and Floortime. In addition to providing a good comparison of the two approaches, the excerpt also illustrates the ways that parents of children with special needs must think on their feet to apply therapies and interact with their kids.
Movement activities that provide therapeutic benefits for children with special needs.
This is a great togetherness activity for kids with sensory integration problems who crave deep pressure but hate being held and hugged.
A occupational therapist who runs Brain Gym workshops demonstrates many of the activities that make up the program of educational kinesiology.
Based on Dr. Stanley Greenspan's book "The Child with Special Needs," this site gives a great introduction to the theory and process of "floor time," a play-based method for promoting emotional development.
Information on the Alert Program, a technique for helping kids get in touch with the way their bodies respond to stress, and teaching them to stay alert without getting overstimulated.
Although this computer-based reading program may be done by speech therapists in their offices, it can also be done at home with parent supervision. This site offers information on the program and a database of providers.
Similar to Fast ForWord but less expensive and intensive, Earobics software lets children play games that improves their listening and reading skills.
From the Apraxia-Kids site, advice on activities and strategies parents can use to help their speech-impaired children.
Teacher supply catalog includes items helpful for kids with learning disabilities, including graphic organizers, reading incentive products, and easy readers.
